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Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice

Police Potpourri: Murder, Drag Racing Down; Mayor's Dander Up; Desk Appearance Tickets Disappear; Council Speaker Swept In A Sweep; Condor Defended


MURDER RATE PLUNGES

June held a triumphant announcement: The city's murder rate had fallen 13 percent over the first six months of the year. The police department had logged 289 murders through June 24--or 46 fewer than in the first six months of 2000. Were this rate to continue, the city would experience 581 murders by year end--far fewer than last year's 673.

But the triumph was marred by an earlier outbreak of harsh mayoral behavior. In late May Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik had told Jack Newfield, then a columnist for the New York Post, that he intended to keep city murders to under 600 - a number not seen since 1963 during Mayor Robert Wagner's administration.

Kerik backed up his prediction with what seemed to be a sensible strategy: He was going to stick to basics, go after violent felons with outstanding warrants, focus on gangs, get guns off the streets, and fine-tune the department's assault on drugs.

Fine. Then Mayor Giuliani issued a reprimand so harsh that it even attracted the attention of the Times of London. A goal of under 600 was "very highly unrealistic," said Giuliani, his annoyance reflected--as it often is--in bad syntax.

The month's figures show that murders have continued along Kerik's predicted downward slope.

CONDOR DEFENDED

It wasn't just the murder rate that plummeted, important as that is. Reported rapes over the first six months of the year were down five percent, felony assault down eight percent, robbery down 15 percent, and burglary 17 percent.

The largest single decline in any category was in car theft, which fell 18 percent. Some 3,000 car owners did not have their cars stolen in the first half of the year.

The Daily News chose to combine these figures with comments from Harvard criminologist George Kelling in support of Operation Condor, the undercover program aimed at violent drug activity. Because Condor costs the city millions of dollars in overtime, it is financially controversial as well as politically volatile. Kelling warned that the next mayor and police commissioner should be careful about dumping Condor or tinkering with it, since it is not broken.

Condor, combined with near zero-tolerance policing, will be ongoing issues for the city. Whether emphasizing the stick of punishment or the carrot of safer, better living conditions, the idea behind the city's aggressive policing strategy is that police confront citizens they suspect of even minor wrongdoing. This is politically dangerous territory.

What's more, for most of the last few years the Giuliani administration has been ratcheting up the consequences of being caught in "minor wrongdoing."

At a recent mayoral forum sponsored by the Century Foundation, former corrections commissioner Michael Jacobson pointed out that misdemeanor arrests went from 130,000 in 1993 to 215,000 in 1998. Even more serious, the police practice of releasing minor offenders with desk appearance tickets--permitting them to go home while requiring their appearance at a later date before a judge--is gradually being discontinued. Some 43 percent of minor offenders were held for arraignment--jailed--for 24 to 48 hours in 1993. In 1998, 85 percent were held.

SWEEPS TRAP CITY COUNCIL SPEAKER

One increasingly common way for middle-class New Yorkers to encounter their police is via "sweeps," by which the police target and barricade some discrete area and check every vehicle for minor infractions. The resulting traffic jams are often horrendous. Even prominent officials can find themselves swept.

City Council Speaker Peter Vallone had trouble making it to the Manhattan Institute's conference last week on "New York at the Crossroads." On the way into Manhattan, he found that "all the traffic coming in from Queens bottled up to France" because the cops at the Midtown Tunnel were checking for seat belts violations. "The Midtown Tunnel," he said. "How busy is it?"

Richard Brookhiser of the New York Observer pointed out that Vallone was blasting "the policy of stop-and-frisk," though "in a very old-ethnic Queens fashion." He suggested that young black males "suffered the same frustrations as harried outer-borough commuters," wrote Brookhiser.

DRAG RACING CURTAILED

Shortly after the New York papers carried lead stories on the fatal drag-racing accident on Long Island, Newsday ran a piece saying that organized drag racing at longtime trouble zones in Queens seems to have been ended. Newsday quoted a young man who said, "They have all sorts of roadblocks now, and they've timed the lights so you can't race anymore." The success is attributed to a crackdown called "Operation Hermes," run jointly by the police department's 107th Precinct and the office of Queens district attorney.

Since its start in June 1999, Operation Hermes has arrested 53 people and seized 33 cars--which seems like an astonishingly high number. Newsday cited police officers who credited the department's "zero-tolerance assault on reckless and drunken driving."

Julia Vitullo-Martin, a long-time editor and writer on urban affairs, is the former director of the Citizens Jury Project at the Vera Institute of Justice. She is now writing a book entitled The Conscience of the American Jury.

