Possible weapon in war on gang violence at Theater District clubs: Online table reservations

Bijou owner George Aboujaoude says he is "very grateful" Boston Police quickly showed up outside his club early on May 17 - without that, a melee that ended with ten arrests, three guns seized and one officer in the hospital could have turned out far worse.

But at a Boston Licensing Board hearing on the incident this morning, Aboujaoude and club attorney Karen Simao said they're taking several steps to try to keep gang members - whom police blame for a good part of the roving brawl and all three of the guns - out of the club.

Simao said the Stuart Street club now requires people reserving tables to register them on a Web site and to supply the names of the nine other people they want to have at the table. Doormen check the IDs of people going to those tables against the site; people not in the database are not allowed in.

Simao said the club is willing to give the Boston Police gang unit a login to the online system so that detectives can pre-screen people signing up for tables - and then alert the club. "We can deny entry to people if we need to," she said, adding the club now also limits people to reserving just one ten-person table.

She added the club now stations 30 guards at the exit and on the street to quickly disperse club goers as they leave at closing time.

The board decides Thursday whether Bijou could have done anything to prevent the street fighting and, if so, what sort of punishment to levy.

Several Boston Police detectives attended the hearing to describe what happened that night:

Members of two rival gangs showed up at Bijou. Police and Simao said they didn't cause any trouble inside - although a club manager did phone police around midnight to make sure police would have details on the street at closing because "he didn't like the look that night."

Gang-unit officers were in the area, watching the crowds as area clubs got ready to close. Around closing, a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old, both with hoodies up over their heads, began making their way from across Stuart to the sidewalk in front of Bijou. A gang-unit detective saw them clutching at their waists - which might indicate they had guns - and radioed for help.

Gang-unit detectives said they are still investigating why the two guys showed up at closing with guns, but speculated they were summoned through a phone call from a fellow gang member inside the club, something like "So and so's here. We're going to need help, we're going to need guns or whatever."

Gang-unit detectives swarmed the two. The 16-year-old quickly submitted to arrest, but the older guy started struggling, drawing more officers - and a crowd of people, detectives said. Police estimate it took seven minutes to finally get him in the cruiser as more people flooded the area, many of them antagonistic toward police and holding their cell phones up to record the scene.

Then, not long after, the members of the two gangs, by now spilling out of Bijou, went after each other at Stuart and Tremont, breaking into a series of fights, as still more people arrived to watch as all the area's clubs let out. With officers now arriving from across the city, police arrested six more people.

Simao said that when club security guards saw what was happening outside, they stopped people from leaving the club, to avoid adding to the problem. Club goers "were surprisingly respectful," she said.

Unfortunately, police said, the club did start letting people out before they had the situation outside fully under control. Det. William Duggan, who said Bijou has always been very cooperative with police, said these people naturally stayed to watch the action. "That was then their focus, and their focus was on us," he said. "It's a very dangerous situation for both them and us."

Det. Vincent DiFazio said that as the crowd grew unrulier, he was on a median strip on Stuart with three guys, whom he ordered off - for their safety, he said. Two went, but one, he said, started arguing with him. "I'm a criminal-justice major, you ain't going to do shit," he recalled the guy yelling at him. The guy put his hands up and yelled, "You're a pussy, you ain't gonna do anything." As this was going on, more fights were breaking out, he said.

"There's a lot of defiance from the public," Simao said. "We see it with the police and we see it with the staff."