Luke (he and other
students interviewed agreed to tell their stories provided
their real names weren't used), a student at UW-Madison and
only 20 years old, showed the bouncer a fake identification
card he had purchased nearly a year before. Although his fake
ID had usually been successful in getting him into local bars,
that night the bouncer recognized it as fake and confiscated
it.
Luke was upset
over the loss of his fake ID, but not because it blocked his
access to alcohol, but rather because it prevented him from
going to the bars, the haunts of choice for the majority of
his friends on the weekends.
"I can drink
anywhere anyway," Luke said. "I just wanted to go to the bars
with my friends."
Luke's friend
"Ron," another underage student at UW-Madison, agreed that
the only reason he purchased a fake ID was to keep up with his
friends.
"Bars are a
great time," he said. "As college students, we all know bars
are the place to be. Everybody's doing it."
Ron, who grew
up in Los Angeles, purchased his fake ID during his junior
year of high school because "getting into clubs was big
there," he said.
Ron also lost
his fake ID to a bouncer at a Downtown bar, but was able to
get it back cost-free because a former bouncer at the same bar
and friend of Ron's was a patron there that night, and told
the bouncer who had confiscated his fake ID to give it back,
which he did.
"There's sort
of a code like that between co-workers," said "Josh," the
former bouncer. J
osh explained
that all the employees at the bar were close friends, and
therefore they were willing to help out not only their own
underage friends, but those of their co-workers who would come
to the bar.
"I always tried
to hang onto any ID I took for a week or so, and then turn it
into the owner," he said. "That way, in case it was a friend's
ID or something, I could get it back to them."
The owner, as
most bar owners, would then turn in the fake IDs to the police
"as sort of a goodwill, Look, we're doing our job' kind of
thing," Josh said.
Money-making
venture
Having access
to so many fake IDs that were in such high demand put Josh and
his co-workers in a unique position to help underage friends
get into bars as well as make some extra cash on the side.
"For a while,
myself and other people, we'd keep a box of IDs that we'd
confiscated and give them or sell them to our friends," he
said.
Josh talked
about a co-worker who took every fake ID he could find and
sold them to friends to raise the money to pay off a Jet
Skiing ticket.
He also said
occasionally people would offer up to $100 to buy back a
confiscated ID, so Josh and a co-worker would meet them later
that night to sell an ID back and split the money.
"I would talk
to my co-workers and say, Hey, it's against the rules but do
you want to do it for the cash?'"
Knowing this,
Luke, finding himself on the other end of the bargain, offered
the bouncer $70 to buy back his fake ID, which he had
originally bought for $120. A friend of the bouncer sent him a
message on Facebook a week later and met him on the street to
make the exchange later that night.
Spotting the
fakes
Regardless of
whether bouncers want to confiscate fake IDs or just turn away
underage patrons, they first have to learn how to distinguish
a real ID from a fake ID. It's not an easy task, especially
since many underage patrons will use an ID from a friend who
is of legal drinking age and try to pass it off as their own.
Whether it's
harder to spot a real ID that is someone else's or a fake ID
seems to vary by bouncer.
"Most of the
ones I've taken are someone else's IDs," said "Matt," a
bouncer at Wando's Bar and Grill. "You can ask them a random
question like What's your address?', and if they don't know
it, that's a dead giveaway right there."
Josh thought
fake IDs were much easier to catch.
"It's
definitely harder, for me at least, to recognize an ID that's
another person," he said. "If you're sisters or brothers you
look something alike anyway . . . those are the ones that are
harder to tell."
Joel Plant,
City of Madison Alcohol Policy Coordinator, agreed.
"If you're
looking at a legitimate ID, and it's someone's older sister's
ID, that's a real ID," he said. "It feels like a real ID, it
has all the identifying characteristics, and now the person
that's looking at that ID has to match up the person who
presented the ID with the person who's on the identification.
That's where the human factor comes in. Sometimes that's easy
to do, sometimes it's difficult, especially with siblings."
Sgt. David
McCaw of the Madison Police Department said he sees more IDs
that aren't really that person, but the split is about 60/40,
with the other 40 percent marked by fake IDs.
However, he
said there are simple steps to recognize both types.
"Both (types)
have their pluses and both have their minuses," he said. "But
we don't rely on one thing just like the bars don't rely on
one thing to determine whether a person is truthful or not."
To recognize if
a real ID really belongs to the person who presented it, McCaw
said a lot of bars have put tape measures beside the door to
measure height. Also, bars often ask for a second or even a
third form of ID.
To recognize a
fake ID, Plant said bars can use black lights to make sure the
holograms on the IDs match the ones that should appear on that
particular state's ID card.