Marijuana


This has been the month of marijuana. Many New Yorkers are wondering whether their city has gotten trapped in some deadly new form of Reefer Madness. On May 10, five people were shot--three killed and two badly wounded--in an apartment above the Carnegie Deli in midtown. It looked initially like a drug deal gone bad because the apartment's tenant, Jennifer Stahl, had dealt in high-grade marijuana. (The shooting later turned out to be more of a music deal gone bad.) The New York Times said that six pounds of marijuana, worth roughly $10,000 per pound, were found in the apartment.

This astonishing market price reflects both the new potency of marijuana--not your grandmother's mild weed of the sixties--and the value produced by the federal government's 30-year war on drugs.

Michael Massing, author of The Fix, a history of U.S. drug policy since the 1960s, points out that marijuana is the only major illegal drug to have soared in price over the last few years--mainly as a result of interdiction, the term commonly used for the efforts by law enforcement agencies to catch people trafficking in drugs. "Interdiction has had the effect of making the marijuana trade far more violent than it had been," he says. "The old distinction between hard trade and marijuana no longer exists." You used to get marijuana from people you knew, he adds.

Indeed, several news accounts emphasized how cautious Stahl had been as a dealer--selling only to people she knew. She was almost surely murdered by an acquaintance. She had called the shooter by the name "Sean."

A recently installed video camera caught two men on tape, leading the police to identify two suspects quickly. The one named Sean is thought to have fled to the South, perhaps Georgia; the other, Andre Smith, was arrested in New Jersey. Smith's arrest has returned the issue of parole to the public eye.

A May 23 New York Times headline put parole up front: "New Jersey Parolee Is Arrested in Killings of 3 Above Carnegie Deli." While out on parole three months earlier for violent robbery, Smith had been arrested on charges of possessing 311 grams of marijuana near an Irvington, New Jersey, public school. But New Jersey officials failed to revoke his parole--or warn New York officials of the arrest.

"He should not have been out," Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik said at a press conference. "He should have been violated," he added, using the odd criminal justice term for returning to prison those who violate the provisions of their parole.

Praising the wisdom of New York State's elimination of parole for violent felons--a move he had spearheaded--Gov. George Pataki said the Smith case proved his old campaign point: "We had revolving-door justice for too long in this state."

MEDICAL MARIJUANA BANNED

Meanwhile, marijuana for medical purposes had taken front and center on the national stage.

In U.S. v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that federal law does not allow a "medical necessity" exception to the Congressional prohibition on the distribution of marijuana. Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, Congress listed marijuana as a "Schedule I" drug, meaning that it "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." Growing, using, selling, or distributing marijuana is therefore a federal criminal offense.

Federal law notwithstanding, eight states have decriminalized medical marijuana. In 1996, a California plebiscite authorized the use of marijuana under medical prescription. Several systems of providing medical marijuana then developed, including buyers' cooperatives headed by physicians.

This did not sit well with the Clinton Justice Department, which sued to enjoin distribution in Oakland. That is, the Justice Department requested an injunction to stop distribution rather than bringing criminal charges to punish distribution--though it contended this was a criminal offense. Why an injunction? Because criminal charges would have required a jury trial. The Justice Department knew full well that it almost surely could not have found a California jury willing to convict the Oakland Cooperative of illegal distribution or the sick patients of illegal use of marijuana.

Will the Bush Administration follow Clinton's hard line on marijuana? The day the Oakland decision came down, Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that as a presidential candidate Bush had supported state self-determination on medical marijuana use.

Yet President Bush has chosen a hard-liner as his drug czar. As the Los Angeles Times recently noted, Bush's drug czar nominee, John P. Walters, told Congress in 1996 that it should yank all prescription privileges from doctors who recommend medical marijuana for their patients--about as rigid a line as one can draw.

Michael Massing calls all this "discouraging to everyone who follows the issue." He says that people in the field are looking to any branch of government at any level to bring reasonableness to this issue, which has been surrounded by hysteria. Research, both systematic and anecdotal, has shown repeatedly that smoking marijuana helps some patients.

Even the august and conservative New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized in support of medical marijuana.

Decriminalizing marijuana would reduce its market value--and accompanying street violence--substantially. Massing would like to see marijuana's non-medical use remain illegal, but as a misdemeanor punishable by a fine, like a speeding ticket.

