In the past decade, my old hometown of Rochester, NY has been doing similar things. The mayor instituted a point system that applies to businesses in the city - the business is penalized with points if a crime occurs in or near its premises. The point system includes not only violent crimes, but drug crimes as well. In fact, most of the closings have been due to patrons being arrested for drug possession or dealing drugs on the sidewalk out front. (This raises other legal issues - is it really constitutional for the city to be closing down business owners and denying them profits based on the actions of third parties?)

Most of the businesses that have been closed have been hip hop clubs or all-night restaurants where the cleintele is primarily black (although one of the more high profile closings was a gay drag club).

Along with his point system, the mayor (who, incidentally, is black), has long been pushing for a "revitalization" of the city's urban area. He hopes to achieve this goal by stopping suburban sprawl, and getting people who would otherwise live in the suburbs to move back in the city. He has been courting this group of people by using city funds to subsidize downtown restaurants and clubs that are "upscale" and cater to a white, middle-class crowd.

While the mayor has not been very successful in his quest to relocate white suburbia to the inner city, he has succeeded in at least one thing - supressing urban culture, and replacing it with sports bars, disco bowling, and top 40 dancing.

I'd be very interested to hear the outcome of this Seattle case. It sounds like they are lucky enough to have a lot of stupid people along the way who left quite a paper trail of evidence in their favor.


_____________________________________________


"The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked --
But God is sufficient in disposin of affairs." --Mos Def