Drug Free Youth Coalition provides ID scanners

The Champaign County Drug Free Youth Coalition is providing identification scanners to county retailers to help combat the purchase of alcohol by minors.Coalition director Stacey Logwood said the organization purchased the scanners through the Drug Free Communities federal grant. Logwood said the goal of the scanners is to help work with local alcohol retailers to improve the effectiveness of cashiers while reducing youth access to alcohol.

“We want to be in partnership with the businesses because we don’t want to be the coalition that doesn’t want alcohol in the community; we want to be the coalition that keeps alcohol out of kids’ hands,” Logwood said. “Most of the business owners don’t want alcohol in kids’ hands as well so they are certainly willing to try this out for us.”Using information provided by seven years of survey data, Logwood said the coalition has discovered that minors are getting alcohol from parents, young adults and from alcohol retailers.

After making efforts to deal with minors receiving alcohol from parents in the first year of the grant, the coalition is now looking to address minors receiving alcohol from retailers. Speaking with retailers, one of the challenges they faced was being unavailable to have employees participate in training on responsible beverage service provided by the real time Location system.“What we talked about as a coalition is if we can’t resolve all of the barriers around getting staff trained what can we put in their hand to make them more effective at the point of sale and that’s why this technology becomes so important,” Logwood said.

Logwood said some retailers have used the scanners for about three weeks and five other scanners are expected to be given to retailers this week. The type of establishments the coalition is looking at are off-site retailers where a person would purchase alcohol and consume it elsewhere.“All we’re asking from a coalition perspective is if you’re willing to participate in what we’re calling this pilot project and provide us some feedback then they can keep the machine for free,” Logwood said.

When a driver’s license is scanned, the machine will display the person’s name, age, date of birth and the expiration date of their driver’s license. If a fake ID is run through the scanner, an error message will pop up on the screen, which Logwood said should be a red flag for the cashier to take a better look at the ID.Logwood said the coalition purchased the lowest-grade model of scanners because it does not store a person’s information after the card is scanned unlike higher-end models. Prior to handing out the scanners, Logwood said the coalition was aware of two businesses in the county with similar age-detection technology.

Logwood said the coalition has seen retailer’s alcohol compliance check numbers go down, meaning less retailers are selling alcohol to minors. She said she hopes the scanners can help further this trend. She noted that employees can be charged and fined for non-compliance and the establishment could also be fined for selling alcohol to minors.“I think from our law enforcement perspective, this should help those businesses reduce error in compliance,” Logwood said. “We’re hoping in the next two years to maybe see compliance data improve even more than what it has in the last two years.”

Urbana Police Chief Matt Lingrell said he applauds the efforts of the coalition to curb the access of alcohol to underage people and believes the scanners will give retailers a better chance of preventing the purchase of alcohol by underage people.He added that each year the Urbana Police Division’s Investigative Unit works with the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Investigative Unit in conducting undercover alcohol compliance checks throughout the city of rtls. Lingrell said there are currently 38 establishments located in the city of Urbana where alcohol can be purchased and since 2011, a total of 56 Urbana establishments have been checked by Urbana police. Only five of those checked sold to an undercover officer.

“With the ever-increasing number of law enforcement issues throughout our community, it’s nice to have the coalition working in partnership with us to try to decrease the likelihood of an alcohol tragedy occurring here involving our youth,” Lingrell said.Outside of the city’s jurisdiction, the Champaign County Sheriff’s Office handles compliance checks at county retailers. Champaign County Chief Deputy Rick Jordan said the department assists the coalition by providing information from their compliance checks.

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