Enough is enough
at local nightclubs

Sometimes, it’s time to say enough is enough. And in Sayreville, we agree with those who say that time is now.

After months of wrangling and delaying by the Borough Council as it tried to decide whether to renew the liquor licenses for three local nightclubs and how to control rowdy behavior at those clubs if it did — the council finally renewed the licenses of two with stringent conditions and delayed the renewal hearing for the other until November.

They obviously hoped those conditions, and their obvious disapproval of the history of problems at all of the establishments, would be enough to make things better in future.

Obviously, they were wrong.

Early Sunday morning, police responded to a potentially disastrous situation at Club Bene, which is changing its name to Krome. According to police, Brian Arlene, 22, was firing a stolen .22-caliber pistol into the air with more than 500 people who had attended a hip-hop dance hanging around the parking lot.

Not only did the cops have a difficult time breaking through the unruly crowd to tackle Arlene and take his firearm away, they had to pepper-spray other members of the crowd who were attacking him.

And if that wasn’t enough, they had to break up several unrelated fights, one of which resulted in a stabbing and one young man being rushed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.

If this were the first time something troubling had happened at one of these clubs, we might feel differently.

Unfortunately, it’s not.

At Club Abyss, police said they responded to 75 various complaints in the last year, including 13 for controlled substances.

At Club Bene, police had a total of 49 reported incidents between May 1999 and June 2000, most of which were outside the club. Last May and again in June of this year, police had to call for help from Old Bridge and South Amboy after 300 to 400 patrons began fighting outside the club. The club was also one of three involved in a two-day investigation in May that culminated in the arrest of 32 patrons and employees at the clubs for drug-related charges.

At Hunka Bunka, all you have to do is follow the police blotter to know how often police are called to that location.

We know that taking action strong and definitive enough to stop these incidents from happening in the future will not be easy for local officials — and if they take action, the matter will likely end up in court.

But that’s a battle that must be fought, and soon — before lives are lost at one of these locations. That could have happened Sunday, and only blind luck prevented the worst from taking place.

Residents in Sayreville can’t count on luck forever.

The time to win this battle is now. Enough is enough. Borough officials must crack down on this behavior, immediately.

Lives hang in the balance.

— G.B.