Street Cleaning

The Beijing police pulled off a strike on certain shady Sanlitun venues, ostensibly for drug-related offenses. The targets were the four Pure Girls, Phoenix Cafe, and Sunset Grill. Eyewitnesses around 10:30pm reported "cops everywhere." One who observed the raids on Sunset and the Pure Girls, reported official-looking cops, accompanied by dogs and a team in what appeared to be rubber gloves and yellow lab coats. An area bar-owner claimed to have seen the other owners led away in handcuffs, and those establishments have remained closed since. The owners of targeted bars could not be reached. Apparently some of the patrons seized were international school rats as young as high school freshmen. One of these rats reported that everyone without ID in the bars were taken away. This raid was filmed and documented extensively by police cameras, at least in the Tongli area, and we have heard no reports of violence.

Update: Ricahrd Spencer of London's Telegraph reports on the bust under an attention-grabbing headline.

Links and Sources
Beijing Boyce: Drug raid in Sanlitun sees more than 20 arrested
China Daily: China Daily: Beijing police nab 8 foreigners suspected of drug trafficking
The Beijinger Forum: Huge Drug Bust in Sanlitun - SWAT and sniffing dogs?!
Xu Tao: Video of the police bust (unfortunately you need to use Internet Explorer to view the video and watch about 20 min of guff before you get to the part about the Sanlitun raid).