Wild: Police rolled up to Tempe Tavern last week and arrested 249 people in a single raid for underage drinking

Police in Tempe, Arizona, rolled up to Tempe Tavern last week and arrested 249 people in a single raid for underage drinking. That is not a typo. Two hundred forty-nine people at one bar and the wild part is this is the second time this year they’ve pulled something like this.

According to police, community members complained that the place had basically turned into a youth hostel with liquor. So Tempe PD sent in fifty-seven officers to handle the situation, which feels slightly excessive unless Tempe Tavern had transformed into the world’s most poorly run speakeasy.

Police rolled up to Tempe Tavern last week and arrested 249 people in a single raid for underage drinking

@12newsaz

It happened again. Tempe police arrested 249 people at Tempe Tavern for underage drinking and fake IDs—the second underage drinking bust within a year.

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The end result: 249 arrests involving fake IDs, underage intoxication, and providing false information. Out of that group, 246 were cut loose with a summons.

Three people got booked into jail, which probably means employees or someone who tried to eat their fake ID in front of the cops.

Back in April, the bar was hit for another 173 underage drinkers, so clearly this place is running a youth soccer camp more than an actual bar. The Department of Liquor Licenses and Control is now handling whatever punishment is coming.

Here’s the part that blows my mind.

Arresting 249 kids is insane. You know what makes more sense? Just shut the bar down for being the most obvious underage drinking hub in the state. This is not a kid problem. It is a bar problem. Every person who just got cited for being underage will be “underage drinking” again at home this week with their families. The law is not preventing anything.

Luckily for the kids, most of them only have a mail-in summons for next month. No lawyer needed. Pay a fine, maybe do ten hours of community service, and you’re done.

We used to be a proper country…

This whole thing reminded me of college in Morgantown. Back in the early 2000s, West Virginia bars had the entire fake ID ecosystem mastered. Places would advertise “18 to party, 21 to drink,” which really meant “18 to drink, 21 to pretend you waited.”

If the Alcohol Beverage Control inspectors were making the rounds, the bar would handle it with absolute professionalism. The music would stop. The DJ would get on the mic like a hostage negotiator and tell everyone under 21 to step away from their drinks.

Everyone would freeze like a middle school fire drill. ABC would walk in, look around for five minutes to make sure nobody was chugging out of a pitcher or puking into a trash can, and then head out.

The moment the door closed, the DJ turned the music back up and the bar reverted to normal chaos.

That was peak America. No one cared.

It was simpler, freer, and way more fun than whatever Tempe police think they are accomplishing by arresting two platoons worth of freshmen on a Wednesday night.

Tempe Tavern might be the most blatant underage drinking hot spot in the country. Shut it down or keep pretending this is some massive moral crisis. Either way, the kids will be fine. The bar? Probably not.

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