READING, Pa. \u2014 Summer may be winding down in Berks County, but Reading Police say their crackdown on illegal after-hours clubs is not.<\/p>\n
“No, this is a continuing thing, all right?” Deputy Police Chief Aaron Demko said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, from May to June, Reading Police spent six weeks targeting illegal and unpermitted after-hours clubs in the City of Reading.<\/p>\n
During the operation, police say they conducted 135 directed patrols at locations with known after-hours club activity. Four locations were shut down and placarded.<\/p>\n
During the inspection, 18 additional City of Reading Fire Prevention Code violations were found.<\/p>\n
According to police, they have seen a drastic decrease in activity since then. However, authorities don’t expect the problem to disappear completely quite yet.<\/p>\n
“It’s being driven by large amounts of money and revenue, so we believe we’re going to continue to see these places pop up, and we’ll continue to address them,” Demko said.<\/p>\n
The operation involved Reading Police, the City’s Fire Marshal’s Office and Property and Codes Enforcement, along with assistance from Pennsylvania Liquor Control Enforcement.<\/p>\n
Police explain that these aren’t just places where people stay out late. They say violent crime has been connected to many of the locations they have investigated.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just an after-hours club. Violent crime is coming from almost all of these locations,” Demko said.<\/p>\n
Following the initial enforcement activity, reinspections determined that the buildings had all discontinued the illegal use.<\/p>\n
Police say they are now in what they call a “maintenance phase,” meaning officers will continue to check areas where illegal after-hours activity has been identified.<\/p>\n
“So it’ll absolutely continue. This is not going to stop. As long as the problem is still present, we will continue to address it,” Demko said.<\/p>\n
Police are also asking residents to report suspected illegal after-hours activity, saying they will follow up on every complaint they receive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 Summer may be winding down in Berks County, but Reading Police say their crackdown on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[118037,118041,118040,118038,1856,128,130,129,1751,13383,118039],"class_list":["post-282906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-after-hours-clubs","tag-after-hours-activity","tag-directed-patrols","tag-illegal-clubs","tag-law-enforcement","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-police","tag-shutdown","tag-unpermitted-clubs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}