Local city facing alarming trend of underage drinking and driving
»Play Video
SAMMAMISH, Wash. -- A disturbing trend in Sammamish is forcing police to take a hard-line stance against underage drinking and driving.
The goal isn't simply to keep kids safe, but to battle against three years of frightening statistics.
Those statistics show that 40 percent of all DUIs in the city come from drivers under the age of 21.
Dad Alan Saturay sees the headlines about teen DUIs in Sammamish and knows something has to be done. To him it starts with fellow parents making it more difficult for their kids to get their hands on booze.
"I think there's also a good number of them who have easy access," Saturay said
In response, Chief of Police Nathan Elledge is putting together a task force of parents, city leaders and police to uncover the issues that play into these problems.
He said there's more at play than just cops on every corner.
"We don't just come out and add additional enforcement," Elledge said.
It's important for parents to play a role, but the kids actually tell the chief the focus should start earlier.
"They're saying that education at the high school level may be too late and it may be a better idea to have drug and alcohol education earlier on in life," Elledge said.
So far, the task force has had two meetings and will have another next week. They want to create a targeted, specific plan and hopefully other cities will follow suit.
The goal isn't simply to keep kids safe, but to battle against three years of frightening statistics.
Those statistics show that 40 percent of all DUIs in the city come from drivers under the age of 21.
Dad Alan Saturay sees the headlines about teen DUIs in Sammamish and knows something has to be done. To him it starts with fellow parents making it more difficult for their kids to get their hands on booze.
"I think there's also a good number of them who have easy access," Saturay said
In response, Chief of Police Nathan Elledge is putting together a task force of parents, city leaders and police to uncover the issues that play into these problems.
He said there's more at play than just cops on every corner.
"We don't just come out and add additional enforcement," Elledge said.
It's important for parents to play a role, but the kids actually tell the chief the focus should start earlier.
"They're saying that education at the high school level may be too late and it may be a better idea to have drug and alcohol education earlier on in life," Elledge said.
So far, the task force has had two meetings and will have another next week. They want to create a targeted, specific plan and hopefully other cities will follow suit.
Parents now have option of Tantalus- home use keylock liquor lock. Â NEW to the market, this product can restrict access to liquor bottles in the home. Â Available on Amazon.com
Find out just where, and from whom these youth are acquiring the alcohol
and charge those that procure, or allow the youth to obtain their booze with
contributing to the delinquency of a minor. It has worked in the past and
could, if enforced, work in Sammamish.   It will only worked if the laws
are in fact enforced.
Easy, Let all of the underage drinkers get "super" drunk on night, then let them experience the throwing up, hangover and recovery.
Hey, KOMO, why don't you give us the dates of these "frightening statistics" so we know under whose watch this was happening.  I bet it was before the state lost all control of the sale of alcohol.Â
Drug and alcohol education earlier in life huh? Maybe they can do something like the DARE program, which after decades of study showed to be less effective than preventing use than no DARE at all.Â
Well, thanks to the Costco initiative and the utter stupidity of this state's voters, hard liquor is on open display in many grocery, drug and variety stores where it can be stolen by any determined shoplifter. This has NOTHING to do with any change in attitude, upbringing, discipline, school, etc. It is simply a matter of the much greater availability of the substance itself in a great many more places where underage would-be drinkers can get hold of it at a "discount" of five fingers!
People, YOU created this problem when you voted to dismantle an effective liquor control system that had worked well for nearly 80 years! You all predicted that the retail price of liquor would DROP while variety would be enhanced - also - but price has in fact INCREASED considerably while selection has narrowed to only a few most "popular" (or profitable) brands and revenue that supported liquor enforcement has decreased precipitously - thus placing additional burden on general tax revenue sources.Â
"We have met the enemy... AND HE IS US!!!"
@JLS1950 --- Good try."The goal isn't simply to keep kids safe, but to battle against three years of frightening statistics. Those statistics show that 40 percent of all DUIs in the city come from drivers under the age of 21." Unless we somehow have accurate statistics for the future (i.e. late 2012- 2014), one could reasonably conclude the years were 2009-2011 OR 2010-2012 (maybe even earlier, but certainly not later than 2012), which would put this issue under the State's watch; you know when they had a monopoly on the sale of alcohol in this state.
