09:54 AM EDT on Thursday, June 30, 2005

DRUNKEN LUNKHEADS on the rampage downtown after the nightclubs close are causing concern for the survival of the new Hotel Providence. Hotel patrons might have no right to expect rural tranquillity in the city, but patrons of the city's nightclubs have no right to turn downtown into A Clockwork Orange.

The situation recalls the "droogs" in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel, about a young thug who was "into" murder, rape, pillage and Beethoven. Walk the streets of downtown after dark until, say, midnight, and you will find moderate activity on most nights; often, it's ominously quiet. Then, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, the "fun" begins. The clubs all close at once. Bouncers eject umpteen thousands of patrons, mostly teens, onto the streets. Curses and fists are thrown, bottles heaved, windows broken, trash cans upset. Club rabble rousers merge into mobile hordes of hooligans. Frenzied packs careen through downtown. Yelling rises to a tribal howl, and turns to prolonged honking as the knuckleheads find their cars, crank up their stereos and pull into clogged streets. All the noise triggers car alarms.

I do not exaggerate. It sounds like a cyclone.

City officials believe that the cause is underage drinking. Perhaps. I'm out of sympathy with busting kids for drinking. If you're old enough to vote, not to mention die for your country, you are old enough to drink. Still, the law is the law. Change it or enforce it. In fact, the police are gradually getting a grip on underage drinking, targeting adults who help kids break the law, or at least wink at it. Good.

Yet, whether you drink legally or illegally, once you hit the street you are duty-bound to be civil. Incivility, not drinking per se, is the problem.

But I am also out of sympathy with closing clubs earlier. Punishment should be meted out to the guilty, not the innocent. Early closing times would punish responsible clubs and drinkers.

And heaven forbid the hour of ejecting droogs onto the streets ever comes early enough to intersect with the hour when civilized folks, having enjoyed a succession of civilized entertainments, return to their cars to go home. If these two populations ever meet, the Providence renaissance is over.

Rather, the clubs should be allowed, at least on a trial basis, to stay open until four or even five. Instead of being forced into the streets en masse, patrons would filter back to their cars in twos or threes. The angry traffic jams caused by thousands of drunks being funneled onto the highways all at once would disappear, freeing the police to focus on what louts remain, if any, to disturb the peace.

Instead, a few arrests of rowdies, well publicized, leading to punishments as severe as the law permits (also well publicized), would, I believe, solve the problem in short order. The city must get serious. Here are a few suggestions: Jail time for throwing a punch. A $500 fine for throwing a bottle. A $200 ticket for leaning on your horn. If current law permits only a slapping of wrists, toughen it. Not enough police to make an arrest in a mob hopped up on liquid courage? Call backup. And isn't that a gun in your holster? We're not talking about jaywalkers here, but people who attack the police and the innocent. They have murdered. We are talking about urban terrorists, who can literally scare the life out of a city -- and will, if not stopped. Yet getting serious about incivility has not been tried in Providence.

It had better be, and soon. In bringing urbane residential living downtown as a matter of public policy, the city has done exactly the right thing. But it has hastened an inevitable confrontation between civilization and barbarism. Something has got to give, and it had better be the droogs.

To solve the problem may be easier than mustering the will to solve the problem. City officials, downtowners, responsible club owners and other civic-minded people and groups must prepare to defend the need to attack the indefensible. In this age of relativism, that might be harder than it sounds.

Droogish incivility is not a form of constitutionally protected expression. It is not protected by the First Amendment. It must not be confused with personal liberty, artistic license, or the need to preserve the "edge" of a creative community. If those who want to preserve downtown's edge believe that they are on the same side as those who riot in the streets, they are terribly mistaken.

The droogs are not just people with different ideas of how to have fun. They are infringing upon the right of all to enjoy the public square. It is the job of the police to defend that right, and it is the job of City Hall to make sure that the police have the authority, the power and the will to do the job.

Moreover, it is the job of citizens to understand that the public square belongs to the public, not the droogs -- and that equal treatment under the law requires protecting the former from the latter.

Maybe that means piping in some Beethoven to soothe the savage beasties. It certainly means letting the police do their most important job.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board. His e-mail is: dbrussat [at] projo.com