Party Crashers

They’re never invited and rarely welcome, but weekend after weekend the Montgomery County Police underage drinking unit busts parties where teens are drinking

By Mimi Harrison

Sgt. Bill Whalen is looking at pictures on his computer. He sits in the offices of the Alcohol Initiatives Unit at the Montgomery County Police Department in Gaithersburg on a late spring Saturday night. It’s after 10, and two other members of the unit, Officers Gary Finch and Steve Evans, watch with him as images click past on the monitor, all of them different, but depressingly the same. All are evidence of underage drinking at recent parties, and, from the looks of things, they portray anything but a good time.

“That was the place off Burning Tree Road,” says Whalen, “near Holton Arms.” Two adults left their house—under construction, but habitable—in the care of two teenaged boys who were unrelated to them. What ensued under the watch of the teens looks extremely destructive, but with the construction it’s hard to tell. What is clear from the photo, however, are the signs of the combination science fair/Olympian sporting methods used for alcohol consumption. There is a setup for beer pong (a drinking game involving pingpong balls and cups of beer), an ice luge (an enormous block of ice carved with a channel for shots of alcohol to travel on the way to the drinker’s open mouth) and—unless there was a veterinary health crisis that has yet to be identified—an enormous dog bowl brimming with brew. There are also the unmistakable marks of disgorgement—vomit on floors, in sinks, on bedclothes—that have turned this home into a sewer.

The cops wrote 46 citations there, which means that 46 people under 21 were drinking. These kids will all have to appear in court; any of them under 18 will have to bring their parents to juvenile court. Those over 18 will go to adult court. First-time offenders will get off with community service and compulsory alcohol education class; after that, there’s a $500 fine.

The rogues’ gallery on the computer screen goes on: A vacant house in Silver Spring whose owners were divorcing. Their kids took advantage of the empty space to stage some mayhem before it was sold.

Next up: A 19-year-old girl in Gaithersburg who entertained a brace of 14- and 15-year-old boys in her (own) apartment. She posed for the camera. “I (heart) DICK” her T-shirt says.

Nineteen is the average age of the kids the police find, but the unit frequently busts kids who are 14 and 15, and have come upon drinkers as young as 13, says Whalen.

Image after image goes by, each a verse of the same song. The red plastic cups, the kegs, the vodka, the flushed and sweaty children, the empty, mucked-up, high-priced homes. What’s not in the slide show are the fist fights and flying bottles, the melees that Whalen and his men have to walk into and break up. Alcohol is notorious for causing aggression among adults; in over-charged adolescents who have been drinking hard, violence—against property and each other—is not uncommon and cuts across the socioeconomic spectrum.

And, according to studies conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly a quarter of sexually active females between the ages of 15 and 24 report having unprotected sex because they were drinking or using drugs at the time. There seems to be a distinct disconnect between beer pong and the condom.

Finch and Whalen recall a party several weeks earlier, on Olney Mill Road in Olney, where the girls left their underpants in a bag and each boy drew a pair to determine his hook-up for the evening. The unit found 100 kids in the basement alone at that house. The biggest surprise came three hours later, when they ferreted out the last merrymakers, who had been hiding in a walk-in closet; one girl had zipped herself into a garment bag and been hanging there, hiding.

Whalen’s unit tries to stay on top of the underage drinking/party problem as far as their numbers will allow, which is only seven full-time officers, except for big nights, like prom, when the unit borrows officers from other details. Lt. Ron Smith takes care of administration. The unit plays a cat and mouse game they can never really win. Because it takes a long time to process one big crowd, Whalen’s unit can only bust one or two parties a night.

Still, they do a lot with the little they’ve got. They run what they call “Cops in Shops,” plainclothes officers who observe transactions at the source if they get a tip that someone is selling to minors. They also do compliance checks by sending kids in to buy from a suspected merchant.

The party’s over

At about 11 that Saturday night the team takes to their vehicles. Whalen goes out in an unmarked car. He will cruise around, watching, listening and waiting for messages to come over the Message Data Computer (MDC), on the console in front. The unit gets tipped to most of these parties through complaints from the neighbors.

Drinking parties are a nuisance, especially in warm weather, because the action spills out into yards. Noise, lights, cars, kids and fights are clear signs, and many neighbors don’t hesitate to pick up the phone. This night Whalen leads the way and hones in on a neighborhood in Olney. A neighbor has called to complain about noise. The night is clear and dark, and a full moon hangs over the lush and leafy streets. The six police cars pull into a Sandy Spring firehouse parking lot so the officers can use it as a staging area and wait for Whalen’s instructions. A chaperoned bash is happening inside the firehouse, a Sweet 16 party. Lights are on, and kids look great. It’s midnight, and parents’ cars are snaking around the building to take the non-drivers home.

