Requesting some translation help

Howdy folks.

I'm translating a show from Japanese to English, and there is one banner sign I am kinda stuck on. I will reference the situation in case that will help the context of the sign. Members of the students association are searching for somebody that has been breaking campus regulations. The banner reads:

耳スリ締り強化

耳 on it's own mean's ear. スリ is confusing me here, because it's in Katakana. I am not sure if it's together with the previous kanji or if it's a separate word. Neither of which I can find reference to in my dictionaries, WWWJDIC, or my JquickTrans program. I know Katakana is mostly used for foreign words now, could this perhaps be the Katakana writing for the english word 'three' ?

締り I don't know if it's irregular kana use, or if this means something specific that is not in my dictionaries. The kanji alone means tighten/lock/tie etc. It's used in a bunch of words, and was used on a previous sign 取締り meaning management in the previous context.

強化 means to strengthen or reinforce.

As a last ditch I tossed it into babelfish, which seems to sometimes help me with odd words I am not familiar with, what came out was no help: Ear スリ tighten strengthen.

Could somebody please help me to piece together what exactly this banner is saying? It's the only one in this show that is confusing me.

Thanks

You're misreading it, for one thing.

Try 取り締まり強化中 instead. And in this case 取り締まり refers to the enforcement of a law, not management. It would help to see an image of what you're talking about, but in the case it really does look like スリ (katakana) on the sign, it may be a bit of a visual pun, since スリ refers to pick-pocketing.

中 Isn't on the sign, but looking at that first kanji, that one was used on the previous sign but it was written properly. Looking at the image again, 取 which you've gotta be correct on, does look like the second half of that kanji is ス, because the second stroke on that radical is incomplete, plus it's half of the size of 耳 and centered in the middle, also it's written the same size as り. Thanks for the help on this, the sign makes total sense now.

It's always the handwritten stuff that throws me for a loop most of the time, especially since my kanji knowledge is still very weak. The other sign was not hand written and was written: 取締り and actually looked like that.

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Handwritten Japanese can be very difficult to get used to.

you gotta scan it and let us perform a surgery for it here on the forums.

ax