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Using minors in liquor stings called effective measure
By Eileen McNamara - More Articles
Published on 01/20/2002
Melanie Wilson
Kristen M. Ejchorszt
Theresa Earl
Dana Jensen / The Day
Tom Fritz, night manager for Universal Discount Package Store in Norwich, uses a
$2,000 drivers license scanner to check IDs.
Norwich -- On the door of his West Main Street liquor store, Paul Agranovitch has
issued a stern warning on a neon orange sign to would-be underage drinkers.
“If you're under 21 you are not permitted in this store unless accompanied by a
parent,” the sign on the front door of the Universal Discount Package Store reads.
“Everyone in a group will be asked to show an ID.”
Twice the target of stings by local police, who used undercover, underage buyers,
Agranovitch is taking no chances. After he was caught in a sting for a second time in
September 2000, forced to pay a $750 fine and close h
is store for three days, Agranovitch spent $2,000 on a computerized scanner that
detects phony licenses. When he finds fakes, he alerts police and presses charges
against the violator.
“I take this extremely seriously,” Agranovitch said. “We don't want to sell to minors.
It's not like we look at 17-, 18- or 19-year-olds as a great market.”
That kind of compliance with state liquor laws is exactly what the Minors in Stings
program was meant to foster, said Norwalk police Lt. Thomas Cummings, the program's
creator.
Since the state passed a law in 1998 making it easier for local police to use minors
as undercover agents in liquor stings, dozens of police departments, including
Norwich, have developed sting programs using volunteers u
nder 21. Cummings began running undercover stings with minors in his town in 1990 and
conducts several every year. He credits Norwalk's program and others like it across
the state with keeping youngsters from drinking and
driving.
“The Minors in Stings program works; it saves lives,” Cummings said.
In Norwich, however, the initiative has ground to a halt amid lurid allegations that
Lt. James F. Daigle Jr. took nude and seminude digital pictures of three female
undercover volunteers after telling the teen- agers that
police protocol required the pictures. Police have placed Daigle, a 17-year veteran
of the force, on paid leave while it conducts an internal investigation. Police have
imposed a gag order on all officers, barring them f
rom discussing the allegations and Daigle, chairman of Norwich's Republican Town
Committee, has not yet publicly answered his accusers.
The state this past week froze a $45,000 federal grant it awarded Norwich last year to
conduct programs, such as the liquor store stings, that combat underage drinking.
Officials in the Office of Policy and Management sai
d that in light of the misconduct allegations, they want to make sure Norwich did not
misuse part of the funds.
While they view Norwich's situation as an aberration of the program, Connecticut
liquor control officials, other police departments and organizations that promote
anti-drinking initiatives among teen-agers worry that the
accusations against Daigle could cast a negative light on the use of minors in
undercover stings, a practice they believe is essential in keeping alcohol out of the
hands of underage drinkers.
“It's a very, very effective program,” said Joanne Morrison, spokeswoman for the
Governor's Prevention Partnership, which helps police departments develop programs to
fight underage drinking. Using minors as undercover ag
ents, she said, makes it easier for police to identify businesses that either
willingly sell to minors or don't bother to routinely check identification of
obviously young customers.
Once a store or restaurant owner is caught in a sting, Morrison said, it cuts in half
the chance that they will violate the law again.
“If this program were derailed because of these allegations, it would cost lives,”
said one law enforcement official.
Norwich is among 18 towns in Connecticut that last year received federal grant money
for underage drinking initiatives, including stings. Since 1999 Norwich has conducted
five stings; two in 1999, one in 2000 and two last
year. The department asked state liquor officials to participate only in the 2000
sting.
Norwich, according to state liquor control officials, is the only town in this region
that conducts the stings.
While the liquor control division assists local police departments in 80 percent of
all undercover stings that are conducted, it imposes no regulations on how the stings
are carried out. It also does not recruit minors or
tell departments how to use or recruit minors, though its agents will work on stings
that employ recruited volunteers.
Cummings said his town has adopted written guidelines on how to recruit and use minors
in stings to ensure the integrity of the program. The department uses a number of
organizations, such as Police Explorer groups, churc
hes and Students Against Drunk Driving chapters to recruit underage volunteers. The
department's rules also require that no single officer is ever alone with a volunteer.
