News Article: October 02, 2007
Police to remove problem bar patrons not bouncers
Neal Hall
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Ejecting gang members and their associates from downtown Vancouver bars will no longer be the duty of bar staff.
Instead, staff will phone 911 and police will remove the potential troublemakers under a new agreement between the Vancouver police department and an industry group of club and bar owners.
"This is about taking our management and our bar staff out of harm's way," said John Teti, chair of Barwatch, whose members include all the clubs and bars on the Granville Street entertainment strip.
He estimated there are 2,000 gang members in the Lower Mainland.
"A lot of the players are known to the bar people," he said. "And those that aren't, we do have the firearms [interdiction] squad that's always in and out of our bars and we also have the gang squad, which is in and out of our bars."
Vancouver police announced the new strategy today, saying they will soon sign an agreement with Barwatch allowing officers to remove gang members and their associates from premises. In the past, bar staff had to ask a suspected gang member to leave a drinking establishment.
"We want to send a message to gangs and associates that they are not welcome in Barwatch establishments," said Vancouver police Insp. Rollie Woods, who is in charge of the downtown policing district.
"The goal is to make downtown safe for the public, safe for the bar staff and safe for the police," he said. "In an ironic way, we even want to make it safe for gang members themselves."
Woods said training for the new strategy for both police and bar staff will begin Oct. 9. He said he didn't know of any other police jurisdiction that has taken such a measure. The police force has a "strong" legal opinion that the new strategy will work, he added.
Vancouver's new police chief, Jim Chu, said today that violent crime and street disorder are among his top priorities.
"We certainly have had some high-profile incidents lately," Chu said during a meeting with The Vancouver Sun editorial board. "But unless you're a gang member or you're drunk and belligerent coming out of a bar at two in the morning, your chances of being involved in violent crime are low," he said.
Teti said today that owners of nightclubs and bars are concerned that recent high-profile shootings in Vancouver and the surrounding suburbs are part of a gang war.
"Police intelligence has told us that there's going to be retaliation. The person who was recently killed in the vicinity of Vancouver Tech [secondary school] was a club kid."
He said the latest measure to oust gang members from bars is another step to ensure the safety of patrons and staff.
"We just can't run the risk of having people injured or killed within our bars," Teti said. "We can't have people shooting each other in our establishments and inside the downtown core."
Last month, downtown bars began turning people away wearing brands of clothing that are considered gangster-wear, featuring such trendy motifs as tattoos, skulls and chains. Barwatch establishments already use metal detectors to scan for weapons and identification scanners to identify problem customers.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, contacted today, had no comment on the latest police strategy.
nhall@png.canwest.com