6A | WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 2018 | SIUSLAW NEWS
RIDE ALONG from page 1A
“If the indicator turns green,
there’s no alcohol. If it turns an
amber, then it’s .07 or below. If
it turns red, then they have an
approximate .10 blood alcohol
content,” Bailey said. “Obvious-
ly, it’s not specific enough to tell
how much. It just shows traces
of alcohol.”
Just having the test was a good
deterrent for students entering
the prom. There had already
been rumors of a youth refusing
to come because they got word
of the test. Other officers were
checking the home address of
the youth.
Alcohol wasn’t the only thing
Bailey was looking for that night.
“Who knows what else we’ll
pick up,” he said. “Minor in
possession, alcohol, marijuana,
tobacco. Those types of things.
We’re also looking for furnish-
ings. How do juveniles get alco-
hol?”
Bailey set a close eye on the
celebrating high schoolers. For
the most part, he stayed by the
entrance, avoiding the pounding
musical bass of the dance floor.
Instead, he opted for a quieter
spot where he could seek out
suspicious behavior.
Bailey described what he
looked for when it comes to in-
toxication.
“There’s the smell of the alco-
holic beverage that emits when
someone has been drinking,”
he said. “You’ve got a stumble,
slurred speech, red eyes. Usually
people are pretty good at picking
out people who are intoxicated.
Surprisingly, the smell that emits
from someone is one of the big
indicators for me when I’m
looking for intoxicants.”
He pointed to the dance
room. “It’s easier to spot it out
here than it would be in there in
that chaos.”
If any of the youth had been
found intoxicated, Bailey would
assess the situation, possibly
handing out a Minor in Posses-
sion (MIP), which would re-
quire the youth to take diversion
classes through Youth Services,
a division of Lane County. Di-
version classes teach the dan-
gers of underage drinking, but
also gives its students hope. The
course helps youth expunge the
MIP from their record when
they turn 18.
If Bailey suspected a youth of
being intoxicated, he planned to
quietly pull them to the side.
“We’re not trying to make a
huge scene out of it,” he said. “I
would take them to the side, I
would check their eyes for hor-
izontal gaze. But I don’t want to
bother them. I’m here to do my
thing. They’re here to have fun,
you know? For the most part,
the students have been pretty
interactive with what we had so
far.”
The prom was considered
a success. The kids were safe,
they had a good time and there
was no intoxication from what
Bailey could see. But inside the
prom, which was monitored by a
large number of school officials
and volunteers, wasn’t the big
concern for the night.
That would be the house par-
ties that were planned afterward,
and Bailey had gotten a line on
two of them — one inside city
limits, one outside. Bailey’s job
for the evening was to check
these parties, and search the rest
of the region for any signs of un-
derage drinking.
‘The cops are out’
So how do the officials get
word of such parties?
“Students talking to other stu-
dents,” Bailey said. “The infor-
mation hotline, you know. The
majority of our tips are probably
not true, and we probably won’t
find anything.”
But trying is important. The
schools made sure that youth
knew the police would be out on
patrol that night.
“It’s proactive policing,” Bai-
ley explained. “It’s to make
people think twice. ‘Maybe we
shouldn’t, maybe I need to come
up with an alternate plan right
now, because the police are go-
ing to be out and I don’t want to
get in trouble.’ It will make peo-
ple think twice. If we stopped
something, then we did our job.”
Good choices are what Bailey
and the rest of the officers are
trying to instill. Catching youth
drinking before it becomes a
problem is key to that.
“This could be something
that would be a starting point
for somebody,” he said. “They
decide they really like alcohol.
But they don’t know themselves,
especially when they’re intoxi-
cated. They think they’re okay
to drive. That kid hops in a car,
drives somewhere, kills them-
selves or others. The aftermath
effects of that can be devastat-
ing.”
In a small community like the
Siuslaw region, which only has
Siuslaw and Mapleton school
districts, aftereffects from ac-
cidents can impact students for
years to come.
Many of the youth Bailey de-
scribed are only intermittent
drinkers, first-time offenders
or kids who occasionally drink
socially.
“For 99 percent of the time,
you’re dealing with the one per-
cent, those kids that are habitu-
al (drinkers). They drink all the
time, and we have numerous
MIPs on them. For the most
part, we have good youth here.
It’s the same thing with adults
— 99 percent of the time, we’re
dealing with the one percent.
You do have a sprinkling here
and there with new individ-
uals, but for the most part it’s
the same people over and over
again. That’s another reason it’s
important that we start putting
MIP citations in, because we get
them into the system as soon as
possible before they become
that one percent.”
As Bailey was explaining this,
he noticed a car with two prom
goers in it, seeming to head
toward the location of the par-
ty within the city limits. It ap-
peared the drivers knew Bailey
was following them, so he drove
in a different direction. Merry-
man followed in his own patrol
car.
Bailey reached the street the
house was on, pulled a switch,
and all the lights on the car
turned off. It allowed him to
slowly drive up toward the
house without anyone knowing
the car was running.
He and Merryman parked
and got out of their cars, walk-
ing up to house. All the lights
had been turned off. Then, the
car with the prom goers showed
up. It stopped just down the
street, looking at Bailey and
Merryman as they walked
around. The car took off.
“You know how many kids
right now got the mass text
of, ‘The cops are out?’” Bailey
asked. “We may have just done
our job right there.”
Whether or not the city
house was a good location for a
prom party, the house outside
city limits also seemed like a
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Bailey drove out of town and
worked his way up through
forested trees to a secluded
neighborhood. Like before, he
switched off the car’s lights and
silently drove up to the house.
Empty. Not a single light in
the window, not a car in the
driveway. Bailey wondered if
they had come too early.
But just as Bailey turned out
of the neighborhood and out
on the highway, it happened.
Three cars packed to the gills
with prom goers turned onto the
road. Bailey stopped his car for a
moment, as did the teenagers.
See RIDE ALONG page 7A
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Neighborhood garage sale
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Household, camping, boating
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