Subsidized late-night taxi and shuttle services would probably be more effective, but that’s Great Debate territory.
Another problem is that in a lot of the USA pedestrians are magnets for police, and if they have even a hint of alcohol on their breath they get hauled in on a public intox charge. The harsh laws and strict enforcement along with cultural support for them probably encourage drunken driving.
INAL or LEO but I believe entrapment has to be more than just creating an opportunity to commit a crime, it has to involve enticement to commit a crime. The person must be led to commit a crime that he would not commit under ordinary circumstances. That is, suppose the LEO sends a cooperating underage customer into a bar to try to buy beer. That is not entrapment. It is basically simulating a situation that probably happens every day, just allowing LEO to observe a controlled situation. Now suppose the underage customer shows the bartender a $20 bill and says, “There’s a nice tip in this for you if my beer is nice and cold.” That could possibly be considered entrapment. The bartender would not knowingly serve an underage person just to make the sale, but the bribe provides additional incentive that raises the bar.
Undercover police arrest people in drug and prostitution stings, and are very aware of where the line is and not to cross it.
Correct. It must be more than simply creating an opportunity. Prostitution stings, for example, have an undercover female cop in skimpy clothes standing on the street corner and nothing more. When a “customer” approaches, they are careful to ensure that he is the one that makes the offer of money for sex. Likewise, in reverse, when the sting involves a male undercover approaching a prostitute, they are careful to ensure that she says the magic words offering sex for money.
This is important because the government isn’t going out of their way to affirmatively entice a citizen to break the law; they are simply presenting an opportunity.
In alcohol stings, a government agent is inviting a minimum wage store clerk to break the law. The 20 year old agent goes to the beer cooler, picks up a six pack, walks to the counter with money and implicitly says to the poor guy: break the law and sell me this beer.
Unlike with prostitution or drug stings, the clerk doesn’t immediately know that he is being invited to break the law. Drug and prostitution sales are always illegal, but beer sales are generally legal. If he sells to the agent, he broke the law. But he only broke the law because the agent invited him to break the law. But for the agent’s affirmative solicitation to break the law, he wouldn’t have. To me, that’s textbook entrapment.
But it isn’t. And AFAIK it’s never been ruled entrapment wholesale by the courts. (I’m sure there may have been individual cases that have). For example, when I said we used decoys that looked over 21, we only did that in certain cases. Businesses that went years without a violations and then got one usually weren’t cited but warned.
Places that never ever got tagged we’d like to really push the test and see how good they were. A lot of the places around here (like the Pick n Saves) that say they card EVERYBODY? Well, they really do, and they check the ages on the ID’s.
I knew of 2 guys that I wouldn’t use. One was 19 and had been going bald since he was 15. The other was 20, had a full head of hair that was half grey. No way in hell I’d get away using them. They both looked like they were at least 35.
But understand, during these stings the investigator is also in the establishment observing the transactions. Either sitting down at the bar or in the store acting like a customer. Doing it this way makes the investigator the witnesses and accuser and not the decoy. Usually we’d come back about 4 hours later and issue the cite. The seller has no recollection who it was he/she sold to, and because of the way it’s set up the decoy doesn’t testify in court if it goes that far. So it’s hard for the defendant to say the person they sold to looked over 21. Most of these cases end up with citations not arrests.
Also, we only did these stings about twice a year in bursts. Maybe hit 20-30 business over 2 weeks and not do it again for 6 months. Then we’d only rehit the places that got tagged the last time. Places that got tested and passed would eventually get a letter saying they got tested and congratulating them on passing.
Encouragement or solicitation of the commission of a crime by one who is willing and predisposed to commit the crime does not constitute entrapment.
So if an undercover officer walks up to a female who seems to be a prostitute and says “Will you give me a blow job for $50?” and she agrees, that is not entrapment? I think you would agree that it is.
What is the functional difference between that question and an underage government agent asking a clerk if he will sell him a 6 pack of beer for $5.23?
But it’s not worded like that. There was an episode of COPS years back (don’t recall the jurisdiction) where the bait officer was walking around store and gas station parking lots up to men say “Hey, you wanna fuck me?” And every guy that said something to the tune of “yes, how much” got pinched. At no time did the bait officer state they could fuck her for money, it was them that crossed the line into solicitation. Not entrapment.
The entrapment was because, IIRC correctly, she was rather hot. 
When it comes to alcohol sales, the law and the courts have determined it is the burden of proof upon the seller to know if the buyer is over the legal age. Testing that is not entrapment.
How do you determine a priori who is willing and predisposed to commit a crime?
They also have much better public transit systems, so people do less driving.
I’ve been all over Europe several times. I also married into a family of Immigrants.
My observation is while Europeans tend to drink more overall, their drinking is more staggered. An American may come home from work and drink a 6 pack within 2 hours or less. While my Italian in-laws drink 8 beers it’s spread throughout the entire day. 8 beers over 10 hours is not going to have the same effect as 6 over 2 hours.
I just didn’t see the binge drinking as we do here. A Frenchman may drink a few glasses of wine every day while an American won’t drink all week and then will drink an entire case over the weekend. Tell me which is more healthy.
