Short Leash In San Jose

The city council in San Jose, Calif., has revised an emergency temporary ordinance that allows police to immediately suspend a club’s permit if it is deemed a public nuisance.

The revision is considered an effort to keep the downtown area safe and address concerns of nightclub owners who thought the current law was too harsh.

The new ordinance allows police to quickly seize a problematic nightclub or bar’s entertainment license, according to the San Jose Mercury News. But to address concerns of the clubs, the council approved recommendations from the city’s vice mayor to give clubs the opportunity to avoid license suspension, the paper reported.

The recommendations call for police to meet with offending club owners to negotiate a solution, to give police less time to decide on an owner’s appeal and to create a downtown working group to develop policies addressing curfews, cruising, event promotions and festivals.

The emergency temporary measure was in response to an October shooting that left three injured. Many nightclub owners thought it was too harsh because it increased the duration that businesses could be shut down while appealing a license revocation or suspension, the Mercury said.