As the police department and community advocates increase the pressure on nightclubs to deter underage drinkers from entering their establishments, some club owners are going high-tech.

Many have chosen to or are considering purchasing ID scanners, which allow them to scan driver’s licenses to detect whether patrons are of drinking age and if their IDs are valid. One company’s scanner can make a photo record of the IDs of all patrons who enter, which can protect a club in the event of a police investigation.

“We have started seeing a lot of business in New York,” the vice president of California-based Card Scanning Solutions, Iuval Hatzav, said. “In the past week or so we got extremely high volume of phone calls from New York.”

A source in the New York Nightlife Association said officials were attempting to convince nightclubs to buy the software to protect their establishments.

The device offered by Card Scanning Solutions retails for about $749 when software and a database function are added in, according to the company’s Web site. Mr. Hatzav said a new model of the scanner would include access to a database shared by all the clubs in a city, so certain underage would-be clubgoers or troublemakers could be red-flagged.

Three murders this year — each highlighting a different aspect of nightlife gone wrong — have led to legislation in the City Council that would allow the city to shut down clubs that do not follow the law regarding underage drinking. Today, the council’s speaker, Christine Quinn, and several council members, including the chairman of the Public Safety Committee, Peter Vallone, are announcing another packet of legislative tools to clamp down on the bad apples in the nightlife business.

Although he would not comment on the legislation until it was unveiled today, Mr. Vallone said ID scanners were “almost a necessity in this day and age of the professionally done fake IDs.”

“The speaker and I support them,” he said. “We believe they can play a very large part in the future of nightlife in this city. … I believe it’s appropriate that they be mandated.”

The recent death of Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old high school graduate who was found murdered after a night of drinking at the Guest House on West 27th Street, had led to a police crackdown in the Chelsea area in the past week. A man identified by police as Drayton Coleman, 35, allegedly picked up Moore on the West Side Highway after her car was impounded and a friend was taken to the hospital to be treated for alcohol poisoning. She was found days later in a suitcase in a dumpster in West New York, N.J., having been raped and strangled, police said.

The murder of Imette St. Guillen, a 24-year-old college student who police say was raped and strangled by a bouncer in SoHo, and the fatal shooting of Gustavo Cuadros, 25, by a bouncer at Opus-22 on West 22nd Street, have also led to attention from the authorities on the conduct and training of bouncers in New York City.

A lobbyist for the New York Nightlife Association, Robert Bookman, said his organization of more than 150 nightclubs was open to the addition of ID scanners, but that the police should meet them half way.

“We need some prosecution of people with possession of fake IDs,” he said. “I think that would be a huge deterrent.”

Mr. Bookman said his members have felt like the targets of police investigations, rather than partners trying to reduce the problems that can be associated with some patrons’ excessive drinking.

“If only the streets were quiet and abandoned at night, then my Comp-Stat numbers will go down,” he said, imitating what he perceived to be the police mindset toward clubs. By the calculations of an economist hired by the association, nightlife brings about $400 million in tax revenues to the city and another $320 million to the state, he said.

A 23-year-old club promoter, who asked not to be identified because he said disclosing his name could hurt his business, said the ID scanner would stop many underage drinkers from getting into clubs, but it would be no panacea for the troubles of Chelsea.

“That will really change the nightclub scene,” he said, adding that it may lead to longer lines in front of clubs and possibly more fights among impatient patrons. Also, he said, manufacturers of false IDs would likely soon match the technology with equally sophisticated fakes. Many clubs in the meatpacking district have already started using the scanners, he said.

A training coordinator for the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association, Chuck Conkling, a retired agent of North Carolina’s Alcohol Law Enforcement, said the problems in New York could be a symptom of the state’s alcohol enforcement set-up.

New York’s State Liquor Authority is mainly charged with issuing alcohol licenses and dealing with licensees, and has a relatively small investigative arm. In North Carolina and other states including Oregon, enforcement and licensing are done by separate agencies.

“The best states have separate enforcement agency from the regulatory agency,” he said. Alcoholic Beverage Control “enforcement is always the most politicized part of law enforcement. … There is so much money involved.”