The Taste -- again

When it was a lounge serving liquor during the 1990s, the Taste compiled a history of violent incidents on Good Hope Street, including a melee pitting police officers against people who were leaving the Taste at closing time. Because of the continuing problems, the Cape Girardeau City Council pulled the Taste's liquor license in 2001, and owner Michael Pryor closed the doors.

When the Taste opened as a no-alcohol after-hours club last fall, operator Patrick Buck told the Southeast Missourian: "If we come to the point to where we have problems outside, we will shut down immediately. There's not going to be another melee."

The killing of Anton Shamon Miller in front of the Taste Jan. 1 wasn't in a melee, but it certainly represents a problem -- for Buck, for the city and especially for residents who live near the Taste.

Mayor Jay Knudtson has correctly observed that the city would not tolerate this continuing pattern of violence in any other residential area of the city. The block the Taste is in has a commercial zoning, a designation given in 1967 when the building housed People's Cafe. But the block is a mix of residences and businesses, and the next block east is entirely residential.

The fact that the violence is occurring in an area of the city attempting to rebound from a decades-long downslide ought to be a special concern to those who govern Cape Girardeau.

In the days since the killing, Buck has said the Taste is being singled out for criticism that did not follow a shooting death in the parking lot at Players nightclub Nov. 1 or a Dec. 6 shooting in a restroom at the Purple Crackle in East Cape Girardeau, Ill., that wounded two men. He's right.

But that's because people have been getting shot, stabbed and killed at the Taste for years.

When the city council took away the club's liquor license in June 2001, it was not because of a specific incident but because the owner had shown an inability to control the atmosphere inside and outside the club. If Buck proposes to do better, he has made a poor start.

In 1997, the council also singled out Peppy's Sports Bar and Dance Club, a nightclub that opened on Kingshighway in April 1996. In June the following year, Peppy's was put on six-months' probation after police were called to the club 43 times in 11 months. After the six months were up, the council decided not to renew the club's liquor license.

The city does not have the police resources to patrol nightclubs, especially not during the early morning hours when the Taste is open, so the responsibility must fall to the club operator.

Buck has begun installing security cameras on the outside of the building, reasoning that video surveillance will keep people from loitering outside. But he was standing next to the shooter when the killing occurred. That is a striking image of how powerless anyone is to stop violence from occurring in a alcohol-fueled closing-time atmosphere security consultants call the "critical-intensity" period.

Those who go to the Taste at 1:30 a.m. aren't insomniacs. They tend to be people who have been drinking and aren't ready to stop.

The decision by the Cape Girardeau City Council to work on an ordinance covering after-hours clubs makes sense. That appears to be the only means the city has of controlling behavior at the club.