Police and a crowd of a hundred or so clubgoers found themselves in a dangerous stand-off early on Saturday morning after violence flared up outside Escape nightclub.

Officers arrested two Pembroke men as they tried to pacify a large crowd outside the club entrance, some of whom had been trying to push their way in after being barred due to a new stricter dress code.

Police media spokesman Dwayne Caines said they detained a 26-year-old man after they saw him kick and punch a passing taxi, and breaking one of its windows.

He said the man tried to elude officers by running into the crowd. When they found and tried to arrest him, he began to fight them off.

The scuffle excited the crowd and they became verbally abusive towards the Police, Mr. Caines said. One man, a 29-year-old, told the officers to let his cousin go and pushed one of them in the chest. He was detained and taken to Hamilton Police Station along with the other man, who was charged with willfully causing damage.

Earlier this month, the area around Escape, on Par-La-Ville Road, was the scene of another violent clash which landed one man in hospital after he was apparently zapped with a stun gun.

A witness to that fight, after which three men were arrested, said it had been sparked off by gang rivalry.

Yesterday, Escape security manager Freedom Burrows described how he called Police after a portion of the crowd waiting to come in started becoming verbally abusive to his staff at around 12.30 a.m. after they barred them from entering because they were wearing sneakers.

"There were quite a number of people outside. At that point, a large number of them started to try and push in the line. They were trying to block the entrance to M.R. Onions. We called the Police and they responded pretty fast with a couple of cars and the big paddy wagon."

Mr. Burrows explained that he had 17 security personnel on duty to enforce the dresscode crackdown, which is part of an overall effort to clean up the club.

"We predicted that because of the new dress code there would be some problems. Its the way to go though. Hopefully it will filter out the people who might cause trouble.

Manager Paul Decouto warned that if such incidents continued, he would start enforcing a complete ban on people wearing baggy clothes, in which weapons can be easily concealed.

He said, although clubgoers are scanned with a metal detector and patted down before they go in, he had had word that some people had been trying to sneak wooden sticks in to use as weapons.

"There have to be rules and we want people to know that they are in place. There was no trouble inside the club. Those people outside were loitering around and hadn't really made any plans for the evening." He said recent renovations to the club had included a partition that separated the entrance from the doors into M.R. Onions. and added: "It's almost like an airport the way we run our door now."

Mr. Decouto continued: "It's sad that it has to come to this but we can't just ignore that its happening. We plan to provide safe, fun entertainment and we are not going to tolerate this type of behaviour.

"We're making clear that this is our house. I just think its going to take a couple more weeks before it sinks into people's heads."