The Safety and Licensing Committee met 08/09/2023. One of the information items they received was a report on Alcohol Violation Convictions. There were two violation convictions, one for the Appleton Clark gas station and one for Sai Ram, each for dispensing alcohol to a minor. Each received 80 demerit points, which resulted in Appleton Clark gas station having a total of 160 points on their record and Sai Ram having a total of 80.
The discussion was brief but I have prepared a transcript for download.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) was concerned about the number of violations she was seeing recently. She had never seen so many violations in the past. As someone who had once worked in the alcohol service industry, she wondered if some of the violations were the result of staffing issues. She recognized the seriousness of the violations but also wondered if there was a way the city could address this ahead of time without compromising the safety of the city.
Police Chief Polly Olson thought the difficulty of business owners to find the right staff was a valid concern; however, the training required to sell alcohol had not changed over the years, and licensees had a responsibility to make sure their employees understood what was expected of them. She didn’t know if there was anything the city could do beyond what it already did.
She did note that the Police Department had started talking about being a little more sympathetic when it came to the presentation of fake IDs given that such IDs were increasingly available and were sometimes of such quality that they could make it past an ID scanner. “We will take that in consideration when it comes to writing out citations under those types of circumstances.”
The high quality of fake IDs was a huge concern to the Police Department, and they were communicating regularly with licensees to try to come up with some ways to address that.
Regardless of those concerns regarding fake IDs, the sting operations conducted by the Police Department involved people that were very clearly under the age of 21, and Police Chief Olson said, “I’m not sure what else we can do from a city standpoint, in terms of holding them accountable.”
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1103674&GUID=DD9AD8C6-1BBB-49A7-BDA1-F0391B34793C
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