Nearly 30 students from Georgetown and other universities were arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Department for underage drinking last weekend and detained for more than 12 hours after a computer glitch prevented the station from processing their arrests.
Lieutenant Brian Bray of MPD said he found “chaos in the station” when he arrived for his shift at 5:30 a.m. “I was pretty shocked when I heard there were maybe 30 or 40 [people] in the back,” he said. Bray said 28 students were arrested between 10:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. last Friday night and held overnight – 16 Georgetown students from six area parties and 12 from an American University student party.
Most of the arrested students were held for more than 12 hours because of a computer glitch. The station’s LiveScan system, a computer fingerprinting and identification system used to process arrests, malfunctioned for about eight hours, according to Bray, forcing MPD to hold the individuals much longer than normal. “Usually a good officer can [process the arrest] in less than an hour,” he said, after which most students would have been released and sent home. Students remained in the station’s cells, however, until the next afternoon. Bray said that because of the extenuating circumstances, he had the authority to release the arrested students without processing them. “Otherwise they would have stayed there for all of the next night, too,” Bray said. He said the last person was released around 6 p.m. on Saturday.
According to Bray, the number of complaints about loud parties has risen dramatically over the last year. “It’s been pretty busy the first couple weeks of the school year, worse than last year,” he said. According to Bray, 49 calls for disturbances in the Georgetown and Burleith areas were received in the first weekend of classes at the university. Last year, the station received only 29 complaints.
Though the number of students arrested was unusually high this past weekend, Bray said it was not part of a focused mission against underage drinkers. “[The arrests were made] just on regular patrol, not on anything specialized,” he said. “As far as I know there are no plans . to do stings this month,” he said. Bray said MPD will sometimes publicize if stings for underage drinking are planned, but if the mission is receiving federal grant money or seeking statistics about the issue, it is traditionally kept quiet.
Bray said that arrests of such a large number of underage drinkers are relatively rare. He said that since it is usually noise complaints that bring MPD to parties, students often get off lightly.
“If the police are called and you’re cooperative, there’s a good chance you’ll get off with a warning,” he said. Bray noted that most officers will levy a fine and move on, unless provoked or harassed by a partygoer. “That’s when we have to start taking people in for disorderly conduct,” he said. “Just the smell of alcohol on your breath is probable cause [for arrest].”
