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| 26 August 2000 - The San Diego Union-Tribune Police target teen-age drinking 'Operation Safeguard' to continue countrywide through Labor Day By Gregory Alan Gross EL CAJON – The fresh-faced blond teenager walked up to the counter at the 7-Eleven with a six-pack of Coors light, gave the clerk a $20 bill, collected her change and calmly left with her beer. Moments later, she was back – along with four undercover police officers and an investigator from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The teen was a police decoy, looking for merchants selling liquor to minors. The clerk was under arrest. "This is only my second day!" she tearfully told the officers. She ended her workday being cited and photographed alongside the 17-year-old decoy, a police cadet The marked $20 bill would be taken back and the six-pack kept as evidence. "You made a mistake," El Cajon Officer Paul Winslow told the clerk. "It's not the end of the world." The decoy operation, carried out through most of last night at liquor and convenience stores and supermarkets, was part of Operation Safeguard, a countrywide drive through the Labor Day holiday to reduce underage drinking. Safeguard formally began yesterday. The plan calls for similar liquor-selling stings, DUI checkpoints and enforcement of beer keg registration. In addition to El Cajon, police departments in San Diego, La Mesa, Escondido, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Chula Vista and National City are taking part in Safeguard, as are the Sheriffs Department, the California Highway Patrol and state park rangers. "It's the first time we've ever made a coordinated effort around the county to attack this problem," said National City police Sgt. Lanny Roark. The operation was designed for an extended period instead of just the holiday weekend "to cover that end-of-the-summer, let's-get-that-last-round-of-partying-in period," Roark said. Safeguard itself may be just a reflection of the growing seriousness with which police are viewing alcohol sales violations. El Cajon police are now routinely running decoy operations, such as the one they did last night, said Lt. Larry Wood, commander of the community policing division. "All we want is for liquor licensees to be responsible," 'Wood said. "Well consider it a successful operation when no one sells to (the decoy)." Teen-age drinking has been a chronic problem for decades, and the stakes are as high as ever, Roark said. In the last nine months, 23 youths killed in San Diego-area auto accidents had have been found to have alcohol in their systems, according to the county Medical Examinees Office. Almost as frightening is a survey taken of high school students in the San Diego Unified School District. It showed that:
We really have to change our attitudes toward alcohol and youth access to it," Roark said. "We put so much emphasis on drugs and drug education, and that's fine. And yet, kids have more access and more exposure to alcohol than any other drug out there. "Even gang members, when you ask them what their No. 1 activity is when they get together, they'll tell you it's sitting around, drinking." Nationwide, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that as of 1998, almost a quarter of the teen-age drivers killed in traffic accidents had blood-alcohol levels -of .10 percent or higher. "We know that kids consume alcohol differently from adults. They binge drink for the specific purpose of getting intoxicated," Roark said. Aside from over-the-counter alcohol sales, authorities are focusing on illicit rental of beer kegs for parties in private homes – parties at which minors often end up binge drinking, even in their parents' homes. "These things are going On in very affluent neighborhoods, good kids; from good homes," Wood said. "A lot of bad things can come out of these parties, and not just drunk driving." Article Snapshot 1 (44K) Article Snapshot 2 (53K) |
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