Voters Agree on Drunk Fine

Weary of vomit and passed-out concert customers, Police Chief Arthur O'Neill asked for help at Town Meeting, and he got it.

Voters overwhelmingly agreed to create a $200 charge for anyone so inebriated they have to be taken to the station or somewhere else in a police department vehicle to dry out. The surcharge, O'Neill said, would help to defray the cost of hauling hundreds of drunken people, many of them underage, away from the Comcast Center after way too many beers in the parking lot. Only those who qualify for protective custody will be affected.

O'Neill said thee were 402 protective custody cases last year alone at the Comcast Center, but he emphasized the crew at the concert venue, the most successful center of its kind in the country, keeps everything under control once customers get inside the gate. It's outside in the lot where things get hairy - people can disguise liquor in a variety of containers, and word gets out about who has it. Police and EMTs are routinely required to deal with young people so drunk they pass out, and some must be taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.

The problem has been mushrooming over the past several years, and 20 to 25 officers cannot be expected to control a crowd that can top 20,000 on a sold-out night, he told Town Meeting.

O'Neill has been trying to bring the crisis to the attention of townspeople for some time, and at Thursday's Town Meeting he told voters he and Foxboro police had huddled over wording to similar articles. Foxboro, home to Gillette Stadium, faces the same problem at an even greater rate, and that town too has adopted the surcharge route at a town meeting in March, hoping a stiff fine might serve to warn off at least some of the scofflaws.

"We bring them home if there is a responsible person there," O'Neill said. "Or we bring them to a facility."

"Now you'll have to pay for the ride," said Town Moderator Bob Saquet.

In response to a question from one voter, O'Neill said the fine was not meant to be a revenue generator, but he added a brand new transport wagon was used only twice before a drunken patron threw up all over the inside. That costs the town, he said, because a hazardous materials crew must do the cleanup.

Voters nixed an amendment proposed by Francis Shaw of Mill Street to lower the fine to $50. Shaw said the motion if passed would criminalize something that was not criminal, and called the proposal "a social experiment" because few other communities had adopted it. But O'Neill said only refusing to pay the fine would be criminal.

"It's time to get a curb on this behavior," he said.

The article passed with a majority vote.