“We know that many teenagers are consuming alcohol in their own homes as well as the outdoors,’’ wrote Mendes in a grant application filed this month with the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, requesting $5,000 to fund law enforcement stings and party surveillance patrols beginning this March through September 2013.
Underage drinking in the suburbs south of Boston is an ongoing issue - recently making headlines after teenagers in Milton gathered for a New Year’s Eve party in a home on Robbins Street, a normally quiet neighborhood of half-million-dollar properties.
The party went unnoticed by local police until a few minutes past midnight - when a party bus from South Boston, packed with 30 young people, rolled up. Turned away, the bus occupants became violent. One of the party crashers, Michael J. Capuzzo, 18, now in jail, allegedly stabbed five teenagers. Three of them - two residents of Milton and one from South Boston - were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening stab wounds to the upper torso. Two others suffered minor hand wounds.
“What we know is that a house party involving many individuals, mostly from Milton, was held at this residence,’’ Milton police said that day, describing the scene as chaotic. Officers conducted dozens of interviews and established, among other things, that there was a connection between someone on the bus and people inside the home.
Suburban police are stretched thin with shift officers working to manage service calls, say local law enforcement officials, without the time to aggressively unravel high school subculture and keep tabs on known party homes or stop events before they happen. In fact, officers in Hingham, Norwood, and Westwood said, it’s rare to bust an underage house party, since police typically rely on noise complaints to tip them off - and, once on the scene, officers don’t have jurisdiction to enter a home unless they see an underage person holding alcohol or arrive in response to a 911 call.