This view has substantial support in New York. Richard N. Gottfried, chairman of the New York State Assembly Committee on Health, wrote an op-ed in the May 16 Newsday attacking the Supreme Court decision as "bad law for patients' rights." Citing a 1990 survey reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that 44 percent of oncologists said they had suggested that a patient smoke marijuana for relief of nausea induced by chemotherapy, Gottfried urged passage of his Medical Use of Marijuana bill. The bill would allow physician-supervised use of marijuana in treating patients with serious illnesses.

Supreme Court decision or no, the use of medical marijuana, particularly by seriously ill patients, will continue all over the country. The only question is: how will the Bush Administration's Justice Department respond?

YET ANOTHER SHOOTING OF AN UNARMED BLACK MAN

A more routine use of marijuana is involved in the Bronx trial of Mark Conway, the New York City undercover police officer accused of third-degree assault in the shooting of a fleeing unarmed teenager, Dantae Johnson, in May 1999. Johnson had fled Conway in part because he and a friend had just been smoking a joint--and because he had been wrongly arrested less than a month earlier. "I was scared," he testified. "I was trying to go home."

The New York Times drew explicit comparisons between this shooting and the killing of Amadou Diallo, also unarmed and black, four months earlier in February 1999. Like the officers who killed Amadou Diallo, Officer Conway is white and a member of the Street Crimes Unit. Like them, he wrongly believed his shooting victim to have a gun.

Amy Waldman in the Times zeroed in on what she called "yet another echo of the Diallo trial." This was the testimony of Officer Conway's supervisor, Lt. Kevin Cantwell, who had also been the supervisor of the Diallo officers. As in the Diallo trial, he took the stand for the prosecution--only to give testimony that was helpful to the defense.

In Conway's trial, Lt. Cantwell testified that on arriving at the scene, he found Johnson on the ground. He authorized charging him with possession of a loaded weapon and robbery. No weapon was ever found, nor did any evidence of a robbery appear. The charges were dropped.

Because Lt. Cantwell insisted he could not remember who had given him the information that led him to authorize the charges, wrote Waldman, his memory lapse could be helpful to Conway in suggesting that he was not the one trying to manufacture evidence.

There is another comparison between the Diallo officers and this case that the Times chose not to draw explicitly: all officers evaded a trial by jury in the Bronx. The Diallo officers were tried by a jury in Albany. Officer Conway is being tried by a judge in the Bronx.

TRIAL BY JUDGE

Thus we have yet another distressing criminal trial of a New York City Police officer presided over by a judge with no jury.

A bench trial--trial by a judge alone--is a defendant's right under New York State law. But the existence of such a right raises the troubling issue of just what the U.S. constitutional right to a jury trial means in this state.

Officer Conway is following the path of most cops accused of similar crimes committed on duty before him.

Bench trials of cops have happened many times before and will happen many times in the future because New York has an unusual statute that allows defendants to "waive" their right to a jury trial and "consent" to a bench trial. The Court of Appeals has ruled that courts have almost no discretion to deny a waiver.

In effect, a defendant can demand a judge-only trial even over the protest of the prosecutor and the reluctance of the trial court.

The Bronx has seen an unusual number of bench trials. Indeed, since 1977 when Police Officer Thomas Ryan was convicted by a jury of fatally beating a 25-year-old burglary suspect, only one police officer charged with a civilian death in the Bronx has chosen a jury trial. Francis Livoti, who was acquitted in a bench trial of killing Anthony Baez, is the most recent and best known example of an officer evading a jury trial. (The legal term is "waive," but such usage defies common sense.)

Private citizens can demand a bench trial too, of course, although they exercise the option less often than police officers. Over the past 10 years in the Bronx, for example, defendants have chosen bench trials in only 19 percent of all criminal cases.

At the federal level, however, a defendant cannot similarly avoid a jury. Under federal criminal procedure, a defendant can waive trial by jury only with "the approval of the court and the consent of the government," a principle upheld by the Supreme Court in Singer v. United States.

As Chief Justice Earl Warren noted in that decision, a defendant's "only constitutional right concerning the method of trial is to an impartial trial by jury." There exists no parallel right to avoid a trial by jury.

Nearly all the states have procedures compatible with the federal system. New York, as one of the rare exceptions, is out of step with its fellow sovereign states, its own citizens and the nation's founding principles.

The jury trial is the nation's chief means of ensuring that the morals and standards of the community will be heeded in criminal proceedings.

The jury trial is the right of every American--and the right of every American community, including the Bronx.