“There are levels of supervision so there can never be any questions of the
individuals being left alone with anyone,” he said. “Nothing is left to chance, nor
should anything ever be left to chance.”
The state also distributes to police departments a guidebook, written by the
Connecticut Coalition to Stop Underage Drinking, that details how to recruit and use
minors in stings. Most departments in Connecticut, Delaney
said, have adopted the guidebook into their formal policies and procedures.
When asked for copies of the department's policies or procedures on the undercover
stings using minors, Deputy Chief Warren Mocek this week said the department has none.
Mocek instead provided copies of the state guideboo
k and other materials that liquor control officials give police departments that
contain recommendations on how to conduct stings. He said his department relies on the
guidebook and other materials for direction in conduc
ting stings.
“Any department that runs an enforcement program and doesn't have written, established
procedures is just crazy,” said one liquor control official who asked not to be
identified. “They are leaving themselves open for trou
ble.”
Basic rules
Cummings, who helped develop the guidebook, “Including Minors in Compliance Checks,”
said the first and overriding rule of any sting using underage operatives is to ensure
the safety of the minor. The guidebook emphasizes
that police should not recruit minors from their own town. Doing so could jeopardize
the volunteer's safety if storeowners or clerks recognize them. It also could
undermine the sting.
“Minors...should not be local to the area where the operation is going to take place,”
the guidebook says. “Obtaining a local minor could put the minor in an uncomfortable
position if they walk into a (store) and the empl
oyee ends up being someone he/she recognizes. This type of situation could also pose
safety considerations for the minor.”
“The guiding factor is you need to have a person who is completely unattached to the
target area,” Cummings said. “You don't want someone who...shop owners might know. You
are better off using someone from out of town.” O
ne concern, he said, is that a minor could be the target of retribution by a store
owner or clerk charged with selling alcohol to a minor in one of the stings.
In the last three stings it conducted with underage female operatives who were
recruited by Daigle and who now allege misconduct by him, Norwich ignored that rule.
One of the women, Melanie Wilson, lived in Norwich near t
he downtown. The parents of another, Kristen Ejchorszt, have owned a Dairy Queen for
12 years on West Main Street, less than a mile from Agranovitch's store. Ejchorszt
worked in her parents' fast-food restaurant. The thir
d woman, Theresa Earl, worked in a popular coffeehouse downtown for two years.
Each of the three women worked near Daigle. Wilson worked at the Americus Wharf
restaurant, just around the corner from the police station on Thames Street. Earl
worked at the former Liberty Tree Coffee House and Eatery o
n Market Street, next to a cigar shop Daigle used to co-own with another police
officer. The Ejchorszts' Dairy Queen is just up the road from the police station.
Daigle and other officers frequented all three restaurants,
the women have said.
None of the women knew each other, but all three had something else in common: Each
knew Daigle for years not only as a local officer, but also as a friend. That
relationship of familiarity and trust, all three have separ
ately alleged to police, is what convinced them to volunteer as undercover agents when
Daigle asked them. It also swayed them that he was telling the truth when he said that
he was required to take topless pictures of the
m to make sure they were not hiding false identification, the three women allege.
In all three instances, Daigle took the pictures just prior to the start of the sting
and warned his recruits that the operation could not take place if they did not
consent to the pictures, the women have alleged.
All three women were pressured to put aside their self-interest to carry out their
civic duty, their lawyers said.
“To then find out that there was no greater good that came of it is sad,” said Dado
Coric, the lawyer for Earl. “Someone lied to them and took a nude picture of them.
It's a significant betrayal of trust.”
Lawyers for all three women have filed notice with the city that they intend to sue
Daigle and the police department. Wilson and Earl additionally allege that Daigle took
a second set of nude photographs of them, weeks af
ter they participated in the liquor stings. Both allege that Daigle, in separate
incidents months apart, told them the pictures were needed for an undercover sting
into Internet child pornography that he was conducting.
Ejchorszt, who took part in a sting last November, was the first to come forward with
her allegations. She filed a complaint with police on Dec. 3. Sources said that when
Earl and Wilson read news stories about Ejchorszt
that said topless photos were not a requirement of the stings they
each contacted Daigle to question him about the photographs. Daigle
asked them not to tell his superiors about the pictures, sources
said.
Wilson has also alleged that Daigle and other officers drank beer
after the sting in which she participated in 2000, and that they gave
her beer as well.
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