‘It Falls on Local Officers . . . to Go Under Cover’ : Drive Mounted on Liquor Sales to Young

The 18-year-old strolled into a Fountain Valley Thrifty Drug store and tried to buy a six-pack of beer.

When the clerk asked for identification, the teen-ager produced his driver’s license with the words “Under 21 until 1988” stamped on the bottom. Despite that information, according to Fountain Valley police, the clerk sold him the beer.

The youth repeated the performance at the Bushard Market nearby, producing his ID and walking out with a six-pack, police said.

In each case, the clerk was left with a memento: a citation for selling alcohol to a minor, a misdemeanor. The buyer, it turned out, was a Police Department employee. The mini-sting operation is one of more than a dozen throughout Orange County intended to squelch alcohol sales to minors at the source. According to Ken Kelly, district administrator of California’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, more than 20 Orange County cities have programs similar to Fountain Valley’s.

In most cities, police use underage cadets as decoys in undercover operations. Fountain Valley police interviewed several local teen-agers before hiring one as a temporary police “operator.” In most cities, the youths carry no identification at all, although the Fountain Valley operator shows his actual driver’s license.

“Basically, these investigations act as deterrents, like the fear of getting tickets on the highway,” Kelly said.

They are also unusually effective at curbing the sale of alcohol to minors, according to police officials around the county. In the Fountain Valley operation, seven out of 31 vendors sold alcohol to the youthful buyer and received citations as a result. Store owners could face penalties ranging from fines to revocation of their licenses to sell liquor, depending on their past records, Kelly said.

Most officers, who have tried everything from hanging out in front of liquor stores to grilling teen-agers about where they buy liquor, say the undercover method really works.

“I don’t know any other way,” said Lt. Greg Cooper of Santa Ana.

ABC officials say 75 liquor store owners or their employees were accused of selling to minors in Orange County in the last six months of 1984.

Some stores are habitual offenders. In Costa Mesa, Sgt. Tom Boylan says one liquor store was cited for selling to minors four times in six weeks. “They sold to a 17-year-old two days after I cited them. Guess I didn’t have much effect.” he said.

More often, however, the stores bow to police pressure to halt illegal sales. In Laguna Beach, an increase in drunk-driving arrests --from 34 in April to 64 in May --resulted in an intensive effort to quell sales to minors. The campaign included letters from the chief of police to 85 liquor vendors, reminding them of applicable liquor laws and politely requesting that stores comply.

Laguna Beach police coupled that effort with community service programs and, most effective of all, undercover investigations.

“It’s common knowledge that the state Alcoholic Beverage Control people are understaffed, so it falls on local officers to enforce these laws and go under cover,” said Lt. Jim White.

Believes in Results

White says he has no statistics, but he has a “gut feeling” that fewer alcohol-related crimes are appearing on police logs since the program began.

In Fullerton, Senior Officer Gary Miller says, “We have, we do, and we will” work under cover to catch offenders. “We do it periodically, to catch stores that are just sloppy or doing it habitually,” he said.

Miller says the program’s goal is to cut the number of traffic accidents related to alcohol, which he said are the No. 1 killers of drivers ages 16 to 24.

The goals behind such sting operations are so popular that police say even most liquor stores won’t complain about them.

One exception is the case of Warner Jr. Liquors in Fountain Valley, where owner Glyndon E. Fry bristled after his clerk received a citation.

“I think they’re really getting awful dirty the way they’re playing the game,” he said.

“What these police ought to do is catch the 21-year-olds buying liquor for the kids. I have a 19-year-old son and I know a house where he can get 21-year-olds to buy him beer any time. I did the same thing when I was a kid,” he said.