Julia Vitullo-Martin, a long-time editor and writer on urban affairs, is the former director of the Citizens Jury Project at the Vera Institute of Justice. She is now writing a book entitled The Conscience of the American Jury.

Neighbors and Nightclubs


When a recent argument inside the nightclub Tunnel in Chelsea spilled out onto the street, a 16-year old wound up fatally stabbed and another teen was shot. It was just another incident in a long line of troubles for the nightclub. In the last few years at Tunnel, an 18-year-old died of a drug overdose, another club-goer was shot and killed, and city officials have repeatedly accused the disco of promoting drugs, selling alcohol to minors, and evading taxes.

For Maria Garcia, who lives a few blocks away, the latest stabbing and shooting resulted in another sleepless night because of a neighborhood disco.

"There were police cars, people on the street, and ambulances," said Garcia. "It kept us up all night. We did not know what it was, but we knew it was something big."

Noise, drunken club-goers, litter, drug use, and violence are common occurrences because of nightclubs, Garcia says. "With several clubs all within a few blocks, we literally have thousands of people coming out of clubs between 2 and 4 o'clock in the morning, every day of the week."

As the head of a group called Chelsea Owners and Tenants for Neighborhood Preservation, Garcia is engaged in ongoing battles to get area nightspots like Twilo, Roxy, Limelight, and the Tunnel to be responsible neighbors. She also tries to keep new clubs from opening.

And, at least part of the time, she is successful. Recently, Garcia and her neighborhood organization stalled the efforts of two clubs, Tambourine on West 23rd Street and High Altitude on West 19th Street. While Garcia said the two victories were not the norm, they point to the growing power of residents in the ongoing battles between community groups and nightclubs, with city officials in-between.

Club owners claim they are often treated unfairly by the city, raided by the police, required to undergo a rigorous and expensive process of gaining permits, subjected to unfair expectations from the public and press.

What To Do If Your Neighbor Is A Noisy Nightclub

Persistence is the key to dealing with noise, crowds, and other problems that may result from a disco in your neighborhood. But knowing whom to call will also save time, since different city agencies handle different problems.

First, see if others have complained before you. Local community groups may have already taken up the cause. Tenant.net is a good resource for many neighborhood issues and may provide information about what is going on in your area.

Second, it is best at least to make an attempt to contact a club directly, because the establishment may be accommodating. Filing an official complaint with a government agency before voicing concerns to the club may make it more difficult to reach a solution in the end.

When you decide it is time to get the city involved, the first official stop is the Department of Environmental Protection, which handles complaints about noise from nightclubs and outside speaker systems. The general complaint phone number is 718 DEP-HELP (337-4357). The city also has a special quality of life hotline at 888-677-5433.

The local police precinct handles noisy neighbors, boom boxes, noise outside of bars and clubs, and the general loudmouth who passes by your window at 2 a.m.

Community Boards are the place to air grievances about general neighborhood issues, liquor licenses, and new clubs. You can always take it one step further and notify your city councilmember.

The final step is the State Liquor Authority, which considers community response when it considers applications from establishments that want to sell alcohol. Recommendations from community boards and letters from elected officials do influence the decisions. The city office for the State Liquor Authority can be reached at 212-417-4002.

"You are probably safer inside a club than in a school or on the street because of the measures most owners take," said Andrew Rasiej, president of the New York Nightlife Association, a coalition of club owners and music industry professionals.

Some argue that unlike Miami, a city that welcomes nightclubs as a vital part of its image and economy, New York is turning its back on the nightlife that helped make its name.

"If you look up dancing on the city's visitors website, all you get is ballet," said Rasiej.

In fact, the official New York visitor's website does offer some other options, but the lounge of the Marriott on Times Square (the website's top suggestion) is probably not what most have in mind when they want to experience the "city that never sleeps."

PROBLEMS BEHIND THE VELVET ROPE

At 11 p.m. on a Thursday, women in backless tops and platform heels and men in tight silky shirts stand outside the Cheeta nightclub on West 21st Street. They line up along a velvet rope, some shivering in a light drizzling rain, hoping that sometime soon they can convince the doorman that they are indeed on the guest list. The thumping bass of the electronic music inside booms out onto the street. The line is constant for the next few hours, the doormen allowing in a few parties at a time to keep up the appearance that this is such a fashionable place to be; how could it not be, if people are willing to wait in the rain to get in?

"I go out about three, sometimes four nights a week," said Ana Tallow, a 22-year-old student who has been waiting on line for 20 minutes. "It is just about going out and being with my friends."

