Almost a quarter of all businesses targeted served alcohol to minors

Six local restaurants were handed down penalties for serving alcohol to underage youth during a June sting operation at a state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission meeting this morning.

Allstar Sports Club and Ixtapa Mexican Restaurant were fined $1,000 and will pay an additional $200 in costs; LaFrontera Restaurant will have its alcohol license suspended for 10 days and pay $200; and S&W Lounge, Thai House, and Winger’s Tooele will all have five-day suspensions of their alcohol licenses and pay $200, according to Vicki Ashby, public information officer for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Eleven Tooele Valley businesses were caught providing alcohol to minors in the covert sting operation conducted by state and local officials June 11.

“A total of 47 businesses were visited, with citations issued to 11, or a total of 23 percent,” said Lt. Chris Simmons, with the Utah State Department of Public Safety Investigations Bureau.

Zacatecas Market, Maverick in Tooele, La Puente, The Delle Quick Stop, and Thompson’s Smokehouse were also cited for selling alcohol to a minor, but were referred to local authorities for action, according to Simmons.

Restaurants, clubs and other state licensees are referred to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control for punitive action, while retail and other non-state licensees are handled through the local jurisdiction where the business is located, according to Simmons.

Officials said the sting netted an unusually high number of violations relative to the number of establishments visited.

“Twenty-three percent is a little on the high side,” Simmons said. “It varies a lot, but one operation we did last Friday in Sandy only netted 2 percent citations.”

Amy Bate, alcohol prevention grant coordinator for Tooele County School District and coordinator for the Most Don’t Campaign, was upset by the results of the sting operation.

“We are supposed to be in this together, working as a community to keep our youth safe,” Bate said. “I am ashamed that we have retailers and restaurants selling alcohol to underage youth.”

The state Bureau of Investigation uses underage youth between the ages of 17 and 19 to conduct these sting operations. The youth use their own state-issued identification to purchase alcohol and an undercover agent in plain clothes usually goes with them to observe, Simmons said. If the youth are denied service they leave and do not lie about their age. If they are served, an agent in uniform comes into the establishment to write the citation. The youth used are usually friends or relatives of the agents who volunteer.

Simmons said friends and relatives are used simply because they are easy for the officers to locate and recruit.

Blanca Espirada, manager of Winger’s Tooele, was surprised by her restaurant’s citation.

“I’ve been here four years and it [serving underage youth] has never been a problem,” Espirada said. “We train our employees to check ID’s and when it is busy we have two managers and a team leader on duty to help. The server said she looked at the ID and thought the date was good. She must have made a mistake. When they came in to write the citation, we checked the ID again and the person was not old enough.”

Some of the business owners targeted by the sting were upset with the state.

“These type of sting operations are a form of harassment,” said Robby Thompson, owner of Thompson’s Smokehouse.

Thompson said at the time of his business’ violation a veteran employee was on duty and very busy, and made a mistake after looking at the license.

“We don’t get underage kids in here trying to buy beer except when one of these sting operations comes around,” Thompson said.

Simmons said the bureau conducts these kind of campaigns along with local authorities on a quarterly basis throughout the state.

“We chose Tooele County in June just simply because we hadn’t been out there for a while,” Simmons said. “We had been down in southern Utah for a while. Servers and owners are trained on checking IDs that anybody who looks under 35 should be checked. There really isn’t any excuse for not checking an ID. On these type of operations, we should see zero citations.”

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com