Cops train to stop SPAC parties

PHOTOGRAPHER: Bruce Squiers

At a mock party training exercise held Thursday at Saratoga Spa State Park, Officer Christina Holst checks on a youth pretending to be passed out from partying.

Local police can change the culture of underage drinking before rock concerts at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, a trainer told a group of officers Thursday.

If police expect teens will bring alcohol into Saratoga Spa State Park and get drunk, then they will, said Chief Eddie Edwards of the New Hampshire Liquor Enforcement Bureau.

“If you really want to change it, you have to change how you think about it,” Edwards said.

He contended police can change the decades-old culture that leads young people to expect to come to SPAC and get drunk before the concert.

“If you come to a concert, what’s the expectation?” Edwards asked the nearly 50 officers who attended the training.

“It’s a free-for-all,” said Sgt. Jack Sadousky of the state park police. He oversees operations on Live Nation concert nights.

Although the parking lots are posted as no alcohol allowed, that rule is often disobeyed, with booze visible to anyone walking by.

Alcohol also flows freely at state park picnic pavilions, where obviously underage young people gather before concerts.

Park police have cited the difficulty of patrolling the entire picnic areas and the woods where people can hide to down a few brews.

When they do come upon a drinking party, they order people to pour out the liquid onto the ground, sometimes writing tickets to underage drinkers but just as often giving them a warning because there are so many violators and too few officers to arrest them all.

But Edwards said there are other ways to keep kids from drinking in the park, such as broadcasting ahead of time that no alcohol is allowed in the park, perhaps on flashing road signs miles away from SPAC. Trash barrels at the entrances could be set up so people can dump their booze.

If a trained community volunteer or police officer notices alcohol visible in a car, the occupants could be banned from entering the park. Underage people with booze could be banned from the concert and their cars could be towed, he suggested.

“Our first goal is to prevent alcohol from coming into the park,” Edwards said. “You give them a chance to get rid of it before you can even see it.”

Edwards made the solutions sound easy to a problem that police have faced for decades, prompting Sadousky to say with frustration, “I wish you were here for Dave Matthews in a couple weeks.”

The Dave Matthews Band concerts, two sold-out nights in early June that draw 25,000 people each, are notorious for underage drinking, fighting and unruly crowds.

Police make numerous arrests those nights, and officers are sometimes injured in the pursuit of subjects.

Controlling problems at SPAC require cooperation between state park police, state park administration and Live Nation, the concert promoter.

Nearly 50 police officers and other officials attended the training, which was held all day at Saratoga Spa State Park.

State park police, state police, city police, Saratoga County sheriff deputies, Stillwater, South Glens Falls and Mechanicville police were among those represented.

The Prevention Council and the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services put on the training, which included a mock dispersal training of local teens pretending to be drinking at the state park.