By 2 a.m. patrons begin to flow out of the club, some staggering and laughing loudly. They whistle for double-parked taxis; the taxis honk back. This scene is a nightly occurrence, just part of what is expected outside of a club. But traffic and noise are just the beginning.

Last year, St. Vincent's hospital in Manhattan notified authorities of an increasing number of people who had overdosed on drugs and arrived in the emergency room via private ambulances. Several nightclubs, it turns out, keep ambulances on a kind of retainer, parked outside their door. The hospital reported treating four to five nightclub overdoses a night, twice as many as before. The medical emergencies are from relatively new drugs like the psychedelic Ecstasy, which can lead to dehydration, and the mixture of alcohol and GHB, commonly known as a date rape drug. Since 1994, the national number of medical emergencies from Ecstasy has increased ten times.

THE PLAYERS AND THE LAWS

New York Nightlife Association - A coalition of music companies and club owners that would like the city to look more favorably on the nightclub industry.

Social Club Task Force - Building and Health Departments officials, Fire Marshall, and Police Department who make inspections.

State Liquor Authority - Issues liquor licenses to New York establishments. Many in the city, including Queens Borough President, Claire Shulman do not think the state authority is responsive enough to city issues. Shulman has proposed a bill to create a City Liquor Authority.

Department of Buildings - Issues certificate of occupancy for clubs.

Department of Consumer Affairs - Issues cabaret licenses for dancing.

Community Boards - Neighborhood government bodies hold public hearings and can vote to reject liquor license applications.

Nuisance Abatement Law - Three arrests at a club means it can be shut down.

Padavan Law - Named after one of its sponsors, Senator Frank Padavan, the law gives local communities a right to have their views expressed on certain liquor license applications. It does not give Community Boards the right to give the final rejection of an application, only to weigh in with their concerns.

"Sure Ecstasy is a problem in some places. Sometimes as soon as you walk into a place, there is someone right there trying to sell you something," said Tallow, the student and club regular. "But clubs also get too much blame. People make their choices to find what they want. It is not necessarily the clubs' fault."

Two of the clubs that hires ambulances--Twilo and Roxy -- said the private ambulances are for the protection of their patrons.

"When people go down [from GHB], 911 is useless," said Jason McCarthy, the general manager of the Roxy in a recent New York Times article. "I do this to protect my clients who go into cardiac arrest."

Twilo, in particular, has had drug problems. Last summer, a medical student passed out on a dance floor and died. And two club-goers are suing the club alleging that employees hid them in a backroom when they overdosed so that police would not find out.

"We are blamed for everything and we are never given the benefit of the doubt," said Peter R. Sullivan, Twilo's lawyer. "The reason we are still open is because we have been able to prove to the courts that we are the safest club in New York."

The clubs also say they have asked for help from the police in fighting the drugs, but received no assistance.

High profile cases of guns and violence at clubs, particularly involving famous hip-hop stars, have also created negative perception. Last year1s shooting at Club New York that put rap stars Sean "Puffy" Combs and Jamal "Shyne" Barrow on trial produced daily news stories for months. Just weeks ago, rapper Jay-Z was charged with concealing a weapon outside the club Exit.

Such cases have apparently inspired the New York Police Department to create a special "hip-hop" patrol unit that cruises by certain hot spots looking for rappers involved in illicit activities.

CLUBS SPEAK OUT

Clubs say that the incidents that make headlines are small when the number of discos and patrons are considered. They also contend that many of their efforts for improving relations with the city and residents (like a recorded message in cabs from Madonna urging club-goers to be responsible) have been snubbed by city officials.

"When there are events at Madison Square Garden or parades, organizers hire off-duty police officers," said Andrew Rasiej, who also runs Digital Club Network, which broadcasts music events online. "We've asked police and the city for the same thing. Their response has been: No."

Another consideration, club owners say, should be the positive economic impact they have on the city.

Indeed, a recent study by the Manhattan Borough President's office reported that the city's bars, clubs, and ballrooms generate three billion dollars for the local economy and account for more than 27,000 jobs. A survey commissioned by the New York Nightlife Association claims that the nightclub industry brings in more people than the city1s sports teams, Broadway theaters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Empire State Building combined.

And New York does not provide a particularly business friendly environment for those who want to open a disco. A total of 26 separate credentials from various city agencies are needed, and some owners say they have spent more than one million dollars without assurance that their club will be allowed to open.

Zoning may be the most difficult part of the equation.

