Alcohol enforcement team takes break

Highway patrol to take over program

The Flathead County Alcohol Enforcement team's operations have been suspended pending the Montana Highway Patrol's assumption of the program next month.

New policies must be developed in anticipation of a restructured grant from the state, which places expanded emphasis on education and treatment programs to combat underage drinking, Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan said.

"I suspended it because we want to put some new procedures into effect," said Meehan, who added that other internal policies also needed to be addressed.

The suspension prompted the resignation of Sheriff's Deputy Travis Bruyer from his post as the Alcohol Enforcement Team coordinator. Bruyer said Monday he never was informed why operations were halted.

"It came as a shock to learn this, as I was out of town on vacation when this occurred," Bruyer said. "My overall concern is that, with countywide graduations approaching, what steps are being taken to ensure the safety of our youth and community."

The team's operations were suspended May 14, and Bruyer - who has coordinated the team since its founding - resigned the next day. He will remain a sheriff's deputy.

Bruyer said he was concerned the suspension may violate the terms of the Alcohol Enforcement Team's state grant, which has run about $70,000 per year for the last four years, and negatively impact the possibility of receiving money in the future.

"We have an obligation to the community and my concern is for the welfare of the community and youth at large," Bruyer said. "We've set a precedence about what the community expects."

But Meehan said Wednesday that the team's grant money for the year is all but depleted, precluding the possibility of substantive operations until new money arrives July 1.

"The personnel dollars are balanced out at zero," Meehan said. "But we'll still have one team out Friday night [tonight] and one team out Saturday night for all the graduation parties, and that's being picked up out of the Sheriff's Office budget."

The suspension is the team's second since its inception in July 2005, Bruyer said. The first occurred in August 2007, when operations were shut down briefly to realign the program with sheriff's corporals and sergeants as team leaders.

"Our job is to make arrests and collect data. Right now we're doing neither," Bruyer said. "We shouldn't need that much down time to pass things off to highway patrol."

In July, financial administration of the Alcohol Enforcement Team will pass from the Sheriff's Office to Linda Ravicher, the project director of the Stop Underage Drinking in the Flathead Coalition, and coordination of the law enforcement aspect of the project will go to the Montana Highway Patrol.

Under the current grant, funds are used primarily to pay for enforcement efforts, such as reimbursing the seven participating local law enforcement agencies for overtime worked by their officers.

But in a significant policy shift, the majority of grant money coming from the Montana Board of Crime Control on July 1 is geared toward education and treatment programs, Meehan said.

Ravicher said that in addition to compliance checks and party patrols, the grant will pay for public service announcements, radio spots and billboards.

New initiatives - such as the 'shoulder tap," where a youth outside a store asks a passerby to buy alcohol and, if successful, hands the person a card indicating he or she can be prosecuted, or "cops in shops," where police work shifts with store clerks - also are being considered.

Authorities will have more than $76,700 to spend on enforcement and media campaigns between July 2009 and July 2010.

"It's very much a collective effort to keep something going that is a very good thing for this community," Ravicher said. "They have been tremendous in focusing on putting priority on underage drinking."

Given the restructured grant and its new emphasis, it made sense to give financial and administrative control to a group that specializes in media campaigns and education, Meehan said. Ravicher also is associated with the Flathead County Chemical Dependency Center.

And passing the coordinator's position to the highway patrol has been cooperative and amicable, he added.

Meehan, who has long lent vocal and budgetary support to the Alcohol Enforcement Team, said the Sheriff's Office will continue to play a large role in its operation.

"We're going to be more than just participants in the team," he said. "We're still going to be actively involved in it and I support the program 100 percent."

All members from the Sheriff's Office will remain on the team, sheriff's corporals and sergeants will continue to be team leaders, and the team still will use Sheriff's Office vehicles, he said.

Since its beginning, the Alcohol Enforcement Team has arrested more than 5,000 minors for using alcohol and 500 adults for providing it. Thirty-seven youths have been treated for alcohol poisoning.

The team has conducted compliance checks on hundreds of area bars, convenience stores and restaurants to make sure employees are checking customers' IDs.

The team received national awards for its accomplishments at a time when underage alcohol consumption in Montana was at an all-time high, according to Bruyer. The team's innovative model and tactics are replicated across the country, but, similar to social norms surrounding tobacco, alcohol use is generational and changes could take years, he said.

The Alcohol Enforcement Team's activities in Flathead County may be working, however. Surveys have found that over the last four years, 30-day use - or five or more drinking episodes a month, usually weekends - among Flathead County youths has decreased while the perception among teens that they would be caught if in possession of alcohol has increased.

The seven participating agencies are the Flathead County Sheriff's Office, Montana Highway Patrol, U.S. Forest Service, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the Kalispell, Whitefish, and Columbia Falls police departments.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com