In the firehouse lot, Finch gets out of his car to talk to Evans and runs into a judge—unlikely looking in Bermudas—who gives Finch a big hello,  “Maybe you’ll fill up my courtroom in a couple of weeks!”

Finch, an affable guy in his late 30s who spent his 20s as a dot-commer in Connecticut, has no doubt the judge’s courtroom will fill up. Four months into the year, the unit has already written 700 citations.

While his unit waits for him at the firehouse, Whalen is driving the unmarked car trying to find the offending party. It eludes him at first but then—aha—his voice comes over the radio, it’s all going on at the back of the house. “No way to sit on it other than pull into it. I’m sure some of ’em are track stars,” Whalen says over the radio. And off they go.

There are certain ways to break up a gathering of inebriated and possibly aggressive young people, and the most important thing you want to do is to get between them and their motor vehicles. It’s an expertise the Montgomery County Police have honed to an almost military precision; but, because no two circumstances are the same, it’s something they usually have to do on the fly. Over the radio, Whalen instructs his unit to creep in and block off as many means of egress as possible. Of course, out in the suburbs in particular, kids can shoot into the woods where squad cars can’t park, and be gone. Or not. Some nights there are broken bones and other casualties among those trying to go AWOL.

Tonight about 75 head for the border as it dawns on the crowd that the cops have arrived. The officers do not give chase. The host, a bulky, genial guy of 20, flip-flops among his friends in shorts and a Texas Longhorns sweatshirt, sleeves ripped out, then loses his steam as he sees the troops descend on his luau. And it is a luau. There is a distinct Hawaiian theme, with tiki torches, plastic leis and tropical ornaments hanging in the trees. Beer, to be sure, abounds. There are puddles of it, the familiar red cups, shreds of paper decorations and cigarette butts underfoot everywhere.

Whalen’s unit—with help from other Montgomery County police officers—descend, their loud voices and long flashlights scouring everyone out of every corner to sit, like naughty campers, on the ground. For a crew under scrutiny of the law, these people don’t seem overly concerned. They yak into cell phones, smoke, crack gum and joke among themselves, as if they are waiting not for a breath test but their turn at bat in a softball game. Ranging from 17 to 23, they are all recognizable, a bridge mix of ethno-suburban upper middle-class youth. They are decked out in Abercrombie/J. Crew/Urban Outfitters, shiny of hair and smooth of skin.

Whalen wades into the crowd and clearly explains what will happen. Tall and strapping, his voice is commanding but his tone is fair. He asks for IDs, explains that the charge, if any, will be a civil one. Run for a car, and that will change into a criminal matter. Still, the kids titter and giggle. The cheek of this crowd is remarkable; of course, many of the kids are dead drunk.

He calls out to the group: “Who here has not been drinking?” Hands shoot up happily. Because they show no signs of imbibing and have shown proper ID, they are free to scoot without a breath test—and scoot they do.

“Who here is 21 and older?” More hands go up and, IDs checked, those who score less than the maximum legal limit of .08 on the Breathalyzer take to their cars and are gone. Those too drunk to drive must arrange for a ride home. And so it goes, one by one, every other individual is checked and given the Preliminary Breath Test (PBT). This is an instant analysis of the person’s Blood-Alcohol Content (BAC), which is determined by a small instrument into which a deep breath is blown. Cops get an immediate digital readout. People under the legal drinking age of 21 should not register any BAC. If they do, they are given a citation and required to appear in court—with their parents if the kids are under 18.

The process is slow and, as the night gets colder, the kids get clammy and the mood descends. Girls wrap themselves in their naked arms. The host, whose high spirits reigned just an hour and a half before, sits in a lawn chair close to tears, his head in his hands. His parents are in Syracuse till Tuesday. He’s 20 years old but he might as well be 8. He’s gonna get creamed.

The sergeant informed the crowd several times not to smoke, as smoking interferes with the PBT device and can, in fact, break it. One girl, who has been disruptive throughout the proceedings, lights up and is handcuffed and taken to the side for hindering the investigation. Whalen is good-humored, but he suffers no fools. At almost every party, he says, there is a “mouthy” one, a kid who talks ominously about the lawyer they’ll get, the importance of their parents, their acquaintance with other officers and how fast Whalen will lose his job. This young woman is tested last; even so, late in the evening, her BAC—blood alcohol content—is .15, almost double the limit at which an adult is considered impaired.

