Savannah police see multiple underage drinking violations St. Patrick’s Day weekend

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Of the things the Savannah Police Department is watching out for this St. Patrick’s Day weekend safe alcohol consumption and compliance with alcohol laws are two big ones.

Saturday evening, the department’s Alcoholic Beverage Compliance Unit gave an update about what they’ve seen so far this weekend and what they’re watching out for tonight.

The Savannah Police Department says that of the 18 businesses the Alcoholic Beverage Compliance Unit checked up on Friday night, half of them were breaking the law.

Sergeant William Barnett with the ABC Unit says they’re mainly focused on preventing underage drinking, with a particular focus on servers giving drinks to people who are underage.

Friday night the unit saw that in nine different businesses though they didn’t say which ones.

”The servers will get cited, and they’ll have to go to court. Then we’ll have meetings with administrative meetings with the businesses, and basically work with them to see them try to make improvements, so it doesn’t happen going forward in the future,” Sgt. William Barnett said.

Barnett says that in some cases the underage drinkers might face a court date, as well.

Most bars this weekend have bouncers checking IDs in an attempt to prevent minors from ever getting close to alcohol, to begin with.

A bouncer I spoke to says- that’s been a serious challenge this weekend.

“It’s actually been pretty scary, because yesterday, we had an incident where somebody attempted to join in from the back door, the exit. Then today, not too long ago, three groups of people tried to just rush in, bum rush,” Edwin Marcos said.

Marcos says in those situations he’ll kick those people out- and if he spots a fake ID, he’ll take it as well as put the person’s name on a list.

If someone underage makes it in the door, though, they might just run into one of the four members from the ABC Unit.

”I can’t go into too much detail, but we’ll say it’s an undercover operation. As we go into it, really, it’s a process for us. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, there’s a lot of businesses here, so we just try to be thorough, and like I said before, we’re fair and impartial as we approach this and we go and meet with businesses.”

We are expecting a more complete look at the arrests made and citations issued this St. Patrick’s Day weekend from the Savannah Police Department on Monday.

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