The CASE for drinking responsibly

A new province-wide initiative aims to prevent problems in Ontario bars and clubs before they happen.

The Community Alcohol Safety and Enforcement (CASE) program was developed by Ontario’s chiefs of police. It’s focused on dealing with five major problems related to drinking in bars: allowing underage drinking; excessive drinking; overcrowding in bars; after-hours clubs; and, fights and other problem behaviours connected with drinking.

In a week-long blitz, police will be meeting with post-secondary institutions, as well as local bar owners, in an effort to educate them on exactly what their obligations are, as well as the penalties for not complying with the rules.

“What we’ve seen in Ontario over the last few years are some issues related to alcohol overconsumption,” said Frank Elsner, chief of police in Greater Sudbury.

“We (realized) we needed to get a better handle on it, especially as it relates to public safety.”

Speaking at a press conference Aug. 23 held in the police’s Brady Street boardroom, Elsner said drinking and driving has been a huge issue in Greater Sudbury, and is one of the few categories of crime where more charges are being laid. The CASE initiative works to educate people in the industry about exactly what their responsibilities are.

“It’s a two-pronged approach – enforcement, but even more important, is education,” he said. “So later on this month, we’re bringing together post-secondary institutions in our community for a one-day workshop with them to discuss what the expectations are, what the legislation is and what some of their liability is.”

A Crown attorney will be part of the session as well, Elsner added. A similar session is planned for Aug. 27, to which licensed establishments in Sudbury will be invited to discuss the same issues.

OPP Sgt. Steven Ross, of the Sudbury Regional Enforcement Unit of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission, said his unit is pleased to be part of CASE.

“We’ve embraced this partnership with the Sudbury Regional Police and the Crown attorney’s office,” he said Aug. 23.

“Our responsibility in CASE will be providing inspectors to work in partnership with the members of the Greater Sudbury Police Service to conduct seminars to ensure that licensed establishments have the information required to be compliant.

“We will also be doing rotating inspections at all liquor licensed establishments in the Sudbury area and look for violations that are the greatest risk to public safety.”

While enforcement is part of the initiative, Ross said that part of the initiative will come only after the education part is complete.

“We’re not trying to put anyone out of business,” he said. “We’re constantly working with licensed establishments to educate them rather than going out and fining them all the time. We’re trying to work with them to try and bring compliance to the forefront.”

However, he said for rules to be effective, they must be enforced, which means penalizing people who don’t comply.

“There are ongoing issues related to alcohol – increased in impaired driving, and the fatalities that come with that,” he said.

Once they have completed their sessions with bar owners and post-secondary institutions, Elsner said officers will begin with the enforcement aspect of CASE.

“Our officers, as well as Steve and his people, will go out into the community and start doing random checks of liquor licensed establishments,” he said. “We going to be looking for things we see as problems (and) we will be taking enforcement action.”

While there hasn’t been a specific incident that prompted the initiative, Elsner said there are ongoing issues in local bars that need to be dealt with.

“We’ve had issues with people drinking and driving – that’s a big one for us here in Sudbury,” he said. “We’re seeing overservice, we’re seeing minors being served, we’re seeing rowdiness and things of that nature … But to be fair, I don’t think it’s any different than any other community.”

Timing is also an important element of CASE, he said. Efforts are ramping up now as the city prepares for thousands of new and returning college and university students.

“We’re doing it now in the fall as all the students are going back to school,” Elsner said. “We’re going to do it again in the springtime when people are going back to the patios, boating and things of that nature. We’re trying to be strategic about this.”