Long Beach City Council Weighs Options On Underage Drinking Enforcement

LONG BEACH, NY. — A resolution to approve $18,000 in police overtime payments turned into a 40-minute discussion of underage drinking prevention policy at Wednesday night’s City Council meeting.

Council president Brendan Finn, council member Chris Fiumara and Long Beach Aware president Judi Vining all weighed in on the most effective ways to combat underage service at Long Beach bars.

The discussion began with the third item on Wednesday’s agenda, the acceptance of a grant for $18,800 from Long Beach Aware for police department overtime payment. The overtime payment funds part of collaboration between Long Beach Aware, the police department, prosecutors and city courts to curb underage drinking.

During the discussion of underage drinking, Fiumara raised objections to a program that police commissioner Richard DePalma referred to as the “guest doormen” program, whereby undercover police officers work the door at Long Beach bars to stop underage customers before they can be served.

“I think it’s a terrible program, personally. It’s just my opinion. Do I think underage drinking is terrible? Yeah. Have I done it? Absolutely. But I have a 17-year-old daughter, and I know that some of her friends do it. I know she probably does it,” Fiumara said. “I know they’re also good kids…but it’s the bar owner who should be getting in trouble for that, not the kid, because that’s something they practice, not the kid.”

From the police department’s point of view, DePalma called the guest doormen program a “disincentive to kids to go into bars, also it’s to educate the bars, as well, on proper tactics to card properly and identify young kids.”

In Fiumara’s view, however, the plan places undue emphasis on stopping kids from seeking out alcohol rather than stopping the adults around them from enabling that behavior.

“If [drinkers are] going to a bar and they’re underage… that’s the practice of that bar,” Fiumara said. “And, it starts at home, too. I’ve had parents call and threaten bar managers, [saying], ‘You took away my son’s fake ID!’ Not, ‘Hey, thank you,’ not calling the police, they’re defending their 17-year-old kid trying to sneak into a bar.”

Vining took to the podium at City Hall to respond to Fiumara’s concerns, noting that Long Beach does hold adults responsible under the Social Host Law, which holds adults criminally liable for knowingly allowing underage drinking. Long Beach, Vining added, was the first municipality in New York to pass the law, moving from civil liability in underaged drinking cases to criminal. Additionally, Vining said, the current intramunicipal collaboration keeps kids from creating a permanent criminal record when caught drinking underage.

“There is no record. We designed this very carefully because nobody wants a child who makes a mistake — because their brain isn’t formed enough to make a rational choice — to carry this for the rest of their lives. So, by design, we work hand in hand with the city courts as well.”

Vining noted that underage drinkers under the current program are given the option of pleading not guilty in court and attending a three-hour online class through Long Beach Aware. Since 2020, Vining said, judges require attendees of that class to write an essay at its conclusion to show what they’ve learned.

“It’s really designed to help a kid get from here to there without ruining their lives,” Vining said. "Because once we knew and heard 20 years ago that a child who begins drinking at the age of 14 on a regular basis — and regular doesn’t mean daily or weekly, it means probably twice a month — has a 40 percent higher risk of developing a problem with alcohol or drugs later in life than a child who waits, you can’t have that knowledge and not do something about it.”

At the end of the discussion, Vining invited the council to have a member attend monthly Long Beach Aware meetings, saying that, “We can’t really do or talk about policies, or things like this, in depth, in three minutes under good and welfare.”

“Sure, I’ll be there,” Finn said. “I hope people are happy when I show up, but I’ll be there.”