The effort to curb underage drinking in Westbrook continues to strengthen on two fronts as increased police enforcement yields party busts and a community group works on a citywide strategy.
Westbrook Police Capt. Tom Roth said increased patrols that began in the summer have resulted in a number of high school parties being broken up and even kids moving to other towns to party.
Roth said police are hearing from teens that Westbrook is becoming an increasingly difficult town in which to party, and so they’ve had to move elsewhere, including Portland.
“I’m amazed at the number of house parties we’re hitting,” said Roth.
One of the Westbrook parties resulted in the suspension of at least 10 Westbrook High School athletes from activities.
These successes have come despite the fact that the police hotline set up several months ago for residents to report underage drinking has yielded no tips for police. In fact, Roth said, the line hasn’t received any calls that he’s aware of, although he admitted that police haven’t monitored the line at all hours of the day. He said they would be working on getting full-time monitoring. That number is 854-0644, extension 7.
A community group whose goal is to curb underage drinking is hoping that the hotline and a number of other activities will make Westbrook parents more aware of the city’s underage drinking problem and provide residents and even teens opportunities to prevent it.
At a meeting last Thursday of the Westbrook Community Prevention Coalition, Mark Gousse, Westbrook High School principal, suggested getting teens involved in the process more. He suggested making teens aware of the police hotline, as well as parents.
“This ought to be something we do with our kids and not to them,” said Gousse. “If the hotline is anonymous and safe, it would be good for kids to be able to report (underage drinking) if they can.”
The group’s strategy also includes public and parent education and working with stores that sell alcohol to stop sales to minors. It also includes establishing more weekend and after-school activities for kids.
The group is crafting a letter intended to go to stores in the area, asking them to implement the same prevention methods used by Shaw’s supermarket, which includes separation of liquor into its own section and locking the tops of bottles.
Roth said surveillance cameras have caught minors attempting to steal alcohol from stores, but it remains a problem. He said some kids have opened liquor bottles and mixed drinks into soda bottles while in the store, and then purchased the soda bottle with the alcohol in it.
Roth said teens have also run into convenient stores wearing hooded sweatshirts, grabbing alcohol and running out. “That happens on a weekly basis,” he said.
They also drive into Portland and pay homeless persons money to buy the alcohol for them, and get college kids to buy it, as well.
Beyond working to make it harder for teens to acquire alcohol, the group is hoping, through education, to change the way Westbrook kids today think about drinking. For some, that means a societal shift.
“This really isn’t a Westbrook issue, it’s a societal issue,” said Westbrook parent Tom Perrey, who added that it was a problem when he was in school.
The drinking culture among teens has become normalized, said Matt Nelson, Westbrook High vice principal. That normalization is very difficult for kids to overcome, given the peer pressures they feel anyway, said Nelson.
The group is hoping to educate everyone in the community about the extent of the problem, so that they’re more aware of it. According to a recent state survey, use of alcohol and marijuana among Westbrook teens is higher than the state average.
Westbrook parent Maggie Hurd said she thinks the issue should be discussed and put out in the community much more than it is already. She said she had a so-called scared-stiff program where she grew up and was given a tour of a prison. “It made me think twice,” she said.
According to the state survey, Westbrook ranks below the state average in teens participating in activities outside of school, so the group is planning to work on creating more possibilities.
The next meeting of the Westbrook Community Prevention Coalition will be held at the Westbrook Public Safety Building conference room at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19. Residents are encouraged to attend.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
