Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1472276
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 JULY 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION 'Bouncers can't police Paceville'; but nor can imaginary policemen… IN case you were wondering, that's a ref- erence to a particular news headline this week: 'Bouncers can't keep policing the streets of Paceville, says club owner' (sub- heading: 'Only stronger police presence will be able to control situation')… The quote itself is attributed to Jona- than Grima – owner of Club Havana, among other Paceville establishments – who also said: "We've seen an improve- ment because whereas, before, there were none at least now we have four or five extra officers. […] But that's not enough. We need a proper squad of po- lice officers who are crowd controllers. Paceville cannot continue being policed by our bouncers whom we employ to en- sure order inside the clubs." Which brings us to the 'situation' he's talking about: described in the article as "the apparent upsurge of violence in the Paceville entertainment hub in St Ju- lian's over the past few weeks." Right: at this point I have to concede that none of what follows is based on any personal experience (my own days as a regular Paceville-prowler are at least a couple of decades behind me, by now): even though, on the rare occasions when I do venture through those once-familiar streets… I notice certain little 'changes', here and there. Like, for instance, the fact that a night- life zone which was once limited to the immediate environs of only two streets, to speak of – 'Ball', and 'Wilga' - has now spawled out unevenly in all directions: spilling into (and across) St George's Bay to the north; seamlessly merging with Spinola to the south… not to mention upwards, too: with a mad scramble for new high-rise developments, from Mer- cury House on St George's Road, all the way up to the DB project in Pembroke. And it says something about the corre- sponding population explosion, that ALL this much-larger territory now feels just as stiflingly crowded, as the core of Pace- ville used to feel 20 years ago, or more: when the action was limited mostly to just those couple of blocks, between two nearby street corners (with, admittedly, a couple of far-flung 'outposts' here and there: like Styx, Saddles, Raffles, etc...) But it's not just that Paceville itself has expanded beyond all reasonable propor- tion, in recent years: it's that the flavour of the place has (predictably enough) changed in the meantime, too. Once again, a couple of small disclaim- ers: a) it's not as though I've ever felt physically 'threatened', on any of those recent walks through Paceville (but then again: I'm not exactly 'a young French woman with disabilities', am I?); and b) the Paceville I remember as a teenager was not exactly a 'haven of safety and tranquillity', either. (Truth be told, I have distinct memories of both Ball and Wilga Streets literally flowing with urine and vomit… and yes: occasionally, blood and broken glass, too)… So make no mistake: there was always a certain vaguely 'Wild West' feel to the place, even in those earlier, more inno- cent times. But still: there can be no de- nying statistics, can there? And according to recent press reports, there have been "400 fights leading to injuries, over the past four years"; and "the highest number of fights resulting in bodily harm took place in 2019, when the police reported 135. In 41 of those cases, grievous injuries were reported, while weapons of some sort were used in 25 cases…" Now: on the assumption that those '400 fights' represent only a tiny frac- tion, of all the other incidents that do NOT cause either light, or grievous, injuries – and bearing in mind also the sheer severity of some of the recent vio- lence – it quickly becomes apparent that the crime-rate in Paceville (which, let's face it, was never all that 'low' to begin with) has evolved in perfect step with its recent transformation. That is to say: not just 'quantitatively', but also 'qualitatively'. On top of an in- crease in the sort of street-violence we were all already used to – mostly brawls between rival gangs of alcohol- (and tes- tosterone-) fuelled teenagers – we are now witnessing the sort of criminality that we are clearly not accustomed to at all. As a police spokesman put it: "Al- though there was a spate of fights in Paceville in recent weeks, they do not follow a pattern. Recent fights were iso- lated occurrences motivated by instanta- neous incidents where perpetrators had no relationship with their victims." Naturally, it would be unwise to read too much into that: but when you com- bine it with the nature of some of these 'random acts of violence' – in Paceville, and elsewhere (it was only last month, for instance, that the police started reg- ularly patrolling the Sliema Seafront) - it does appear as though Malta has acquired the same sort of urban crimi- nality that traditionally goes with 'enter- tainment hotspots' in rapidly-growing, vibrant economies (whether or not they choose to consciously model themselves on Las Vegas: like Paceville seems to be unaccountably doing…). And this shouldn't exactly surprise us, either: because it has all along been the government's declared policy to 'trans-