Gerald Baker Police Probe Bars Who Serve DWI Patrons

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Police Probe Bars Who Serve DWI Patrons

New Jersey Law Journal 

 

Probes Begun Into Bars Named for Serving Patrons Charged With DWI

Maria Vogel-Short

 

12-28-2007

A new state program to find out which bars have served drunken drivers their last drink is already yielding pay dirt.

As of month's end, Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control investigations had begun into 12 establishments, all of which had been named by more than one patron arrested for drunken driving.

One bar had been named 10 times, says ABC Division Director Jerry Fischer.

The actions are the result of Attorney General Anne Milgram's directive, signed July 16 and effective Oct. 16, that police, after reading a drunken driver his or her Miranda rights and if they are waived, are to ask about the type, number and location of drinks imbibed.

Milgram said it is in the public interest for law enforcement agencies to share information about drunken drivers, who it is estimated are involved in more than 30 percent of crashes in the state.

Of the 1,400 questionnaires so far completed by police, 40 percent included the name of the location where the last drink was consumed, says Fisher.

If the server is a licensed commercial establishment, its name is logged in an ABC division database, where the data is kept for 25 months and then purged.

The database is designed to aid authorities investigating restaurants and bars with a history of serving intoxicated patrons. Serving a visibly drunken patron violates Alcoholic Beverage Control Administrative Code §13:2-23.1(b), which says, "No licensee shall sell, serve or deliver . . . any alcoholic beverage, to any person actually or apparently intoxicated."

At the discretion of the ABC division, violations can lead to fines, suspensions or revocations. Although revocation is uncommon, suspension can occur if bars repeatedly serve liquor to drunken patrons, says Peter Aseltine, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office. And fines can add up; they are based on what the bar would have made in profits during the suspension, he adds.

Fischer says the directive is an investigatory tool for his 22 investigators. The state has nearly 10,000 licensees and sending out investigators randomly to observe patrons at restaurants and bars "is an enormous waste of resources," he says.

"If you see a place cited by drunk drivers 10 or 12 times, you can assume it is not a statistical anomaly," says Fischer.

Fischer declines to give the total number or names of establishments now in the database, since the information, being gathered from drunken drivers' recollections, is not always reliable. "We don't publish the information because we have no idea whether the information is accurate," he says.

Bar owners and organizations that represent them have similar views.

Lew Rothbart, executive director of the New Jersey Licensed Beverage Association, calls the directive an invitation for "unreliable hearsay" and questions whether it will reap results.

"We recognize that establishments have the responsibility of not serving anyone who is physically intoxicated, but there's no reliability in what a person tells a police officer when they are drunk. If a person is drinking in a go-go bar, he might not want to tell anyone where he is," says Rothbart.

Deborah Dowdell, president of the New Jersey Restaurant Association, adds that the directive "is putting faith in the hands of someone who may not be telling the truth."

Training is a more effective way to stop bartenders from serving intoxicated patrons, she says. She notes that the National Restaurant Association has a six-hour training program, complete with certification and a final test graded by an independent testing service.

"I think the benefits of making our roads safer far outweigh these concerns," says Fischer. He adds that the directive itself will help bars become more sensitive to the problem of serving drunken patrons.

In 2006, the ABC performed 1,719 inspections and 1,311 investigations, began 1,052 prosecutions, found 4,249 administrative violations, made 181 arrests for serving underage patrons and imposed $2.7 million in fines in lieu of suspension, Fischer says.

California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington have similar administrative codes, according to Stacy Drakeford, president of the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association in Calverton, Md.

The inquiries set forth in the directive are made a part of police officers' administrative duties when making drunken driving arrests.

The directive carries no repercussions for drunken drivers who refuse to state where they got their last drink.

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