As for hard alcohol being more accesable to kids its not the big deal your making it. I grew up in a state where hard alcohol was sold at pretty much every small corner store. The underage drinking issue is no worse there than it was here before the took it out of the states hands.
It does have everything to do with "change in attitude, upbringing, discipline, school, etc. Mainly parenting. though.Â
When I traveled in Australia I remember hearing the suburbs with teens were more dangerous at night than city centers. The suburban angst just keeps on eating at certain places.Â
Rich kids and way to much time on there hands coupled with the sense of entitlement= Â to someone is going to die because of these spoiled rich kids
The kids say education has to start earlier than high school. Whatever happened to the drug/alcohol awareness programs that went on in every 5th grade? I don't think it should stop with one program, but should be repeated every year thru high school, adapted to the age group. However, that being said, parents have to step up and be responsible too. Unfortunately, the people who get involved with these programs usually care enough that their kids already are aware and not involved in drugs and alcohol. The parents who expect everyone else to do it for them will always have the problems.
it's all about consequences
Where are the kids getting the liquor?Probably at the local grocery, drug, and convenience stores.A large percentage of liquor is stolen by kids from these stores.Most of the parents of these kids probably havenât the first clue of what their kids are actually doing.
A thorough and lengthy investigation and follow-through should be made of all of the grocery stores and drug stores in the area. All of the stores' past records of losses of liquor should be examined. Appropriate pressure should then be enforced on the parent corporations of these stores to invest in adequate security measures to preclude kids from being able to steel and/or purchase the liquor.
In Lynnwood, kids pull into a cul-de-sac behind a large drug store, run down the path and go into the store, grab a case or two of beer, (hard liquor now that it is available) then run out the back door to their car, then zoom away.Although this has been going on for over three years, the national drug store corporation still does not have adequate security measures in the liquor section of the store.The whole act by the kids takes only a few minutes; they are gone before the police can get to the scene.Neighbors have reported the illegal activities over and over, but nothing has prevented them from doing this, over and over again.
It sounds as though the same thing is happening in other towns and cities, as well.
Sammamish just sounds like a drunken slurred word. Â "I'll take a ham sammamish and bub light puhleez".
@Sparky2112Â Nicey, nice sparky..... well done.
Let's get our highly paid school superintendent & the #stateofwa's missing governor in on this issue. Next door, in Issaquah, there's the teen suicide/bullying that's now out-of-control. Surely, the adults are not gettin' it. But are the parents in these communities rich & powerful enough to squelch any type of investigation? Sounds like the FBI & DOJ need to conduct a thorough, heart-to-heart investigating (ie., their jobs) to make sure this gets addressed before more innocent lives are wrecked or, worse, permanently lost... and where are the state leaders in all this, whining & dining on #ThePeople's tax dollars, waitin' for a sunny day while doin' nothing?
So. Funny. All I saw was the headline and I knew it was Sammamish. I believe I emailed the Chief of Police up there last summer regarding the teenager problems we have. It seems that most of the crime in Sammamish is done by bored teenagers. They tried a "Teen Center" that was a flop and the Skate Park is most popular in the summer. Even then, it gets kids out of the house committing property crime and underage drinking on the way. The city if considering hiring another police officer per shift which some people are opposed to. I would rather see more police wandering the streets even if just as a deterrent to the little crime we have now. Police presence is a great deterrent for kids!!
Drinking parents=Drinking children
No. Spoiled teenagers = drinking children. I live in Sammamish. The teenagers up there have less discipline from their parents. Apparently parents think that just because their kid does well in school, they won't get into any trouble. #Naive
@refinneJÂ I remember being spoiled once.... Youth.... I miss it so...
Maybe intelligent drinking laws would help as well? Preventing adults--and that is what anyone over the age of 18 is--from legal drinking encourages irresponsible drinking by driving it into the woods and remote houses.
naw, that is too simplistic.Â
Drunk drivers should be shot on sight. Problem solved. Next!