In the past, clubs could find homes in neighborhoods that were more industrial, but as housing and land for new residential development grows more scarce, the areas that welcome nightclubs are growing smaller. In the mid-19801s, neighborhoods like the West Side were rezoned for mixed use by commercial, real estate, and manufacturing interests. The zoning threw everyone into inevitable conflict.

"When you sell a loft in the meatpacking district for two million dollars, those people expect the same quality of life as those who live on Gramercy Park," said Rasiej. "But it is not going to happen."

KIDS THESE DAYS: THE HISTORY OF CLUBS

Of course, the battles between nightclubs, residents, and politicians are nothing new.

In the 1860's John Allen, the owner of a dance hall on Water Street that doubled as a bordello, was commonly referred to as the "wickedest man in New York." By 1910, the political reformers were able to convince the state legislature to amend the city charter so that it required licensing of dance halls. Soon after, many social venues began calling themselves dance academies and offered dance instruction in an effort to circumvent regulations and present a more positive image to the public.

Opposition did not deter dancers and clubs. By 1925, there were 786 licensed dance spaces in the five boroughs, 238 of which were in Manhattan. And a study at the same time calculated that 14 percent of the city1s males and 10 percent of the city1s females between 17 and 40 years old went dancing at least once a week.

The modern discotheque with its fashionable celebrities, elaborate sound systems and lighting, and unique problems did not emerge until the 19601s.

Early discotheques included the fashionable Ondine on East 59th Street, Le Club on East 55th Street, and Arthur, owned by the son of Adlai Stevenson, that featured rock and roll bands. The Electric Circus on St. Mark's Place opened in 1967 and featured trapeze performance artists as well as parties for famous people, hippies, and students. In 1977, working-class discos in the boroughs were made world famous by the film, Saturday Night Fever.

Studio 54 became the best-known club of the 1970's with its policy of selective admittance, drug use, and decadent parties. The party may have seemed to go on forever, but in fact it ended in 1979, when the owners of Studio 54, Stephen Rubell and Ian Schrager were arrested by federal agents and convicted of tax evasion.

By the 19801s clubs began opening in unused warehouses in Chelsea, Lower Manhattan, and the meatpacking district. This angered residents. They began organizing against them.

The most tragic and deadly nightclub incident happened in the Bronx in 1990 when Julio Gonzalez set fire to Happy Land Social Club after an argument with his girlfriend. The fire claimed 87 lives and highlighted the problem of illegal clubs that operate without proper licenses and safe building codes.

MAKING GOOD NEIGHBORS

"New York has a well-deserved reputation as the 'city that never sleeps,'" said Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields. "Unfortunately, in some instances, conflicts sometimes arise between these types of businesses and communities in which they are located."

Toward the end of helping clubs become good neighbors, Fields has issued a number of recommendations that include creating special police units to enforce existing rules on nightclubs, reform of the State Liquor Authority procedures, and improved zoning.

Other local measures are also underway. West Side City Councilmember Christine Quinn said community boards two and four in her area have created joint hearings on the use of the meatpacking district that creates better dialogue between nightclubs and residents.

However, community groups admit that even well meaning club owners are fighting a losing battle. "The days when the neighborhood would welcome a large venue for 2,000 people are over," said Garcia. "And there is no doubt that any new club is paying for all of the bad people that came before them."

Non-profits, like Dance Safe an organization that works to promote safety and health at raves and nightclubs, are also doing their part to try to improve the scene. Dance Safe sets ups booths and provides water, information, condoms, and ear plugs. They sometimes even perform a chemical analysis of patrons' Ecstasy pills to make sure they do not contain contaminants.

"People are going to do certain things," said Paul Hale of the New York City Dance Safe chapter. "We do not condone or condemn drug use. We try to educate and reduce the harm people can do to themselves and others."

Hale also noted that most of the people he encounters at clubs are sober and that many overdoses of Ecstasy and GBH have occurred at frat houses and college parties, not just at nightclubs.

Ultimately, the battles over nightclubs pitch each interest against a host of opponents.

Residents complain that police, the State Liquor Authority, and the city are not doing enough to enforce the present laws. The city complains that the long court cases against nightclubs often do not produce results because of unenforceable laws. Fire and police officials say they are cracking down on the problem and that surprise raids that they conduct yield evidence that clubs are routinely breaking the law and putting patrons in danger.

Nightclubs complain that they have few friends in the city.

The only people not complaining are the thousands of young people who, egged on by hip magazines and designers and music promoters and various celebrities, each night are on the lookout for the latest, hottest, and most fashionable place to be. Or, if they are complaining, nobody can hear them through the beat.

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