E-Mail This Article to a Friend OPERATION PARTY TIME Cops crack down on after-hours parties BY DEIRDRE FULTON

Operation Party Time. It sounds like the kind of group you would hire for a bar mitzvah. But these people aren’t looking to dance. They’re cops, and they’re looking to bust up after-hours parties.

An effort by the Boston Police Department’s District B-3, which covers Dorchester and Mattapan, OPT is charged with cracking down on the for-profit, late-night parties that rage every weekend after clubs and bars close down.

At a hearing last week, City Councilor Rob Consalvo (whose district includes Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roslindale) proposed raising civil fines for party hosts to $300, the city limit, and called on three district police captains to suggest other deterrents. He described existing penalties (typically, an arrest and a small fine) as "slaps on the wrist" that become part of "the cost of doing business" for frequent hosts.

Consalvo said he likes to party as much as anyone else. He promised he’s not trying to crack down on New Year’s Eve, birthday, or christening extravaganzas. However, he said, when it comes to after-hours ragers, enough is enough.

"Nothing good comes of a party that starts at 1 am," Consalvo argued at the hearing. (We can think of a few things.)

Officers described two types of parties. The first is the off-campus keg parties we all know and love — unless, of course, we’re neighborhood residents who actually like to sleep and don’t like people peeing in our yards. OPT-style efforts to curtail such festivities are already in place in Allston-Brighton and Mission Hill, which are hot spots for this type of party.

OPT is targeting the second kind: wild, after-hours house parties in Hyde Park, Dorchester, and Mattapan, publicized on leaflets and by word of mouth, where hosts can make upwards of $1000 in one night.

"We typically refer to this as a perfect-storm scene for violence," says B-3 captain Timothy Murray.

Over the course of one weekend in July, undercover OPT officers busted four parties — attended by a combined 460 people — in Dorchester and Mattapan, made five arrests, confiscated two guns, and carted away four loads of high-tech DJ equipment. Murray says the problem is getting worse, pointing out that the number of stabbings between 2 and 6 am had risen from 67 in all of 2004 to 83 already this year — a fact he feels is partly a result of the parties.

Not to mention that "you have 150 people, one bathroom, and the whole neighborhood becomes a public toilet." The council expects the legislation to be voted on at its August 24 meeting.