Police who raided Maggies Restaurant and Sports Bar Wednesday morning confiscated 53 fake IDs – one of the highest numbers on record for university-area bar raids.

More than half of the bar’s patrons were underage, said Sgt. Joel Cordone of the Syracuse Police Department.

‘After you do a couple of these, I don’t think there’s too much stuff that can surprise you,’ Cordone said. ‘But the large number really shocked us. We were alarmed by the number of people in the bar that were underage.’

Cordone said the two-hour raid resulted in 87 citations, which is 63 less than the 150 tickets he estimated Wednesday morning. Forty-six were for underage drinking, 31 were for possession of false identification and six were for ‘passbacks,’ or multiple people using one ID to get into the bar. Four bartenders received citations for sale of alcohol to a minor, Cordone said. Those who are Syracuse University students will be reported to Judicial Affairs.

The tickets do not charge a specific fine, but they require an appearance in traffic court in late April. Cordone said that’s letting the offenders, who were mostly students, off easy. Possession of false identification is a felony and comes with jail time.

The sting operation was the first major resurgence of Operation Prevent, a state underage drinking prevention program, since October 2007. The program began in 2003 with an $18,500 grant to the New York State Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee.

The New York State Liquor Authority had an ongoing investigation of Maggies after recent complaints of underage drinking, many from Syracuse residents, Cordone said.

Many of the letters detailed the process Maggies used to check IDs for getting into the bar. Cordone said the bar is a popular establishment for sorority and fraternity nights. Police found that patrons are required to show college ID to enter the bar, Cordone said, and have to pay extra money if they can’t prove they’re in college.

That night, one customer was asked to pay $20 at the door because he couldn’t show a college ID, Cordone said. Another ‘older gentleman’ was approached by the staff and asked why he was there, Cordone said.

Police changed their tactic this year and chose Tuesday as the day of the week for the raid, because the complaints of underage drinking noted an influx of activity at Maggies on Tuesdays.

‘Once again, get back to the idea that people think they’re going to know when we’re around, or that people are going to know when the police are coming,’ Cordone said. ‘And they have certain alarm systems set up as far as social alarms. People see more cops in the area or whatever. But we also adjust our approach.’

Operation Prevent hasn’t had funding in five years, Cordone said. That’s resulted in fewer raids, because they now depend on regular police manpower. Tuesday night was a quieter night in the city, so SPD could afford to coordinate a team of 24 officers to work the raid.

‘If you see SPD up there, we’re really draining some units,’ Cordone said.

Two of those officers were from SU’s Department of Public Safety. Tony Callisto, chief of DPS, said his department was notified of the raid Tuesday night, immediately before it happened at 12:30 Wednesday morning. SPD called and asked for assistance in the detail they had planned, Callisto said.

‘Sometimes they’ll contact us and include us in the planning, sometimes it’s spur of the moment,’ Callisto said.

The university did not contact SPD to plan this raid, which was the case for the previous raid. The last Operation Prevent incident that resulted in a large number of citations was 17 months ago, on Oct. 26, 2007. The university was seeing a rise in the number of students sent to the hospital for underage drinking.

A few months later, in January 2008, SPD organized a team of 28 officers for another Operation Prevent raid. But it was the coldest night of the year, Cordone remembers, and there was no one in the bars.

But Cordone said his department has more raids planned for this semester.

‘They know we’re coming back up again. We’re going to be here through the spring, and we’ll be here in the fall when they come back,’ Cordone said. ‘We just want to make sure they know that if they’re not of age, to stay out of the bars, or they’re going to risk getting a ticket or getting arrested.’

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Published on April 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm