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Bad news for underage BC students: Police, Brighton Center liquor store are onto you
By adamg on Thu, 04/27/2023 - 1:41pm
A Brighton Center liquor store that had become known as the place for Boston College students to buy booze says it's bought a new license scanner with which to bar underage drinkers with fake licenses, even as Boston Police step up stakeouts there to nab Eaglets with a thirst for beverages that should still be two or three years beyond their grasp.
At a Boston Licensing Board hearing Tuesday, two BPD licensing detectives said they nabbed three 18-year-olds outside Walsh Wine & Spirits, 388 Washington St., on Feb. 10 - one who walked out of the store with a 30-pack of Natty Light, a 12-pack of BeatBox "party punch" and a bottle of vodka, two who were waiting for him behind the bar, one with a backpack that already held two bottles of vodka and some BeatBox containers. At least one was IDed as a BC student.
Det. Sgt. William Gallagher said he and his partner, both in street clothes, were in an unmarked cruiser staking out the store around 10:55 p.m. All three swore they were 21, when they were all actually 18, he said, adding all three provided what turned out to be fake licenses, allegedly from California, Delaware and New Jersey. All three were charged as minors in possession of alcohol; the one who actually went into the store and bought stuff was also charged with procuring alcohol for a minor, Gallagher said.
Last month, the board heard testimony that on Dec. 20, Gallagher and his partner nabbed another under-ager coming out of the store after buying a 12-pack of beer and two bottles of hard liquor - and then getting into a motor vehicle with eight other guys, six of whom produced fake IDs. The board issued a formal warning for that incident.
At Tuesday's hearing Walsh's owner, Niroj Shrestha, said he has since bought a license scanner, recommended by police, to validate IDs. His attorney, Steffani Boudreau said that since he installed the scanner earlier this year, Shrestha has confiscated more than 60 fake IDs - and has not had any incidents involving pre-21ers buying alcohol since the February incident.
At a meeting this morning, the board issued its second warning over the sale of alcohol to minors for the February incident. The next violation would mean a one-day license suspension.
Board members agreed that their newest written warning would caution Shrestha that it's not enough to rely solely on an ID scanner - fake-ID manufacturers are engaged in a never ending war with ID-scanner companies to develop scanning-resistant IDs - and that he needs to remain vigilant and take other steps to ensure nobody under 21 is buying liquor at his store, even up to limiting sales to people who present valid-seeming Massachusetts or military IDs and passports.
Watch the hearing:
Hearing on the Dec. 22 incident:
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Comments
Is it legal to limit alcohol
Is it legal to limit alcohol sales to only people holding United States passports? I guess they can deny anyone an alcohol sale for any reason, but it would be ridiculous to deny someone some beer because they only hold a foreign passport...
I thought that MA law protects alcohol vendors if the passport is issued by a country recognized by the United States
Oh, you're right, now to fix story
Here's the official word from the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, which has ultimate oversight over such issues.
The overall issue is a bit more subtle: Liquor-license holders can sell to whomever they want if they think the ID is good and the person is over 21. The issue is that if it turns out the ID was fake and the person was under 21, you only have a defense at a licensing hearing if the ID was issued by Massachusetts (or the military) or a passport. "But he showed a Massachusetts driver's license and he looked old enough" will help you stay out of a trouble in a way that you couldn't do with, say, a California ID.
Even then, the board will grill you on what steps you took to prevent an under-21 person from getting a drink or a bottle. There have been cases involving fake foreign passports and IDs - and even fake MA IDs (for some reason, our IDs are supposed to be harder to counterfeit, but it has been done).
18, 19, 20 year olds
Should have all the legal rights of an adult, including buying, drinking booze. Young adults shouldn't be infantilized.
But what about the children?
Mass dropped the age from 21 to 18 in the early 70's. Much of the impetus for this, and lowering the voting age (26th Amendment, 1971) was the draft. If you were old enough to kill or be killed, you were a grownup. In the late 70's Mothers Against Drunk Driving and their like lobbied to raise it to 20 in Mass, claiming that 18- and 19-year-olds were buying for their high school classmates. Then in 1984 the frenzy went national, and the feds threatened to withhold precious highway dollars from states that didn't raise their age to 21 and Mass oblidged. I'm too lazy to check, but I believe NH under Gov. Mel Thompson held out for a little while; Wyoming held out for a while longer.
1984
Mel Thompson hadn't been governor since 1979. John Sununu Sr (the father of the current Gov) was voted in 1983.
I remember NH hanging on for a bit longer, and if I recall (and I'm probably wrong on this) that initially it was by your DoB. So if you were 18 during the time period between the late 70s and 1984, you still could buy. There was a cut off there when it started to change, and the last nail in that coffin was for anyone under that 'grandfathered' period.
(I just remember as I had a 16 year old cousin who was pissed he missed the cut off by a year!)
Vermont held out the longest
The stick used to force states to raise the drinking age was the loss of 10% of federal highway funds.
Vermont was not getting much money from the Feds for their interstates, so they did a very Vermont thing - they ran the numbers and decided that losing the federal highway money was less of a loss than losing the taxes on the alcohol.
The feds weren't happy about having their penalties fail, but they cannot constitutionally force states to raise their drinking ages by fiat. Realizing that other states might also learn how to do math they quickly raised the amount that Vermont would get if they rolled over and gave it up.
Vermont changed the drinking age in 1986 - I remember because I was legal age in VT as a college student from 1985 to the ban date.
Note that the drinking age in the US is so out of whack that it is outdone only by Islamic majority nations. Heaven forfend we actually tackle the DRIVING side of this equation.
yup
A few weeks in Europe convinced me that we have it totally backward here and they have it right. And I still believe this well into my 40's. Starting with the dismantling of the streetcar networks and giving cars near-exclusive use of streets, we've let the auto and oil companies walk all over us for a century.
That still makes sense to me.
That still makes sense to me. If you are old enough to join the military voluntarily or are called up to service because of the Draft then you are old enough to drink.
I told a bartender in an airbase bowling alley somewhere in Florida that I would love a beer but I was only 20. She laughed and basically told me the exact same thing before drawing me a beer.
OT: Boston College students are Eagles not Eaglets. Eaglets are students at Boston College High School.
A Triple Eagle is a graduate of Boston College High School, Boston College and Boston College Law School. It's in our Boston English section
ffs
How many tax dollars are wasted trying to keep beer away from college kids? What a joke.
I really wonder if it doesn't
I really wonder if it doesn't engender a level of contempt in young people. Everybody drinks underage, it's wiiiiiidely accepted that college kids are going to drink and there's a lot of wink-wink-nod-nod going on except with the few legal authorities who spend all their time and effort trying to stop it. If you get arrested for MIP on Thursday and on Saturday you go to a friend's apartment where everyone has brought natty ice from the 20 other stores that weren't getting staked out from the cops, you're going to recognize how pointless and arbitrary the rules and laws are. When your parents threaten and warn and hyperbolize about the dangers of drinking but then your uncle tells a funny story at thanksgiving about how your college age dad got so drunk he went streaking, you recognize the hypocrisy, and you lose some respect for your parents.
Just seems to actively encourage the same kind of "rules are stupid I'm gonna do what I want" thinking that is prevalent everywhere. "The drinking age is totally arbitrary and nobody ACTUALLY cares so I'm going to drink" isn't that much different from "The 20 mile speed limit on this street that was obviously engineered for 50 mph is arbitrary so I'm going to drive how I want". Except the latter bleeds out into behavior where it DOES matter.
spot on about contempt
Unfortunately, for right-leaning folks the creation of contempt is a feature and not a bug. Gets the idea that government is arbitrary and counterproductive into young people's heads right at the time they're starting to solidify their political identities.
There are roughly 2,000 Boston police officers
Exactly three are assigned to the licensing unit, which, in addition to looking out for baby-faced drinkers, is also responsible for ensuring basic compliance with fire and occupancy codes at restaurants and bars (like not having blocked exits or stuffing too many people inside clubs), checking to make sure restaurants without liquor licenses aren't offering bottles to tables and the like.
On-duty sergeants and lieutenants in each police district can also hand out citations to license holders for violations, but they typically only do that if called to the scene because of a fight, attack or other more serious crime.
So overall, no, BPD is not expending huge amounts of money just to catch thirsty BC students.
licensing board man hours
Those add up too.
Drinking age should be 18
When I was in college in the 1970s, the drinking age was 18. It was fine to have a beer with dinner or go to a pub with friends after class. There was a chance to learn about casual social drinking, rather than every encounter with alcohol being associated with binge drinking and getting blotto.
It felt especially ridiculous when my kid was in college and turned 21. They hardly drank, but I had to warn them that if they were at a party where underage friends were drinking, they could get into legal trouble. Their 21st birthday was during their semester abroad and it was really nice that it was no big deal.