You are currently browsing the daily archive for February 12, 2010.
City police in Hanover, New Hampshire, home of Dartmouth College, have come up with plans to send undercover cops into campus parties. The plans have been shelved temporarily in response to campus opposition, but remain a possibility for the near future.
The department announced the initiative, designed to curb underage drinking, last week, but it met with overwhelming disapproval from Dartmouth administrators, faculty, students, and alumni.
The plan calls for teams of two people — an officer and an underage plant — to go to the parties. If the under-21 operative was served alcohol, the officer would arrest the person who served the drink and issue a summons to the house’s owner. Fines for homeowners could be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
In announcing that there would be no raids for the time being, police warned the college to conduct its own crackdown. If they didn’t see a significant drop in alcohol-related issues “in a fairly short time frame,” the chief of police said, the department would begin conducting undercover operations as originally planned.
