A second chance
MONDAY, JULY 29, 2013
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A safe ride home Bar patrons often opt to take a taxi rather than drive home. And some bars offer taxi vouchers to customers. (TOM STROMME/ Tribune)
This is the second in a four-part series “Alcohol in Our Culture.” Today’s stories focus on taxi service to bars and how servers at bars are trained. On Tuesday, the series will look at schools and colleges dealing with problems related to alcohol. Wednesday wraps up the series by examining other programs that deal with the problem.
Alcohol servers on the front line By LEANN ECKROTH Bismarck Tribune
Bar patrons calling cabs rather than risking DUI By JESSICA HOLDMAN Bismarck Tribune
T
he voice of Dobie Gray drifts from the cab radio: “Give me the beat boys and free my soul ...” as Clinton Wald makes his way to pick up another fare on Cottonwood Loop. “All house numbers should be lit up,” he said as he searched for the address. After circling around the block, he finds it. But it doesn’t look like anyone is home. These are the power hours for weekend cab drivers and he wants to keep moving. “This is the worst part,” he said. “I don’t like waiting. If I’m not moving, I’m not making money.” Wald usually waits five minutes at a stop. The dispatcher makes a call to the number then Wald makes one last-ditch effort by ringing the doorbell. No one answers; it’s time to move on. He gets the next address from the dispatcher — East Indiana Avenue. “That’s the business though,” he said. “You can have a night where everything goes smoothly and you’re getting one fare after the next. Then you run into those nights when you’re sitting there chasing tail.” Wald has been driving cabs parttime for Taxi 9000 since last October. On a busy night, he’ll put on 200 miles. Usually it’s closer to 150. “People are taking cabs more now than they did before,” said Gary Schumacher, owner of Taxi 9000. One man who calls himself a member of the 4700 Boys, a group of frequent riders, takes a cab to the bar so he doesn’t even have the option to
Taxi 9000 driver Clinton Wald poses with his cab before heading out on a recent Friday night.
TAXI NUMBERS Bismarck-Mandan’s taxi companies can be reached at the following numbers: ■ Taxi 9000: 701-223-9000 ■ Metro Taxi: 701-667-4567 ■ 2 Man Cab: 701-425-6699 drive drunk. He said his reason for taking a cab is that he needs his license for work and court costs for a DUI are a lot steeper than a cab fare.
“You hear that a lot,” Wald said. Wald records the fare on a clipboard that acts as his time sheet. Each driver is paid on commission as well as receiving a flat wage — and, of course, tips. “Tips are an important part of what they do,” Schumacher said. “If we didn’t have tips, we couldn’t employ the drivers.” “People are real generous sometimes,” Wald said. “You have to like driving and you have to like people. Sometimes, you get people who
make you wonder why you do it, but all in all it’s pretty good.” For those fares that aren’t good, drivers call the police. That happens if a rider passes out and can’t be awakened, or if a fare gets too rowdy or dangerous. If someone can’t walk or remember their address, they’re not allowed to ride. The times when the most calls come in are midnight and 2 a.m. More roll in from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. when house parties break up. Continued on 7A
Local bar operators/ owners say they are doing what they can to to prevent intoxicated people from driving. Under North Dakota law, the server, the establishment and the owners can be sued or prosecuted if they serve an intoxicated person alcohol. Burleigh County State’s Attorney Richard Riha said state law allows Class A misdemeanor charges against the establishment and individuals for serving someone under age 21, a habitual drunkard, someone who is obviously intoxicated or incompetent. Those convicted could face up to one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. Riha said businesses can be charged with a criminal offense for serving an intoxicated person. “The organizational fine for a Class A misdemeanor is a maximum fine of $30,000,” he said. The entity — city or county— that issues the liquor license also can pull the license through its administration authority, he said.
Training Bismarck Police Officer Clint Fuller trains servers on when to cut a customer off and how to spot fake identifications. He said the free training takes about an hour. “Whenever there is a new establishment opening, I send them a letter,” Continued on 7A
Some ankle bracelet alarms have gone unchecked By DAVID B. CARUSO and NICHOLAS RICCARDI Associated Press Three decades after they were introduced as a crime-fighting tool, electronic ankle bracelets used to track an offender’s whereabouts have proliferated so much that officials are struggling to handle an avalanche of monitoring alerts that are often nothing more sinister than a dead battery, lost satellite contact or someone arriving home late from work. Amid all that white noise, alarms are going unchecked, sometimes on defendants now
accused of new crimes. Some agencies don’t have clear protocols on how to handle the multitude of alerts, or don’t always follow them. At times, officials took days to act, if they noticed at all, when criminals tampered with their bracelets or broke a curfew. “I think the perception ... is that these people are being watched 24 hours a day by someone in a command center. That’s just not happening,” said Rob Bains, director of court services for Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, which this spring halted its monitoring programs after two people on the devices were accused in
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separate shootings. At least 100,000 sex offenders, parolees and people free on bail or probation wear ankle bracelets that can sound an alarm if they leave home without permission, fail to show up for work or linger near a playground or school. To assess these monitoring programs, The Associated Press queried a sample of corrections, parole and probation agencies across the U.S. for alarms logged in a one-month period and for figures regarding the number of people monitored and the number of officers watching them. The AP also reviewed audits, state and federal
reports and studies done of several of these programs, which detailed problems that included officers failing to investigate alarms or take action when offenders racked up multiple violations. Twenty-one agencies that responded to the AP inquiry logged 256,408 alarms for 26,343 offenders in the month of April alone. It adds up for those doing the monitoring. The 230 parole officers with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice handled 944 alerts per day in April. The Delaware Department of Correction, which has 31 field officers, handled 514 alarms per day. Continued on 7A
Associated Press
Deputy Edward Schinkal attaches an electronic monitoring unit to a woman who was sentenced to home incarceration in Cincinnati on July 12.
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