Here in New Mexico the police also send in underage people to attempt to buy alcohol. What I don’t understand though is how they can do this under this part of NM law:
C. It is a violation of the Liquor Control Act for a minor to buy, attempt to buy, receive, possess or permit the minor’s self to be served with alcoholic beverages.*
So yes, selling to a minor is illegal, but it is also illegal for a minor to attempt to buy in the first place. Seems like the police are breaking the law, or at least their decoy is.
Dunno. Without pouring over all of New Mexico statutes there could be another section of NM law that allows for it, or a non-enforcement easement from the county DA or AG office.
If there wasn’t something that allowed it I’d think a lawyer would have already brought that up as a defense. I notice that some of the violations are a felony. That’s freaking ridiculous! A felony for selling a beer to a 20 year old? :eek:
A friend of mine fell for this. She was a pharmacist assistant who was sent up to the front to cover while somebody went to lunch. (The pharmacy only rang up pharmacy purchases, and it was well lighted.) Store policy was that the front register couldn’t be unmanned.
So she got someone who wanted cigarettes and she had her doubts about the age. So she asked for ID and the kid whipped it out. She looked at it, and in the lighting couldn’t actually see the date clearly, so she figured what the heck, **if he wasn’t old enough he would have left, not shown ID. **So she sold him the cigarettes.
This is pretty much what any normal person would figure, I think.
ETA: Nowadays the underage IDs have it in big letters, or at least my son’s does. I don’t know when they started doing it but it has what looks like a stamp saying UNDER 18.
It is illegal to possess, buy and sell drugs, but cops do it all the time. They also use confidential informants who engage in any number of illegal activities on behalf of the police department as part of an official investigation. It is illegal to buy, possess or sell unregistered machine guns, but cops do stuff like that all the time. A simple alcohol sting is nothing.
part of the job of selling alcohol (or cigarettes) is that there will be those who are underage but trying to buy - and the clerk/server must check these. Therefore, the action would not be entrapment, it would be what a normal worker would encounter and is obliged by law to watch for.
Entrapment would be something like going up to an ordinary guy leaving the liquor store and saying “I’ll buy that bottle off you for $50”. He’s not looking to sell, and you are offering an excessive enticement to do something he would not normally do. It’s only NOT entrapment if the FBI tries to sell weapons to weak-minded Moslems, apparently.
I find it hard to believe the court could convict someone for selling to a minor without the appearance of the minor in court, unless the guy pleads guilty anyway.
An old friend of mine from Switzerland once remarked about the difference between Europe and America. Here we seem to take alcoholism and public drunkenness as a joke - think WC Fields, John Belushi, any number of teen hijinks movies, Dean Martin… He said that over there, people drink with their parents, they have wine at meals on special occasions, and so turning 18 and being allowed in the bar is not a major rite of passage. It’s not a time to simply get wasted and act stupid. Similarly, they generally view public drunks as pathetic, not amusing - much as if someone couldn’t contain themselves and peed their pants or shit themselves. Watch the movie a few years ago about Edith Piaf (“La Vie En Rose”?). Her drinking is shown as sad; she may think she’s having a good time, but few people around her are laughing or amused.
(Although, as someone remarked, with the pervasiveness of modern Hollywood culture, the younger European generation’s attitude is changing…)
This is not actually true: Europeans generally drink more than Americans.
They seem to have fewer issues with drunk driving and overdose deaths, but that’s separate from whether they enjoy drinking large quantities and getting drunk, they absolutely do.
As I’ve made clear, I think having a national drinking age of 21 is asinine and absurd, but I don’t think lowering the drinking age or encouraging teens to drink at dinner would suppress people getting drunk when they turn 21 or 18, as the case might be.
I wasn’t suggesting they drink less. They just don’t see drunken flailing and clowning as funny. (At least, that’s what a few of my European friends suggested). American culture seems to find it incredibly funny to get drunk and lose all control, to wake up with no memory and find the house trashed, to have the car hung up on the fire hydrant across the street, etc. College hijinks. Europeans may drink, even to excess and bleary fogginess, but they don’t find the loss of control and antics funny.
Plus, they drink more because drinking alcohol - provided it’s in moderation - happens more frequently. Our French teacher mentioned the old saying that “a meal without wine was like a day without sunshine”. Even the older children were ok to have a sip of wine with the meal - but it wasn’t a drunkfest, it was just a good drink where Americans might have milk or soft drinks.
100 legal baloney.
Feds have no authority in liquor establishments to enforce sales unless it included some type of illegal transportation, failure to get a tax stamp, or illegal distribution, etc. IOW, there must be a federal element. The 21st AM’s case law gives states SOLE power of regulation of Sales, except as noted.
An employer scare tactic no doubt.
Broad sweeping commentary on Europeans, as we often see on this board. Europe consists of a large number of countries and cultures which differ in this, as with other things. The Italians think sitting in a bar all night drinking without food for the sole purpose of getting drunk to be a weird habit, for the Brits and the Irish it’s The National Pastime.
Clearly there is an issue with drink driving in the US, which I put down to your car culture – poor public transport, bars not in walking distance. In contrast, if I go out for the evening (this in the UK), nothing is so far away that I can’t easily get a bus, or a taxi, or walk safely home at night. As a consequence, drink driving is relatively rarer and strongly frowned upon.