While some fret as development brings stores that sell alcohol closer to schools, kids say it's fairly easy to buy a six pack anywhere.
By JOSH ZIMMER
Published October 3, 2003
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
An agent with the Department of Professional Regulation Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco tapes a sign to the door of a Tampa store in May indicating its alcoholic beverage license has been suspended. The license was suspended for a week after the store's owner was caught in a sting operation selling alcohol to a minor.
CITRUS PARK - For the upshot of Florida's underage drinking laws, check with 15-year-olds John Obgoom and Richard Rivera, as they relax with friends in a parking lot near Sickles High School.
From where they stand, the prohibition against anyone under 21 possessing alcohol seems a mere formality.
"All my friends drink," John said.
Kids find alcohol at home or persuade others to buy it for them. They get fake IDs that let them slip past hapless clerks. At some stores, employees don't even ask an age before selling kids alcohol.
"You can usually go to almost every other gas station," Richard said with barely a trace of exaggeration.
There's irony in the braggadocio: It arises near an intersection that has become a hotspot for outrage over access to alcohol.
Beer, often available to any teen with a car, now sells just 200 feet from Sickles.
Throughout Hillsborough County, rapid development pushes alcohol sales closer than ever to schools. The needs of business encroach on community standards. Tension builds in neighborhoods such as Citrus Park, leaving residents to do battle with corporate lawyers.
In the case of Sickles, protesters lost. Three new businesses with alcohol licenses - a Publix, a Louis Pappas Market Cafe and an Eckerd drug store - opened across the street.
As in communities elsewhere, Hillsborough officials have passed rules requiring certain distances between alcohol sales and various public uses, such as parks or places of worship. Licensed stores typically must be at least 500 feet from schools.
But officials can grant variances if alcohol sales seem compatible with the neighborhood, or if roads provide barriers between schools and the merchants. The variances, which rile neighbors, feed the tension.
Could more outlets mean more underage drinkers? The problem costs the United States an estimated $53-billion a year in drunken driving and other costs, according to a report released in September by the National Academy of Sciences.
Richard only knows what he sees: It's already easy for kids his age to buy alcohol.
Authorities don't doubt it.
Sheriff's deputies, Tampa Police officers and agents with the state's Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco bust dozens of wayward store clerks a month, from Carrollwood to Wimauma, after catching them sell to juveniles. In an extreme scenario four months ago, a clerk at Forest Hills Grocery off Linebaugh Avenue sold a Seagram's strawberry daiquiri to a middle school student still in her uniform shirt. She was 12 years old.
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They are too young to drink. But teenage plants are one of law enforcement's biggest weapons against illegal alcohol sales. Often no more than 16 and 17 years old, kids trying to buy alcohol undercover help nab irresponsible clerks.
Without those plants - often teens interested in a law enforcement career - officers say they would have a much tougher time cracking down on illegal sales.
"It's certainly a good tool," said Capt. John Blair, who oversees a staff of 13 agents at the ABT's Tampa bureau. "It gives us the opportunity to test a store . . . without sitting outside for hours waiting for something to happen."
From May 2002 through May 2003, agents made at least 50 arrests involving alcohol sales to people 18 and under - some as young as Richard Rivera's friends outside Sickles. Still others were charged with selling to 19 and 20 year olds, according to an examination of state records by the Times.
Florida law forbids selling alcohol to a person younger than 21. Arrests, which often occur after one or two warnings, come with a second-degree misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum sentence of 60 days. However, most cases are settled for a $150 fine and six month's probation, said Lt. George Miller, also of the ABT's Tampa bureau.
Reasons for the illegal sales varied.
After looking at an ID, some clerks failed to do the math or ignored the birth dates of underage patrons, agents alleged.
That happened in August 2002 to a 17-year-old agent identified only as CM021085. At least 14 times over the course of a year, she led agents to illegal sales, scoring purchases of Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Light, Heineken and Smirnoff Ice. At Mel's Hot Dogs on Busch Boulevard, a clerk checked her ID but sold her beer, anyway, the agency reported.
In many cases, cashiers simply did not ask for proof of age.
Anyone who calls such sales an honest mistake is being too generous, said Sgt. Bob Unger, a 29-year Sheriff's Office veteran who heads a selective enforcement unit in south Hillsborough County.
Unger directed an operation last month using a 19-year-old male agent. The young man went into shops with no ID. The team visited 26 stores in the areas of Ruskin, Gibsonton and Wimauma and made 9 arrests. More than a third of the clerks did not bother to ask for identification.
"People know that they can't sell to underaged people," Unger said. "There are signs everywhere."
Some stores, especially chains, have electronic scanners that read driver's licenses and indicate whether someone is old enough to buy alcohol.
But when the machine at a Circle K off County Road 39 in Lithia broke down, Debra Santiago never made the adjustment. Saddled with a stream of customers the night of April 17, she said she stopped checking IDs. One of the customers was a teenage plant. Santiago got busted.
The arrest left Santiago, 46 years old at the time, without her sole source of income. She believes she was treated unfairly.
"He came in and got a six pack," she recalled. "I said, "How old are you?' He said, "I'm 21.' I said, "Oh, okay.' I didn't realize they could send someone in to lie. I didn't understand the fairness of that."
