Tuesday, September 11, 2007
It’s Friday night at The Wheel, and J. Taylor has to make a choice as he works the door.
A young-looking student stands in front of him with a questionable driver’s license stating she’s 22. Taylor, Lawrence senior, can let the student in or turn her down.
“It’s not too tough,” he said after attending an alcohol compliance education training session. “It’s not my decision; it’s my boss’s. I respect who I work for and what it stands for. I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
The Lawrence Police Department tried to make that decision simpler for about 200 workers from local alcohol-selling establishments by educating them about fake IDs Monday at Abe and Jake’s Landing. Police provided the training to help prevent underage drinking.
Karen Price, a spokeswoman from the Kansas Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, gave tips to the workers about detecting fake driver’s licenses. She said the state’s font was sometimes smaller than on real licenses, and that the addresses were often in all capital letters instead of mixed lowercase and capitals. She wanted the workers to compare the facial features of the person and the picture — even the smallest differences.
“One agent absolutely swears by checking the bottom of the nose to the top of the lip,” Price said.
Still, bouncers at bars, waiters and waitresses at restaurants and liquor store clerks must make tough decisions every night. Taylor said he usually turns down 10 to 15 people each shift. Sometimes, Taylor said, fake IDs are as good as real ones. He said bouncers have to notice the person’s demeanor to make decisions in those situations.
Angry patrons are another problem. Tyler Yeakel, a Lawrence senior who also works at The Wheel, said people who are turned down often get upset.
Taylor said that he can still do his job well despite the pressure.
“We’re the badasses at the bar,” he said. “Drunk people aren’t that easy to work with, and it’s tough to be on top all of the time. But our job is to minimize the error.”
The meeting to crack down on underage drinking comes three years after Lawrence police last tried similar efforts, according to Mike Pattrick, Lawrence police captain. He said police were trying to prevent underage drinking, not to arrest students.
Their first priority is teaching the staff at drinking establishments how to identify minors, Pattrick said. But he also said the police would enter bars and liquor stores periodically to see how many minors were there and to gauge how well their prevention efforts were working.
— Edited by Tara Smith
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Bouncers, waiters get fake ID training
This is great, but they will be much better off with system like ClubWatch.com check it out for yourself at http://www.club-watch.com
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