News Article: October 29, 2008
Section: News
Outlet: The Martlet Newspaper
Byline: Willetts, Kailey
Title: Program to improve bar safety
Date: 2008-10-29
Victoria - A new initiative taking place in downtown Victoria is aiming to keep bars, nightclubs and streets safer at night.
Bar Watch will see licensed establishments downtown work with the city and Victoria Police to create a system to share information about problem patrons.
“The program is still in very preliminary stages,” said Sgt. Grant Hamilton, spokesperson for the Victoria Police Department. “Violence is definitely the issue we’re dealing with the most.”
Hamilton said that while many disputes happen outside Victoria nightclubs, they often start inside.
Liam Lux, the owner of Lucky Bar and a member of the Victoria Bar and Cabaret Association, says he supports the Bar Watch initiative, but feels it might not be be the magic fix police are hoping for.
“The number one issue that has anything to do with bars is the congregations of people,” said Lux. “The problem is easily summed up: we have an entertainment district with no transportation at all after a certain time.”
Lucky Bar has already taken steps to reduce disturbances caused by patrons leaving the bar by posting signs by exits to remind people to leave quietly and respect neighbours.
“Unfortunately, the simple view is that these problems are from people who go to bars,” said Lux. He hopes that once problems stemming directly from bars are cleaned up, people will see that a lot of the issues downtown have other sources.
Lux hopes that by being proactive, licensed establishments will protect not only their patrons but also themselves.
“This is one of the ways that the downtown entertainment industry is trying to protect ourselves from over-legislation,” Lux said.
One solution currently being looked at by Bar Watch is the controversial software, Treoscope. Treoscope is already in place in many licensed establishments in Nanaimo and Vancouver. Patrons swipe ID cards through the system when entering an establishment and the software verifies the ID, the age of the patron and takes a picture of the person to store on file.
Treoscope provides several advantages for bar owners. It allows them to flag patrons who are unruly or frequently behave inappropriately. These flags show up when that ID is scanned anywhere in North America. It also allows bar owners to show that due diligence has been done if underage patrons gain entry using a valid ID with a photo that looks similar.
And for many owners, the system appears straightforward. When the ID is swiped, Treoscope displays whether it’s valid and whether the patron is of legal age or not. It also stores the patron’s birth date in its system and keeps track of when and how often a patron has visited that bar. If a patron has been flagged, that remains visible to all bars using Treoscope.
Element is currently the only licensed establishment in Victoria to use the Treoscope software.
Element manager Mike Mclean says he’s been very pleased with Treoscope and hopes that other licenced establishments in Victoria will also get the software.
Other owners are still undecided, however, and Lux believes that the biggest factor in getting Treoscope is making sure it would be a useful tool for all establishments.
“Overall, I can see [Treoscope] being very beneficial,”said Lux. “[But] it’ll only work if everybody’s doing it.”
Treoscope also has advantages for the police. If a crime is committed in a licensed establishment, they can access Treoscope with a warrant to find out who was in the bar that night.
Hamilton also thinks software like Treoscope will work proactively in crime prevention.
“Just the idea that people’s information will be captured is a deterrent itself,” he said. Hamilton said the software has been very successful in Vancouver and Nanaimo.
Hamilton said that before Treoscope or a similar program is employed by Bar Watch, it will have gone through the Privacy Commission.
“The Privacy Commission has a very big say over how this program operates, if at all,” he said.
However, Hamilton noted that patrons’ information is captured almost every time people do anything these days — especially when credit card or video surveillance systems are already installed.
“What it comes down to is [the question] ‘what is that information going to be used for?’” Hamilton said. “It’s balancing the need to protect the public — the safety of individuals — with the individual right for privacy.”