City Council Seeks ID Scanners at Clubs, Power to Enforce State Liquor Laws

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Alcohol-serving cabarets licensed by the city would be required to install ID scanners and surveillance cameras under legislation being considered by the City Council, Speaker Christine Quinn announced yesterday.

In addition, she is pushing for Albany to give city officials the power to enforce state liquor laws.

“What we’re saying is that we can’t let the SLA control this any more,” the speaker said, referring to the New York State Liquor Authority. “They have done a pitiful job of closing down bad establishments in this city.”

A spokesman for the authority, Bill Crowley, said he does not comment on legislative proposals, but said he disagreed with Ms. Quinn’s characterization, noting that the agency has closed down 108 establishments and suspended 60 licenses in New York City since January. The statistics include liquor stores in addition to nightclubs and bars.

Ms. Quinn’s proposals come less than two weeks after an underage teenage drinker from New Jersey, Jennifer Moore, was found raped and murdered and her body left in a suitcase after partying in a Chelsea night club.

The surveillance cameras would film people who enter and leave establishments, with the goal of aiding in crime investigations, supporters of the legislation say.

“In government, when you lose somebody in the streets of your city, you have to stop and pause and think about what you could have done to prevent that,” the speaker said.

A lawyer who represents the New York Nightlife Association, Robert Bookman, said his group would respond to yesterday’s proposals after a meeting is held at City Hall regarding nightclub safety in the city. Ms. Quinn yesterday announced the meeting, to be held in September.

“Pass 20 more laws, it’s not going to mean anything unless you have cooperation,” the lawyer, Mr. Bookman said, echoing a common complaint among nightclub owners that the police work against club owners rather than with them. A police spokesman, Paul Browne, dismissed Mr. Bookman’s argument.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg declined to say whether the mayor supported the specific proposals the speaker announced yesterday.

“We will work with the City Council to draft legislation that will increase the use of technology to root out underage drinking, increase the use of security cameras and hold establishments accountable when they break the law,” the mayor’s chief spokesman, Stuart Loeser, said in a written statement.

Ms. Quinn’s plan would target locations licensed as cabarets — dancing establishments — by the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs. There are 242 such licensed businesses in the city, according to the department.

Proprietors would help fund the city’s enforcement effort through a surcharge they pay on liquor licenses, Ms. Quinn said. The machines would cost close to $1,000, the cameras, close to $10,000.

Ms. Quinn dismissed the privacy implications of the plan. “Cameras at places of public assembly are commoplace now,” she said, “I don’t believe there is any expectation of privacy as it relates to going to a club.”

Privacy advocates, noting that many of the ID scanning machines are capable of storing troves of intimately personal information from a driver’s license, questioned whether the efforts would have enough safeguards to guard against abuses.

“When you go into a bar, you expect that people are going to be able to see you,” a staff counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Sherwin Siy, said. “You don’t expect that they’re going to photograph you, record your face, record your identity off of your driver’s license, and be able to correlate that information.”

Mr. Siy said proposals to mandate surveillance could radically alter Gotham’s nightlife industry.

“If I want to spend an evening out, I might go to a casual restaurant that serves drinks rather than a bar that records my information,” he said.


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