Our local medical "outreach center" is receiving youth alcohol diversion grants and passing them onto our police department to conduct "compliance checks" in local bars. They work something like this:
The police department gets a couple (or up to five) paid "of age" informers to go into a bar with at least one underage informant and they order a drink. If they get served, then they go outside and inform a police officer and the bar gets nailed for serving to minors.
Pretty simple huh?
Well.....
What if:
There was a group of 6 with five of age persons and one underage and the underage person went to the men's room while one of the five of age persons ordered the drinks?
Or,
What if the underage informant was 6-2 with a bald spot and a thick, bushy beard AND they cops put gray hair coloring in his beard?
Or,
What if the bar had a bouncer to check IDs and the the of age informants came in and then let the underage informant in a back door?
What if all this is on video tape?
Now here's where it gets tricky:
What if four licensed servers (bar tenders) and one licensed establishment were summoned by the police department to appear before MY committee for a hearing on the revocation or suspension of their licenses (and livelihood) because they accumulated demerit points to warrant suspension from these compliance checks...which they now refer to as stings...
Welcome to my world.....
I think this is border-line entrapment. I am also concerned because the local outreach center is going after these compliance checks with an evangelistic zeal that reminds me of the old Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
The incentives to create a "youth drinking problem" are backwards. The outreach center needs a problem to exist because without the problem there are no federal and state grants to fund personnel positions at the center. The cops need a problem to exist because they collect overtime pay from the out reach center to do the checks....therefore, no problem, no overtime.
I think this is a youth alcohol problem here but it's not in the bars and taverns. It's in the homes that let kids have parties where alcohol runs free...it comes from the more traditional source of kids having friends and relatives who are old enough to buy liquor and beer buy it for them and give it to them. The concentration on the taverns is overstating the source of the problem.
I hate to admit it but some of the tavern owners are working their butts off to keep kids out of the bars and this compliance check (sting) nonsense is just unfair. I've got to work to change it.
