A New Approach to Drinking Problems?

A little more than 10 years ago, Green Bay police grew tired of responding to calls involving the same drunks getting in fights, passing out in the street, and causing disturbances on Broadway Street.

Officers were dealing with prostitution, drug dealing, and general drunkenness on a daily basis in the neighborhood on Green Bay’s west side back in 1996. They were having little luck trying to clean up the neighborhood using traditional enforcement methods.

Lt. John Laux, a Green Bay community police officer, explained what they faced, and how they eventually cleaned the street up.

“We had people drunk and laying in an alley, getting in fights in bars,” he said. “We were basically babysitting them, and with this we were basically asking the community to help.”

Their solution wasn’t to start locking more people up or enhancing penalties or raising fines. Instead, they found a little-known ordinance in Wisconsin state statute to exploit that put responsibility back on the people and businesses entrusted to sell alcohol.

A “no-serve, no-sell” list was established. Persons who were consistent problems for police were put on the list, which was distributed to establishments that sold alcohol with the request they not serve or sell to them anymore.

Laux said the list isn’t random or arbitrary, and isn’t meant to punish people for getting involved in a single alcohol-related incident. Rather, the people on the list are those who’ve been involved in 20 – 30 incidents over a short period of time where alcohol is definitely a factor.

“These were people we were getting repeat police calls on, like two to three times per week,” Laux said.

Green Bay’s list is established based on recommendations from officers that get reviewed by Laux and Captain Bill Galvin. Laux said there isn’t a set criterion established to add names to the list, and it costs very little to implement. The department sends community service interns out with the list to distribute to establishments for posting.

“It began as voluntary, but since then the state statute was changed so that we can require that people not serve habitual drunkards on the list,” Laux said.

Those caught serving alcohol to habitual drunkards face a fine of $361. In the beginning, Laux said a number of fines were issued, but word spread and people and establishments started to take the list seriously.

The success of the habitual drunkard list in helping to clean up Broadway Street raises the question of whether it could be used to help reduce repeat drunk driving.

Drunk driving has climbed the list of legislative priorities in Wisconsin in the last year, with several new laws proposed in the latest legislative session in Madison. Wisconsin has the highest rate of drunken driving in the nation, with more than 26 percent of adults admitting they have driven under the influence in the past year. In 2008, Wisconsin tallied 42,000 convictions for drunk driving, 234 deaths, and 4,000 injuries from alcohol-related accidents.

Green Bay’s habitual drunkard list could be used as a model for handling repeat drunk driving offenders by distributing a list of repeat DUI offenders to bars and liquor stores to inform them of residents who have not been able to drink responsibly. The establishment and its employees could then decide whether they felt it was worth the risk of serving someone with multiple citations for drunken driving.

The list would give a backup to bartenders and retailers who would otherwise find it difficult to say no to a neighbor or regular customer, or at least inform them when a customer has demonstrated a consistent lack of responsibility. The list would require no new legislation, just the use of laws already on the books.

Surprisingly, Green Bay’s approach didn’t garner much attention until an article appeared in the Green Bay Press-Gazette this spring.

Door County Sheriff Terry Vogel and District Attorney Ray Pelrine said they were unaware of the tactic, and Assemblyman Garey Bies (R-Sister Bay) said he thought such a list would fall under the category of blacklisting.

Pelrine says he’s uncomfortable with the government getting involved in what he termed “public shaming,” and said it’s not quite the same as the publishing of information about convicted sex offenders.

“I have never done or heard of any agency that does this,” Pelrine said. “The sex offender review processes are under the authority of a specific ordinance. If it were something black and white like that, I’d be more comfortable with it.”

Vogel had similar reservations.

“I don’t like third and fourth time offenders drinking at bars either, but we still have civil rights,” he said. “For law enforcement to pick and choose who can go where is very different than the sex offender list.”

Vogel said he’s pleased with the progress his department has made trying to reduce drunk driving, and said a “soft approach” has helped open lines of communication with sellers.

“We’ve definitely made ourselves more visible inside of the bars, talking to bartenders,” Vogel said. “We’re seeing more vehicles and more cars left overnight at bars. And the bars and tavern league have done a good job of educating people. Society in general is slowly changing.”

Laux said using a list like the habitual drunkards list to combat drunk driving does raise issues.

“What if it has been 10 years since someone’s last offense, do they remain on the list?” he asked. In Green Bay names can be removed from the habitual drunkards list if the person is clean for a year.

Laux said there have been no legal challenges to the habitual drunkards list, and pointed out that it does not divulge information not otherwise available about a person.

“A person’s criminal record is open,” Laux said. “It comes down to whether or not a department wants to put in the time to distribute the list.”

In a state with the biggest drunk driving problem in the nation, such an effort might be worth a look.