Attorney J. Tom Morgan has advice for parents of students attending The University of Georgia: “I tell them your kid has a good chance of getting his mugshot taken.”
Morgan, the former district attorney of DeKalb County, has carved out a defense practice trying to get young people out of trouble. And Athens, Ga., home of the Bulldogs, sends plenty of business his way. He just got three more cases last week.
“All college kids do the same thing everywhere,” he said. “But the Georgia kids are the ones going off to jail.”
In fact, a study he did four years ago found that Athens-Clarke County had 50 percent more underage drinking arrests than Atlanta/Fulton County.
This is something to keep in mind as students return to classes at UGA. If you imbibe, then don’t jaywalk, carry an open container or act the fool on Broad Street. Those actions will put you in the pokey.
Partying at college is as old as higher learning itself. Georgia routinely ranks in the Top Ten in the Princeton Review’s list of party schools, most recently coming in eighth, which was much better than its football team.
But a university that prides itself on rising SATs is loath to be ranked on BACs. (Blood alcohol content, that is.)
And so the town of Athens grapples with a yin and a yang — it’s known for a cluster of bars and an eclectic music scene, but there’s also a need for a semblance of order. Put 27,000 undergrads in one place and tomfoolery follows. How to marshal all that youthful passion is the trick. Enter Athens’ and UGA’s police forces.
In the 1990s, cops arrested underage drinkers until parents complained. So, then they ticketed them. But in the mid 2000s they shifted and started locking them up again. And again. And again.
“Athens had a policy that every kid under 21 smelling of alcohol went to jail,” Morgan said.
By 2010, more than 1,000 underage drinkers a year were bailed out of Athens’ jail. That’s down to about 600 now. But that’s just those charged with underage drinking. There are plenty of other ways to get in trouble in Athens.
Athens-Clarke County Police Chief Jack Lumpkin, who has since retired, summed up his get-tough mindset a decade ago: The “policy that requires police officers to physically arrest underage consumers and possessors of alcohol is an order-maintenance tool employed to prevent crime, the fear of crime and disorder.”
I talked with Solicitor C. R. Chisholm, who has prosecuted such cases for 15 years. Authorities started getting more stern a decade ago, he said, because “the police department was finding that downtown was unmanageable. There were more fights, more property crime.”
Students got ticketed, were released and then returned that same night to complete their mission.
Besides, he said, most underage drinking arrests come with another charge like jaywalking or disorderly conduct.
Now, they have to find other antics if they want to toss underage drinkers in jail. Last year, the state law changed and those getting charged with underage drinking are to be ticketed, not arrested. So police now need an accompanying charge like jaywalking or having fake ID to make an arrest.
Edward Mortimer, a junior in computer science and until recently a tavern doorman, knows a couple of dozen students who have been arrested.
“It’s like a machine; a lot of people are under the impression that they’re out to make money,” he said. “Everyone hates it. No one feels they’re safer because of it. Everyone’s super-cautious of police.”
Steve J, a rising sophomore, had been drinking and was crossing Broad Street at the Arch to get a hamburger at Five Guys. Traffic was ebbing so he crossed. Next thing he knows, he’s in a paddy wagon “with a guy who looked like a frat bro and some girl who was crying.”
He was hit with four charges, costing him more than $2,500 so far, including lawyers’ fees, court costs, probation charges. There is also drug testing and community service. He had to tell his mom because packages from attorneys soliciting his business started arriving at the family home.
All this for an activity — drinking — that a generation ago was legal for kids his age.
“Drinking is a big part of socialization at UGA,” said Steve. “But I’m trying to do better stuff. I’m working out more, learning to cook, studying more.”
But he worries the arrest will kick him out of the running for a training program he is applying for.
“I don’t know if it will come through,” he said.
J. Tom Morgan said the constant arrests have given “The kids at UGA have an attitude of us against them. They see police as being there to harass them.”
And an arrest record threatens to follow you around. I have talked with businessmen who say UGA applicants with records are not uncommon.
“On job applications you are asked ‘Have you ever been arrested?’ You have to be honest. In other places they have only been cited. In Athens they get arrested.
“It’s a tough, competitive world. If a business has two equally qualified candidates, who are they going to hire?”
Perhaps not the Bulldog.
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