Most people get the message, officers say. Follow-up visits reinforce the seriousness of the original arrest.
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Janet Hiltz looks with a sense of doom at all the new establishments peddling alcohol in Citrus Park.
In the past three years, the county has approved four distance variances in her neighborhood - including the three near Sickles and a fourth at Smokey Bones BBQ and Sports Bar near the publicly owned Upper Tampa Bay Trail.
Hiltz, with two grandsons at Sickles, spoke vehemently against all four applications. She and others say the distance requirements help shield impressionable youngsters.
Not everyone agrees. Some residents supported the variances, downplaying the temptation to youngsters while enthusing over new dining options.
But Hiltz and others consider the variances a danger and an embarrassment, particularly the one allowing Eckerd to sell beer roughly 200 feet from Sickles.
"We felt that that was much too close of an exposure to the students. I'm not sure that a supermarket is quite as much a temptation as a store that is almost a convenience store to them," Hiltz said, referring to Eckerd. "No matter how good the training is, one of their buddies may pass a beer off as a soda."
Told what students had to say about the easy availability of alcohol outside Citrus Park, Hiltz stuck to her hard line.
"I know they're saying that," she said, "but as parents I think we need to be concerned about the ready availability of it. I really don't feel we should cause more temptation than is absolutely necessary, and particularly when there are supposed to be rules in place to prevent this kind of thing. They've got this 500-foot rule and they're not enforcing it. It just seems they're automatically waiving it."
The Florida School Board Association wants an even tougher buffer.
"Our position has always been we do want those kinds of establishments, and others, within 1,000 feet or more of a school," the executive director, Wayne Blanton, said. "It's a safety issue and a message issue that we shouldn't have alcohol sold close to our schools."
That view finds support from teenage drinking experts like Paul Gruenewald of the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, Calif., one of 15 centers financed by the National Institutes of Health.
Communities play with fire by allowing too much exposure to alcohol, said Gruenewald.
"I think the only thing researchers know right now is it is silly to put more outlets next to kids," he said. "An obvious one is schools."
Yet Gruenewald acknowledges the debate is not black and white.
Across the board, law enforcement officials and teenage drinking experts say chain stores, such as Publix and Eckerd, are not the problem. Under a strong public spotlight, chains generally enforce companywide training standards that diminish the risk of illegal alcohol sales.
"We pride ourselves on being responsible citizens in our communities," said Lee Brunson, a spokesman for the Lakeland-based Publix.
"I think Eckerd is a well-managed company that's going to take this very seriously," said Tampa lawyer John Grandoff, who represented Eckerd in it variance application.
Most of the arrests take place at small convenience stores, gas stations or liquor stores. Some are repeat offenders, such as a Shell gas station on N Nebraska Avenue, Winners Food Store in Temple Terrace and Palma Ceia Liquors in South Tampa, where there were five arrests in May.
"Restaurants have hardly ever been considered a concern," said county zoning director Paula Harvey. "Neither have grocery stores."
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In the mid-1990s, there was talk of expanding Hillsborough's minimum distance requirements, Harvey said. The idea fizzled, in part, because officials worried it could prevent landowners from using their properties as zoned.
She said she doesn't see the danger Hiltz and others do. In her eyes, the key to keeping alcohol out of youngsters' hands is to enforce current laws.
"If they are getting (alcohol), it's because the people in the store are allowing them to get it," Harvey said.
Policing merchants is a matter of staff and attitude.
Gruenewald says law enforcement agencies often are slow to crack down on outlets that sell to underage drinkers.
On a local level, high-ranking officers decide how aggressively to pursue illegal sales. For example, the Sheriff's Office's south county district plans to increase sting operations because Capt. Jerry York wants to send a stronger message, said Sgt. Unger of the selective enforcement squad.
Since 2000, the number of ABT agents statewide is down by about 20, including some positions in the Tampa office, division director Jack Tuter said.
"I'm sure there are some (violators) we don't get to," Blair said.
Statewide, 150 ABT agents work closely with local law enforcement, sharing information and conducting busts together, said A.J. Smith, the division's chief of enforcement.
ABT surveys 20 percent of licensees annually.
Of those, about 86 percent pass the test.
That rate may not sound high, but Florida fares better than other southern states, he said.
"We're doing a good job through education and enforcement," Smith said. "I mean, it takes a lot to maintain 86 percent compliance. Certainly we'd like to have 100 percent; we're looking at 95 percent.
"Hopefully, through education, awareness and enforcement, it's attainable."
Under fire for not fighting distance variances more aggressively, the Hillsborough School District will begin arguing its case personally instead of merely filing paper objections, district property manager Jill Lemons said.
In the meantime, the parallel task of enforcement continues, as agents do battle against merchants who cheerfully provide alcohol to teens.
In May 2002 a 17-year-old plant paid for a six-pack of Bud Light at a Sunmart BP on S Dale Mabry in Tampa.
"Thank you," the clerk said, according to the report.
"Have a nice day."
- Editorial assistant Rob Brannon contributed to this report. Josh Zimmer covers University North, Keystone/Odessa and Citrus Park. He can be reached at 269-5314 or zimmer@sptimes.com
