Published November 10, 2007, in The Gainesville Sun

Underage drinking seems endless for police

At a medical-themed private party at a downtown bar last month, fraternity men dressed as doctors and their dates dressed as nurses mingled, drinks in hand, when two Gainesville police officers moseyed in.

One officer carded a nurse, who put down her vodka and cranberry drink and pulled from her bra her driver’s license that showed she was 20, a few months shy of being legal. In handcuffs and high heels, with a white nurse’s cap still on her head, the University of Florida student was led to GPD’s downtown annex past crowds of bar-hoppers. One told the officers she was his stripper. Others just snickered.

In the annex, she was read her Miranda rights and given a court date, when she will likely get a fine or community service.

She was hardly alone. The scene was repeated again and again that night, commonplace for this college town, where underage drinking is akin to highway speeding: Just about everybody does it, it can’t be stopped and it can be deadly.

Between 40 and 50 people are arrested for underage drinking every weekend in Gainesville, according to police estimates. But many more undoubtedly slip past the bouncers, bartenders and patrolling officers and – this is the scary part for police and university leaders – drive home.

It seems that Andrew Enriquez did, but he never made it home.

Enriquez, a 20-year-old UF student, died in September after he crashed his sport utility vehicle on SW 13th Street. He was going 84 mph, and his blood-alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit, said GPD spokesman Lt. Keith Kameg.

He was wearing a bracelet that appeared to come from a downtown bar, Kameg said, but investigators are still looking into it. He had never been cited for underage drinking.

Some police and university officials admit that underage drinking will never go away here, but Enriquez’s death is a reason they pray they’re wrong.

Officers know that in almost any bar on a weekend night, they’ll be able to catch someone under 21 drinking.

“It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” Kameg said.

But because it’s easy to spot doesn’t mean it’s easy to stop – or even possible.

“You will never stop underage drinking,” Kameg said. “But at the same time, you don’t want to be known as the community that does nothing about it.”

Virginia Dodd, an assistant professor in UF’s health education and behavior department who studies student alcohol use, said one reason it can’t be stopped is the close bond between alcohol and Gainesville’s social scene.

In focus groups about drinking, students have told her they are “awestruck” by the number of bars in town when they arrive on campus, she said. Mix that with the fact that nearly 80 percent of students surveyed in a 2006 UF study responded that they view alcohol as an icebreaker in social situations.

That makes for a dangerous cocktail, Dodd said.

“Harm reduction is the best we can hope for,” she said.

The harms are many, too. Underage drinking, she said, makes people more vulnerable to a number of situations: abuse, like sexual assault or violence; humiliating circumstances, like friends having to take care of the intoxicated; or much, much worse, like what happened to Enriquez.

Tavis Glassman, UF’s coordinator of alcohol and other drug prevention, worked on the 2006 survey and said that to curb underage drinking, much of the change would need to come off campus.

For instance, some communities in Florida bar those under 21 from entering bars, Glassman said. That would be an important step, he said, especially after a study Dodd conducted on the sidewalks outside the downtown bars and clubs showed that a high number of underage people were going into the establishments sober and coming out with blood-alcohol levels above the legal limit.

Another part of the downtown beat is to make sure the convenience stores in the vicinity aren’t adding to the problem.

Last week, Gainesville Police conducted undercover operations with an underage informant who was sent into convenience stores and bars in the downtown area. The first stop of the evening was Sidhu’s, a shop in Union Street Station that sells beer, wine, cigarettes and a variety of exotic-looking items.

Police arrested Gurmeet Sidhu, the shop’s owner, and another man who was working the register during the operation after the undercover operative purchased beer at the store. It was Sidhu’s third arrest for the crime in the past decade.

Sidhu said this week that he felt the arrest was unfair, noting that he had undergone dental surgery earlier in the day and was lying down in the back of the store when the customer made the purchase. Sidhu said the man described as a clerk by police was his doctor, who had tried to help the customer.

“I think it’s not right. When an employee makes a mistake, the owner should not be arrested,” Sidhu said.

A bigger part of the job is looking for minors, who only have to be spotted holding an alcoholic drink to be arrested.

At 1 a.m., a few hours after the nurse was arrested, a 16-year-old Buchholz High student was arrested downtown, also for underage drinking.

Her attempt to fool the cops into thinking she was older than she looked hardly shocked them. However, her drink of choice – Hennessy – did.

“Twenty-one to drink Hennessy,” one officer in the downtown annex told the girl, who was using the ID of a 24-year-old friend to pass off as her own.

“Thirty to drink Hennessy,” another said, both agreeing the cognac was too strong for even them. A drawer full of confiscated cards showed that the officers who work the downtown beat don’t fall for that often. Officer Fred Milaragano said typically the card belongs to an older sibling.

Fake IDs are also big downtown.

Milaragano, who is new to the force and knows all the tricks from previously managing downtown bars, pulled out a stack of them, some of which could barely pass as YMCA membership cards. Several were foreign, from countries like Australia, Cyprus and Bolivia, and some were called international driver’s licenses, which don’t exist, Milaragano said.

He pointed out the glaring flaws in some: The face of one woman posing as a Texas resident was clearly cropped from a photograph in which she was cheek-to-cheek with someone. Obviously, she wasn’t posing at the DMV. Others were cheaply laminated.

Others are nearly spot-on: One guy’s North Carolina driver’s license got him into the bars but couldn’t help him weasel away from police, who would rather the telltale signs they look for not be printed.

A more widespread method of deceit is the old-fashioned lie.

A 19-year-old UF student, dancing with friends at Rue Bar, had lost her ID when officers Keith Carlson and Matt Walters showed up to the party and spotted her drinking a rum and Coke.

She swore up and down she was 21. Then she stormed off, saying she would find her ID, which didn’t sit well with Walters. Once outside, he made that clear.

“Quit playing with me,” he said, finally getting to her.

“I’m really 18, I’m sorry,” she said, later telling them she’s 19.

As she was being cuffed, a panicked friend said, “Are you serious?”

Walters had had enough of the lying, if the cuffs, hardly matching her low-cut top and high heels, hadn’t stated that clearly enough.

“If you want to keep playing games,” he told her, “I’ve got a backseat, and the Sheriff’s Office has a jail cell.”

He wasn’t kidding. But she wised up, started cooperating and was let go with a court date, as was the nurse.

Spencer Mann, spokesman for the State Attorney’s Office, said typically, the punishment in such a case would be community service work or a fine, a $75 to $150 donation to a charitable organization.

More importantly, though, is they leave with a lesson.

Minors don’t know, necessarily, how much alcohol they can handle, and some aren’t mature enough to handle it, said Sgt. John Franklin, who is in charge of GPD’s downtown unit.

That’s why the bar patrols are so important, he said.

He also believes they’re helping, no matter how hopeless the problem of underage drinking might seem.

“It’s not that we’re fighting a losing battle,” Franklin said. “It’s just a steady, uphill climb.”

Some of the students arrested left the downtown annex with tears streaming down their faces. Some seemed angry, some seemed more or less indifferent, and some seemed thankful they weren’t going to jail. But officers didn’t necessarily care how they felt, so long as they learned something.

As the 16-year-old arrested for drinking Hennessy was picked up by her step-father, Milaragano said simply, “Only warning.”

A warning Enriquez never got.

A version of this article was printed Nov. 10, 2007, on Page 1A of The Gainesville Sun.