Bootsie’s Comedy Club has closed its doors after becoming a hangout for violent gang members who weren’t afraid to “put people’s lives at risk.”Owner Earlwin ‘Bootsie’ Wolffe has reluctantly closed his Front Street club after five-and-a-half years saying: “Enough’s enough, I just couldn’t risk it any longer.”He said he feared for the safety of his staff and customers, as the club was a popular drinking spot for members of the Parkside gang.Bootsie said he was fed up with “disrespectful people” ruining the venue for others by fighting, smoking marijuana and generally showing no manners for others.He said he “feared it was only a matter of time before someone got hurt” as gang members would head to the club to hunt down their rivals.Bootsie said: “It was all getting out of control. It was crazy.“I’d had enough, I couldn’t be dealing with it all anymore.“Given what’s happening in the community with all the shootings, I knew it was best to get out and get away from it all for safety reasons.“I didn’t want to jeopardise people’s lives, that’s how bad it had got.”Bootsie said he wasn’t willing to put the safety of his loyal customers and his staff, including his teenage son and the young women who worked as bartenders, at risk. He said paying for security on the door didn’t seem to make a difference.Bootsie said: “People would continue to smoke marijuana on the porch even though I called the police.“They weren’t afraid of putting people’s lives at risk. Fights would break out inside and outside on the sidewalk.“We were like a sitting duck for the Parkside crew. It was all giving Bootsie’s a bad image.“I feared it would escalate and someone would get hurt.”When Bootsie’s first opened it was a popular spot for “the more mature crowd” with live comedy and jazz bands. But in the last couple of years the club has attracted a younger crowd who “weren’t afraid to start trouble.”Bootsie, a comedian and former HOTT 107.5 DJ, believes the change in clientele coincided with the escalation of gun crime which continues to terrorise our streets.He said: “The clientele changed over a period of time and the fact that the Parkside crew drank at Bootsie’s wasn’t something I could hide.“I couldn’t turn people away, I believe young people also have the right to socialise, but they bought with them the wrong mentality.“We were the only ‘black’ spot on Front Street and people were starting to talk. I had to do something before something awful happened.”Bootsie said it was also “very noticeable” that the club went quiet for about a week or so after a shooting took place. He believed people were “too scared to show their faces” and this negatively affected the business.Bootsie said the business had faced “financial challenges” because of the downturn in the economy, but he insisted the overriding reason for the closure was “the disrespecting people.”The sign still hangs over the door even though the club closed quietly on a Thursday night in mid-March. Bootsie purposely didn’t hold a closing party, as he didn’t want to attract troublemakers.Bootsie said: “It was a hard decision to make. It’s very sad it came to this but it couldn’t go on like it was.”Bootsie, who works as a teacher at the Educational Centre, rented the property from a private landlord.