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August 21, 2010

Drink up, that’s the ticket

By Brian Ojanpa Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — Three certainties in life: Death, taxes and drunk-in-public college kids announcing themselves each August.

Which begets another certainty: Cop patrols in the area near Minnesota State University dispensing underage drinking citations like penny candy at a summer parade.

It’s a futile job, but somebody’s gotta do it.

“We realize we’re not going to stop underage consumption from happening. We realize it’s an impossible feat,” says Mankato police detective commander Matt DuRose.

So why do it then? Let’s just say this community has basic behavioral etiquette expectations for the young and the classless.

In other words, don’t do what Brandon Thompson did on Thursday night and you’ll likely escape being tagged with a $177 underage drinking ticket.

Or, in Thompson’s case, two of them.

The 20-year-old from Brooklyn Park who will turn 21 on Sunday (insert Homer Simpson “Doh!” here) was caught stashing beer in a car and cited at 10:41 p.m., whereupon he produced a  blood-alcohol breath test reading of .087.

At 2:27 a.m. he was again observed strolling along a street, this time toting a bottle of Ron Diaz spiced rum. At that point in his pickling he registered a reading of .140 and was slapped with more paper.

He also was hauled off to jail because he was exhibiting ongoing criminal behavior and seen as a threat to himself, apparently from the repeated sucker punches absorbed from Ron Diaz.

DuRose said the scenario isn’t uncommon because each year at least one underage drinker during college move-in week is ticketed more than once in a single night.

On average more than 100 citations are issued each year during the three-night patrol in a concentrated area of dense student housing. And if you read that as student housing for the dense, so be it.   

Here’s the deal: The police are patrolling that area with the aid of a $13,000 federal grant for overtime pay not because they think $177 a pop will curtail underage drinking. It will not.

“No drinky no ticky” doesn’t resonate with the bulk of contemporary college students. It’s simply become the cost of doing business. Books, tuition, pizza fees, underage drinking fine. So it goes.

Rather, the main aim of police this week is to discourage the flaunting, over-the-top illegal public drinking behavior too often exhibited by those who feel it’s somehow their right.

Beyond the illegality of their actions, DuRose says it’s a matter of disrespect, of blatantly thumbing one’s nose at the community that’s taking them in.

Meanwhile, the police continue to chip away at the problem, seemingly against all odds. It’s like giving passengers on the Titanic icepicks and instructing them to jab away at that big thing in the water.

Tonight the cops will be out again to ticket teetering youths. DuRose says some just shrug it off, some cry, and some get mad at the officers.

But remorse? Rarely, if ever.

One time, DuRose says, a young man was nabbed who had a stratospheric blood-alcohol reading of .30. When told he would be transported to a detox center, his buddies were incredulous.

“But he’s like that every weekend,” they told the officers.



Brian Ojanpa is a Free Press staff writer. Call him at 344-6316 or email bojanpa@mankatofreepress.com.

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