Josh pointed
out that each state has identifying characteristics. For
example, the bar on the back of the Minnesota ID is slightly
raised above the rest of the ID, and the New York and
California IDs weigh less than many other states' IDs.
However, as
technology allows the quality of fake IDs to improve, they're
becoming more difficult for bouncers to catch.
"I think IDs
have always gotten better. You're smarter than your parents.
My children are smarter than me," McCaw said.
Ron, who was
once involved in the business of selling fake IDs, agreed.
"It's not a
bored freshman in his dorm room putting together an ID. That
would be taken away in a second. Obviously these things are
made with a little bit higher quality, especially now that
bars are a lot harder to get into."
Entrepreneurial spirit
Ron became
involved in the business when his ex-girlfriend needed a fake
ID. By word of mouth, she found someone at a neighboring
school who was in contact with someone who made them.
He told Ron
that every time he referred a friend to him, he'd get paid.
Over the course of a couple of months, Ron made a few hundred
dollars.
"Obviously
there was a business plan to this," he said. "If you can get
one person and offer them this type of deal, (they're) going
to at least make an effort to find people who want IDs,
especially your friends who you already want to have IDs in
the first place. It's not a bad plan, but it's highly
illegal."
Ron added that
because of the legal issues, the business is highly secretive.
Ron never knew who made the ID, or whether his contact knew
who made the ID or was just as in the dark as Ron was.
Luke said this
type of business structure is typical.
"People always
try to make it seem like it's some far-off connection when you
don't know if it's (my contact), or you don't know if it's a
friend of a friend of a friend," he said.
Ron said either
someone involved in the business takes a picture of the buyers
with a digital camera, or the buyers e-mail their own pictures
to the contact along with the information they want on the ID.
Fake IDs
typically cost between $80 and $120.
Bars and
reputations
Just because
people purchase fake IDs does not mean they can drink at any
bar they like. In Madison, the authorities, the patrons and
the bars themselves are all aware there are bars that are
known to recognize and confiscate fake IDs more often than
bars that tend to be more lenient in letting underage patrons
inside.
"Sarah," an
underage UW-Madison student with a fake ID, said, "There are
definitely bars I know not to go to . . . I know which bars
take IDs and which don't."
Plant agreed.
"I think IDs get confiscated quite frequently at certain
establishments. At other establishments, I think it's very
common for those people to get inside. . . . At the end of the
day, it's the tone that the manager wants to set."
Wando's Bar and
Grill manager Dave Neumyer definitely knew the tone he wanted
to set. He said it was important for the bar to be known as
difficult to get into for underage people who present fake
IDs.
"It develops a
reputation for the bar so we don't get as many people even
trying to come in," he said.
Neumyer also
explained that he liked to keep underage youth out of the bar
not only out of respect for the law, but also as a courtesy to
his of-age patrons.
"When people
are 18 or 19 and first come to college, they don't drink very
well . . . and probably don't have a lot of experience
drinking and they end up doing a lot of foolish things," he
said. "I don't really want to drink with someone who just
graduated from high school."
McCaw also
recognized Wando's as being a hard bar for underage patrons to
get into.
"There are some
bars that believe it's bad for business," he said. "There are
other bar owners who believe that if I take your fake ID
you're going to come back when you're of age for one of two
reasons -- either to prove you're of age or because he's got
the hot bar."
Richard Lyshek,
owner of Ram's Head, previously known as Bullfeathers, and
president of the Dane County Tavern League, said he thinks
trying to confiscate every fake ID will eventually lead the
bar to accidentally confiscate a real ID, which is bad for
business.
"I personally
don't want one even person who has a real ID and it's really
them to ever have their ID taken away," Lyshek said. "I never
want to be responsible for that."
He also pointed
out that making an effort to take every fake ID puts a strain
on his bouncers.
"On a busy
night . . . and there are piles of people there and people are
sitting arguing with you over their IDs . . . they won't leave
and you can't do what you're supposed to be doing at the bar,"
Lyshek said.
Furthermore,
Lyshek believes underage drinking isn't really a problem in
the first place.
"These are tens
of thousands, law-abiding, honest students -- the only thing
that they do that's illegal is have a few cocktails."
However, McCaw
said underage drinkers are most often both the perpetrators
and the victims of crimes, specifically sexual assault.
"We see the
ugly side of it," McCaw said, explaining the efforts to keep
underagers away from alcohol are ultimately to keep them from
becoming so intoxicated that they fall into these situations.
"The numbers we
don't have are the numbers of the people we've saved," he
said.
