As a teenager growing up in the suburbs of San Jose, I fully understand the importance of that right of passage known as the “beer run.” I have experienced the thrill of hanging out with that one older-looking kid who could actually grow a beard and had promised that he could buy everyone beer. Fake ID cards could only get you so far, and they were completely useless if the person using them looked like he was twelve and sounded like he had been huffing helium right before he walked into the liquor store.
Parties thrived or died on the strength of the “beer run guy.” Everybody wanted to be his friend simply because of what he could deliver that nobody else could, and everyone wanted to go to the store with him just for the bragging rights, the shared glory, and the ability to say,
“Yeah, I was with Mike when he bought the beer. He even got some condoms while we were there.”
It’s fun. It’s exciting. And it’s also as illegal as hell.
So, when I got hired as a police officer, and it suddenly became my job to catch the “beer run guy,” I admit that I performed my duties with a mixture of professional pride and great ennui. I was happy to keep alcohol away from the underaged kids, but I also realized that I was now that narc responsible for trashing truly epic parties.
The beerus interruptus event in my career that stands out most in my mind, happened at about six o’clock in the evening on a Friday night. I believe the party I destroyed was going to truly be one to remember. I suppose it still was, just not for the reasons the kids had hoped.
I was cruising along a residential street and happened to notice a windowless van driving at five miles per hour below the speed limit in front of me. The van reached a stop sign controlled intersection and came to a complete stop, pausing almost a full ten seconds before proceeding through the intersection. If you know anything about law enforcement – or teenagers – then you understand that such pristine driving habits are highly suspicious.
Someone desperately did not want to get pulled over.
Unfortunately for the driver of this van, despite their careful maneuvering of the vehicle, there was nothing they could do about the burned-out brake light they had neglected to fix. I activated my emergency lights and pulled the vehicle over to have a peek at what they didn’t want me to see.
I contacted the driver who immediately handed me his driver’s license. The license showed that he was eighteen years old. I could see a passenger in the seat beside the driver and I could hear other people moving around in the rear of the van. As I looked inside, I also noticed a case of beer sitting on the floorboards of the van between the driver and his passenger.
With an underaged driver and visible alcohol, I asked the driver to open up the side of his van. For my safety, I wanted to know how many people were back there and if I should call for additional officers to assist me while I dealt with the alcohol violation.
With the van open, I found four other teenagers, and several more cases of beer stacked throughout the van from floor to ceiling. There was more booze in the vehicle than you would find in most Budweiser delivery trucks. There was a party about to happen somewhere, I could tell.
The startled group of wide-eyed high school students were all trying to smile and act casual, as if six kids delivering three tons of beer was a normal everyday occurrence. I smiled back. Then I asked,
“Is anyone in the car twenty-one years old? And before you answer, let me assure you that I will be checking your ID. If it’s fake, someone is going to jail.”
Nobody moved. I think they were too scared to even blink when I mentioned jail.
“No one?” I asked. “Okay, let’s try another question. Whose beer is this?”
Again, there was no response. Only the sound of the van’s suspension complaining about all the weight it was carrying broke the silence.
“Well, if the beer doesn’t belong to any of you guys, I guess I can’t write anyone a ticket for underage possession of alcohol. I also can’t let a bunch of minors drive away with all that booze. That wouldn’t be safe.”
The kids started looking at each other, the expressions on their faces a mixture of relief that they weren’t in trouble and panic that I was going to take their beer.
“I think the best solution here is to dump out all of this alcohol before you drive away. Any objections?”
One kid raised his hand. “Um, sir? You’re going to dump out all our… I mean, all the beer?”
“No, son,” I told him. “All of you are going to pull the beer out of the van and dump it yourselves. And when you’re done, you’re going to put all the empty cans back in the van and take them with you when you leave. I would hate to have to write a ticket for littering.”
The kids filed out of the van like prisoners marching their last mile to the gallows. They pulled the cases out of the van one at a time, removed beer cans, and started popping them open. For the next half an hour, I watched as six kids poured beer into the gutter and threw the empty cans back into the van. It looked like a bunch of miniature abolitionists from the 1930’s making a public demonstration about the evils of the demon alcohol.
Periodically, cars would drive by and drivers would honk their horn or laugh out the window at the display. Everyone that passed by knew exactly what was happening the moment they saw the police car and the beer getting dumped.
The kids muttered amongst themselves the entire time.
“Are we going to have to give everybody their money back?”
“We spent it all.”
“What do we tell the others?”
“They’re going to kill us.”
Wherever the party was, when the “beer run guys” got back they apparently were not killed. At least, I am not aware of any homicide victims discovered in the city the following day, so I assume they were fine. They probably did have quite a bit of explaining to do, however, as to why they had no beer but had still spent everyone’s money.
On the plus side, they now had a story they could tell all their friends, about a mean cop that made a bunch of kids dump hundreds of dollars worth of beer into the sewer.
A story much like this one.
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Love it. My Dad was the Cheif Deputy in the county we lived in. Driving me home from practice after school one evening he pulled over a car load of kids. I pretty much laid down in the seat with embarrassment. He made the kids follow him back to the courthouse
They slowed down. “See that? They are dumping all the booze. I’m giving them a break.” I never forgot that.
I love hearing stories like that. These kind of things happened all the time. Most of the time, when we give someone a break, they don’t realize it. They just think they “got lucky” and the cop didn’t see it. We saw it.
That’s a great story, Gary. I was forever the youngest most naive one in my group of friends who I heard talk about such parties. I was somehow never invited. Probably just as well.