Oracle Online

In the past, police officers responding to noisy party complaints would have just a few minutes at a party to ask kids to pour out their beers and leave before receiving a call for another party.

Now, with ZAP, an off-duty police officer is paid to patrol trouble areas. According to St. Paul Police Department Commander Tyrone Strickland, “there is always someone on duty.” There are a couple on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. “We drive around and sometimes warn first,” Strickland said.

These added forces do not just deal with the underage drinkers at parties, but also the alcohol providers, said Sheila Nesbitt, prevention specialist with Minnesota Public Health.

In Ramsey County, minors charged with illegal consumption are required to make a court appearance. This is a recent change. In the past, minor consumption offenders could write a check and no court appearance was required. Now on the third Thursday of every month, these tickets get taken care of in court, according to the St. Thomas Associate Dean of Students, Jim Sachs. He said people are actually never convicted but you sign a document that states the evidence was there to have been convicted. Technically, it does not go on your record.

What follows, according to Sachs, is a six-hour class, 24 hours of community service, and a take-home chemical dependency test. Then the person is assigned a probation officer for one year. If no infractions occur during this year, the probation is removed from the record. However, the minor is fined a total of $500 to cover court fees, other fines, and the costs of probation.

In addition, if a person is deemed a provider of alcohol to minors that person goes to community court, which according to Sachs is much stricter than the court the minor faces.

The police can come to a college campus to follow up a complaint, However, Nesbitt said, they usually defer to campus security services. “Legally they can; in practice they don’t,” said Nesbitt. “They generally work it out with the university.”

“I think the program is pretty well planned and coordinated,” said Director of Hamline’s Safety and Security Services Shirleen Hoffman. “We haven’t gotten many party house complaints at Security.”

ZAP is funded by grants from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, the St. Paul City Council, and a budget item at the St. Paul Police Department. The only college that has ever financially sponsored ZAP was St. Thomas during a small gap in funding between Public Safety and the City Council.

Hamline Safety and Security does, however, support ZAP with information on party houses. After responding to these calls, police inform safety and security with general information but give out no names or addresses, said Hoffman.

The list of party houses the police use “comes from the community,” Strickland said. “When we go to a house, we add it.”

According to Minnesota Join Together (MJT), a citizen’s network of public health advocates, the number of house party disturbances have decreased, but MJT fears that students may just be traveling further from campus areas to party, its website said. MJT said that it hopes the number of parties that do occur in immediate campus areas will lower in frequency and attendance, and be more responsible.

Despite what a lot of Hamline students believe, that ZAP does not go into affect until midnight-”It starts closer to 8:00 at night and goes to 3:00,” said Assistant Dean of Students for Hamline Patty Klein.

In addition to the ZAP officers, Klein says, St. Thomas also has off-duty police officers that patrol the areas surrounding their campus on Friday and Saturday nights. She thinks this might account for the incorrect impression people have that St. Thomas finances ZAP.

Klein said that unlike other years, this year ZAP officers are going around the area and informing possible party houses of the laws before they ever recieve a complaint on the house. She said the police are letting houses know how to have a party that is legal and that they are here if someone ever needs to call them. This is positive for students and the community, Klein said.

Klein said that in past years, “There used to be meetings with all the area schools, one ZAP officer, and others.” But not anymore. “I have not seen ZAP literature in years,” she said.

The program could be improved, said Strickland, with the help of student congresses spreading the word. Students aren’t aware of the program right away, “It usually takes about two to three years. We want to educate people. We want to avoid accidents.”

ZAP’s goal is to keep everybody safe said Strickland. “Sometimes we have to arrest them to keep them safe.”