Liquor Sales Sting Snags 11 Store Clerks

Thirty-three Santa Clarita Valley liquor stores were targets of a sting operation last month during which underage police helpers tried to buy liquor. Eleven clerks took the bait, police officials said Tuesday, far more than the one or two usually cited during such operations.

Sgt. Bob Warford of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, said he found the number of alleged violations “a little alarming,” but attributed it mostly to the use of multiple decoys.

In previous stings, he said deputies usually used only one or two teen-agers as decoys. Descriptions of the teen-agers spread quickly among liquor store clerks.

“When one gets caught they get on a phone tree” to warn one another, Warford said.

This sting made use of three decoys and made an effort to get them to all the stores as quickly as possible.

“They go into a liquor store and they try and buy a six-pack of beer with a $5 bill,” Warford said. “We also have a plain-clothes officer there to make sure it’s a real violation of the law and when the decoy goes outside, [the officer] issues a citation.”

Eight of the clerks caught in the sting pleaded guilty Monday at Newhall Municipal Court to selling alcohol to a minor. Two were fined $150 and given one year of summary probation. The other six were sentenced to 20 hours of community service, two years summary probation and compulsory attendance at a three-hour course on alcoholic beverage laws.

Prosecution of the remaining three has been delayed due to language problems. Those proceedings will not be heard, court officials said, until translators can be located who speak Farsi, Arabic and one of the many languages of India.

The licenses at the stores where the clerks were cited will be reviewed by the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, officials said.

The Santa Clarita stores where clerks were cited were Canyon Market, Gas Mini-mart, Sierra Liquor, Friendly Valley AM/PM, Super-8 Market on Friendly Valley Parkway, 7-Eleven at Sierra Highway and Soledad Canyon Road, Fox Liquor, AM/PM at Bouquet Junction, Mobile Mini-mart at Sierra Canyon and Soledad Canyon, Mobile Gas on San Fernando Road and Valencia Liquor on Lyons Avenue, according to the Sheriff’s Department.