The Hawaiian theme doesn’t wear well in the soggy after-midnight chill. A tinsel dainty hangs by a tentacle from a tree. The kids who smoked and chattered and raked their hair with their hands an hour ago are sullen now, chins on knees, with clicking teeth. Many boys mill around with paper hula skirts still attached over their jeans. Officer Evans apprehends one such boy walking down the street, who claims he was not at the party at all, but is on his way to the 7-11 at the corner. Nice try.

After a couple of hours, the crowd thins out and there are just a dozen or so people left. A small knot of kids remains with a sober friend who will drive them home. Somber and sheepish now, a couple of the girls in the group seem embarrassed and anxious to get going. One last boy is being tested, but he is not happy with the results. “What’d you blow?” he exclaims, in mock outrage, and insists on another test. “I can’t believe you all blew higher than me!” Not to be outdone, he opens up and gives it all he’s got, but he still isn’t as drunk as his buddies.

Meanwhile, “Group hug!” The cops and the kids are posing for pictures. The citations flapping in their hands, the kids are clicking pictures. They’re beaming shyly, the cops are standing there smiling, what can they do?

Members of the Alcohol Initiatives Unit go to county schools to talk to kids directly and try to connect. Whalen remembers a recent bust at a party where he ran into a girl who looked familiar. “Sergeant Whalen!” she cried. “Hi! You were just in my health class!” So much for that afternoon’s work. Whalen is a family man, with two teenaged sons of his own. He works long hours, always on weekends, nothing he does not do from conviction. But at times he must feel like he’s talking into the wind.

Permissive—and naive—parents

Sometimes Whalen’s biggest problem is parents, especially when they allow underage drinking in their homes or deny access to a house where underage drinking is taking place. Parents who permit underage drinking parties are breaking the law, and can face a $1,000 fine for each charge of hosting and furnishing alcohol to minors, fairly potent disincentives. One night, Whalen arrived at a suspected party house in Potomac that had a sign posted that said, “Come around the side.” Through the windows the officers could see everything they needed: empty cases of beer and kids playing beer pong. The cops knocked, but the parents would not let them in. Without a warrant, police were helpless to break things up.

While parents may have the best intentions, they are frequently naive about what their kids are really doing. They permit their children to have a party, instruct them, “No drinking!,” even sit upstairs the night of the bash and tell themselves they’re fine. At a recent party in Potomac, Whalen found over 100 kids drinking at a Sweet 16 the parents thought was a quiet gathering of 20 in the basement. The daughter posted the invite on the Internet and her parents had no idea what they were sitting on.

Some parents, however, are braver than others, more willing to let their kids bear the consequences of their actions. On a recent Friday night, a house in Bethesda should be empty. The parents are away; the daughter is supposed to be sleeping at a friend’s. But a neighbor, deputized by the parents to keep watch on the house, sees lights, cars, boys, the daughter and her friends, so he makes a call to the mother’s cell. What should he do? Without missing a beat, she instructs him, “Call the cops.”

Officer Fergus Sugrue is not part of the underage drinking squad; he usually works central auto theft. But because this Friday night is a busy one, he’s been tapped by Alcohol Initiatives to cover parties. He gets the call on his MDC to check the address. It’s the usual deal: boys, girls, cars and cups. Other cops have gotten there first and a message comes over the MDC: Juveniles are streaming into vehicles. Within minutes, Sugrue is at the house. Lights blaze and doors hang open. This gathering seems like a beginners’ attempt. These kids are 15, 16, 17 at the most. The girls look sharp in their halters and well-fitting jeans, but the boys still have that big-pawed pup look. There isn’t a keg, but cans, of beer and the waxed, flowered kind of paper cups, Dixie cups, like moms buy for picnics. There’s vodka. Lots of the guests on hand haven’t been drinking. They stand to the side for a while, nervously jiggling their car keys, watching their friends blow into the PBT.

What do the kids make of the flashing lights, the starched authority, the angry parents marching up the steps to retrieve their kids? Their young hostess is going to be in big trouble, busted by her own mom. This message is not ambiguous, and it comes down like lightning. She had been warned, says her mother. This woman sounds resolute. She has raised two older kids and, like thousands of other parents, has had enough of headlines and highway shrines. She might not know Bill Whalen by name but, when her kid throws a party, she wants him invited, too.

Mimi Harrison last wrote for Bethesda Magazine about the Children’s Inn at National Institutes of Health.