Toughen up the penalties for drinking and driving considerably. BUT at the same time, also try to make transportation easier for people that want to go at a bar and don't feel like spendint $50 on a cab ride everytime they grab a beer. The transportation system in the PNW is a joke.
Do both,and people will stop drinking and driving. Also, educating your children from a younger age might help too.
@Mihai CelRau I remember last year during the holidays there was a program in Pierce County where tow truck drivers would volunteer their time and come pick up a drunk and their car and take them home for free. Most people don't want to leave their vehicle and that's why the end up driving drunk.
This is what you get when there are a lack of real consequences at every level.
Have to agree locking up the liquor cabinet and hiding the car keys a little better might need to be on the agenda now..
The only two grocery stores in Sammamish get robbed for their alcohol. Locking up the liquor will only cause more theft at the stores. Perhaps we should teach teenagers a bit of responsibility.Â
Like others here have said. Laws regarding drinking (at any age) need to be tougher. Six months to one year in jail for the first offense. Change a death from drink related to second degree murder. There are several other laws on the books that need to be harsher to encourage those that drink to walk, get a ride, take a bus, or stay home if they want to drink themselves stupid. Parents, schools, and other influences need to be brought to bear to encourage kids to stay away from booze as well as drugs. To combat this problem it has to be a team effort to reduce the problem.Â
The laws for driving under the influence need to be toughened considerably. Imagine if a first time offense was a mandatory 1 year in jail..... I bet the number of people who do it would go down considerably. All we have to do is look at countries where DUI's are taken seriously, surprise surprise, they don't have all the problems we do!Â
Law enforcement officers detect and arrest only a small number of the DUI drivers out there on any given night. They only scratch the surface. The article did not give any real numbers, only a percentage, which can distort the picture. Officers generally work the areas they choose and stop vehicles based on their training and experience. This situation is more than likely due to the practices of the (few) officers who bring in the most DUI drivers. This is not to say that they are profiling younger people or targeting high school age kids. It can simply be the area of town they work, where they run radar and so on.  Also, drivers under the age of 21 can be arrested for a blood alcohol level of .02 or higher, a much lower level than drivers over 21.
"I would rather know where they are if they are going to drink" True to a point but wouldn't it be better to set the example that underage drinking is not a good thing in the first place? Too much money, a new car at 16, parents who want to be their kid's best friend as well as just not caring to be a parent all add up to disaster for the most part. Drive thru the parking lot of Skyline HS in Sammamaish and you will see those cars. Lexus, Mercedes, etc. or at least they used to be there, I haven't driven thru since we lived up there in a while. It amazing what these parents will do to buy their kids love I guess.Â
But this has nothing to do with the easy access to alcohol in Super Markets now, does it!
@DG Probably not. I would guess it has more to do with dad's liquor cabinet being unlocked.
Here's the looming question the media and law enforcement never ask: why do so many youth WANT to drink? Â Why do so many Americans WANT to do drugs? Â Identifying the problem is a great first step, but understanding the actual root of the problem is something that not one person in the media seems to want to look into. Â
Back in the day, the reason we wanted to drink? Because we could. My parents had no desire to play the part of being a parent, so if I could get away with it, I did. If you have kids, be in their life, start young not just when they get into trouble.
Sammamish? Big surprise. Stuck-up high school kids (and parents, for that matter), all thinking that they're above the law. I'm not surprised in the slightest.
@John Hahaha...at some point every community in Washington has had that "above the law" moniker thrown at them. Who will it be tomorrow?
I remember when almost all the teens out in a car during the weekend was DUI! Nothing has changed and I fail to see the big shock here unless you have had your head in a toilet bowl.
Having to tell parents not to give their kids booze just baffles me............
@Beau's Mom  Being a biological parent, and being able to parent are not the same. Poor parenting is too much of a norm nowadays.
@komoispropaganda @Beau's Mom Sad, but very very true. I feel lucky that my parents actually cared about as a kid, and are reasonable. That should be the norm, not the exception, but all too often i see ones that either don't pay attention, or that don't know the difference between discipline, and complete repression.
So true.