Consquences for student's underage citations
Ginger Rae Dunbar
Issue date: 10/27/08 Section: Features
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Police would like people to understand their job of stopping minors from receiving and consuming alcoholic beverages. Students may not realize that while they are getting cited, that they are still alive. In rare, but certain situations involving alcohol, some people involved may lose their life that night for reasons of alcohol poisoning, drunk driving, etc.
At the beginning of each school year, Public Safety has fall presentations to warn students about the consequences of getting caught underage drinking. Numbers are read off about other students that have been charged with offense(s) year-to-date. It turns out that later in the school year, some of the students listening to Public Safety about underage will become another number that was caught.
Police have been working with SIPS for the past couple of years as the program is also concerned with the number of students consuming alcohol. Before the police joined in working with SIPS, there were two arrests for providing alcohol to minors. After the two forces joined together, they arrested 28 providers, according to Sergeant John O'Donnell of the West Chester Borough Police Department. The point of the program and one initiative of the police are to find the providers to cut down the number of consumers.
The West Chester Police are using different techniques to find who is furnishing alcohol to others. They were not able to comment on any techniques they used or plan on using. Since it is believed that the number of people consuming alcohol is higher than the number of people buying, the police are attempting to "cut out the middle man" known as the supplier.
"Think of it as a two-way street," O'Donnell said, "You ask someone to buy (alcohol) for you and then someone asks you to buy (for them)."
Before people are legally old enough to purchase alcohol, they might ask someone who is legal. O'Donnell asks that people think of what they are asking someone to do for them and then determine if they would do the same for any of their own friends. He said that it is a matter of respecting someone by not asking them to buy, when they would be the one to be in more legal trouble than the minor.
Suppliers of alcohol could be of all ages. If someone who is legal provides to a minor, that minor, regardless of age, is now the supplier when they share or give the alcohol to others. Police realize that they can not stop underage people from drinking; they are trying to make it harder for people to do. One way to do this is to find and punish the violators with legal consequences.
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