lower the boom (on someone or something)

1. To punish someone or something harshly. He's a really strict teacher, so he'll definitely lower the boom on you if you don't do your homework. Well, Mom lowered the boom and grounded me for a month because I came home after curfew again.

2. To halt something or bring about its end. I used demerits to lower the boom on silliness in my class.

lower the boom, to

To punish severely, to take a decisive action against. This slangy expression, also sometimes used in the meaning of literally delivering a knockout punch, dates from the first half of the 1900s. It alludes to a sailboat’s boom, which can swing wildly in a changing wind. For example, “The bank lowered the boom on Jim and demanded the collateral on his loan.”