Nightclub Submits Customers to Background Checks

This is perhaps a new take on the velvet rope aspect where exclusive nightclubs put patrons through their paces, before letting them in.  Normally, you would have to look good and wear the right outfit.   Or be cute and female.  But according to the Arizona Daily Star, the Pearl Nightclub in Pima County, Arizona will be conducting background checks on would-be patrons.

Conducting background checks for club patrons is part of a new effort toward  tighter security, after one customer was shot to death in the parking lot, after someone fired into the crowd.   the Pearl will be conducting Pima County Criminal background checks and anyone found to have a recent felony record will be barred from entering the club.  Additionally, there is a dress code in effect where those in baggy outfits, athletic wear, plain old tee shirts, flip flops and work boots are prohibited.   Hey, the flip flop edict alone has my vote.

Those entering the club will be frisked, or at least they will be asked to remove any suspicious or large sized belts and their waistbands will be searched for weapons.  So far the club has banned ten persons who were found to have criminal records.   Those who are approved are issued a membership card.  Critics have said the background checks will not include crimes committed in other states, nor is it likely that anyone who committed a felony after being issued a card will be easily detected.

Still, these background checks go a long way in preventing the riffraff from ruining everyone else’s time or physically killing or hurting another club patron.  Bad enough you get the occasional bad tempered drunks who want to duke it out with each other, but people getting shot is a whole other matter.    Since off duty police officers in Tucson are prohibited from moonlighting in nightclubs and bars, some clubs use fugitive recover agents, or bounty hunters, to police the parking lot.

Time was most nasty nightclub violence and shooting were attributable more to the low rent bars where it was reported that the disenfranchised would have on drink too many and take their alienation out on the world by blasting away with a Saturday Night Special.  That’s no fun, either.   But when upscale clubs have to protect their patrons from violent situations, like shootings, this becomes a whole other matter.  In a bad economy every nightclub is doing what it can to retain business.  The last thing they need is a reputation for violent behavior.

So, for this blog release I suggest…check them out before they drink.