STAYING SAFE: The Rotary Club of Bixby presented a check for $500 to officer Eric Smoot of the Bixby police and several Bixby students to support the schools “Safe Team.??? Program.
DAVID JONES for GTR Newspapers
Bixby teenagers are trying to make their community a better place by playing it safe.
A team of city officials, school personnel, police officers and students have formed the Safe Team, a unit that started out to fight teen suicides and since has branched out to include other problem areas including teen drinking.
Indeed the reach of the Safe Team is such that it has just gotten its own city ordinance passed. Bixby City Ordinance No. 989 decrees that it is illegal to bring teenagers into an individual’s home and serve them alcoholic beverages, described as “alcohol, spirits, liquor, wine, beer and every liquid or solid containing alcohol, spirits, wine or beer, and which contains one-half of one percent or more of alcohol by volume.”
This does not mean, says Bixby Police Chief Ike Shirley, that if parents invite their teenage married daughter and her husband over for dinner that they can’t serve wine with the meal.
“But,” warns Shirley, “if they get intoxicated and have an accident on the way home, the parents can be held responsible.”
The Bixby ordinance actually sprang from a group called 2 Much 2 Lose, which has statewide chapters in high schools and strives to combat teen drinking. Officer Erik Smoot of the Bixby Police is one of two School Resource Officers assigned to Bixby High School and says that over the years the SROs have built up an atmosphere of trust with Bixby teens.
“We have had students go undercover for us,” he says, “and the kids love doing that. We send them into commercial establishments to try to buy alcoholic beverages although they’re under age. We have even had them staked out in liquor store parking lots asking customers of legal age going into the store to purchase some alcohol for them. They’ve been very effective and have taught their techniques to police departments in Sapulpa, Henryetta and Okmulgee who don’t have such programs.”
The willingness of teenagers to participate in such sting operations comes, says Smoot, from some very real problems they see in their lives.
“Over the last few years,” says Shirley, “students have told me of the problems they encounter when parents host a party and allow teenagers to drink in their home. I guess some of the parents think they are keeping a lid on the drinking by monitoring it, but some of the teenagers have more than they can handle and then become a menace on the road.”
The origin of the Bixby ordinance, says Smoot, came from a summer retreat of 2 Much 2 Lose in Tahlequah. “There were about 100 teens there from all over the state and we had a sort of think tank to discuss problems facing teens. A group from Edmond told about an anti-drinking ordinance they had gotten passed and our group took it from there.”
Shirley says the ordinance does its best to be fair. If the parents, for example, are gone for the evening and some teenagers bring their friends over, the parents obviously can not be held responsible for any drinking that goes on. It is designed specifically for those instances where it is the parents who are dispensing the alcoholic beverage to underage drinkers or who are present and turning a blind eye to teen drinking.
For more information on the Safe Team program, visit www.safeteam.org.
