It is a tempting situation. A student gets offered a fake ID by a friend to get into the bars. How can anything go wrong? It must work; it works for everyone else, right?

Wrong. The fact is, bar cops and bar employees are trained to sniff out fake IDs — and they are very good at it.

So how do they figure out who is a minor and who is not? Unfortunately, that is a question a bar cop cannot answer without giving away his secret.

“If you look young, you’re going to get IDed. The other ways I can’t let you know,” said Dwight Gaines, Ames police officer.

The team of bar cops is a Special Operations Unit and currently has three members, but starting April 1 there will be four members. Every night, they split up and visit every bar in town for about 45 minutes each.

“We could arrest 10 [people] one weekend, but the next weekend not one,” Gaines said.

He also said the bars do a good job of checking IDs and enforcing the laws.

“The bar personnel is making a real good effort,” he said. “What we catch is beyond their training.”

When a fake ID is suspected, “there are certain things we can trip them up on,” he said, adding that the birth date is sometimes a clue.

He said he usually does not have to scan an ID to be sure it is a fake.

The police department is not the only authoritative group responsible for enforcing laws concerning minors. The bars also have doormen who are responsible for weeding out fake IDs.

Cy’s Roost, 121 Welch Ave., currently has two doormen and will have more when the weather warms up.

“We’re notorious for taking [away] fakes,” said Paul DeVries, manager of Cy’s Roost.

He said doormen generally confiscate one or two IDs a week, sometimes more.

“At the beginning of the school year we have a lot, maybe one a night,” he said. But as the year progresses, DeVries said minors don’t try to get in as often.

DeVries said the bar has a good relationship with the Ames Police Department.

“We know all the bar cops by first name,” he said.

If the bar cops find someone underage, they write the suspect a ticket and the offender is thrown out of the bar.

The only repercussion for the bar is that the incidents are mentioned to the city council when it is time to have the bar’s liquor license renewed, DeVries said.

“The more [incidents] you have, the more of an eyebrow it raises with the city council,” he said.

If the doormen are not working on certain nights, DeVries said bartenders are trained to check IDs.

Businesses that have liquor licenses are shown how to properly check IDs at seminars held by the police department. They learn such things as checking to see if the picture and birth date match, if the last number in the audit number matches the year of birth, if the height is correct and other tricks of the trade.

“We question the person; we ask what their zip code is or their driver’s license number,” DeVries said. He added that if a fake ID is suspected, the doorman will have the suspect sign their name. If the person is found to possess a fake ID, a manager is notified and the police are called.

Sometimes the bar or police officers can make a mistake and wrongly accuse a person of having a fake ID.

“One time this guy’s picture was fuzzy, so we called the police and they verified that it was actually him,” DeVries said.

However, to assist in spotting a fake ID, some businesses may use an annual reference guide that shows every current ID from every state in the United States.

DeVries said he thinks the number of Ames minors found using fake IDs has decreased over the years.

“I see a lot fewer names in the paper than a couple of years ago,” he said. However, he said “it’s always going to be a problem. It’s something every college town has to deal with.”

Although some bars at the University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa allow 19- and 20-year-olds to be on the premises, DeVries said this policy isn’t wise the legal drinking age is being enforced.

“There will be more problems with mixing people under the legal age with people of the legal age,” he said. “It’s inviting someone [underage] to try and drink.”

DeVries said part of the improvement is the result of a change in people’s attitudes toward drinking.

“People are a little bit smarter than they used to be,” he said, “and not as many people are going out.”

He said two years ago there was a line at every bar every Friday and Saturday night, but he doesn’t see as much of that now.

“The city is enforcing the fire code harder and cops are cracking down on people underage,” he said.

Those caught with fake IDs are issued a citation and released.

“They have to leave and not come back,” Gaines said.

If the person is intoxicated, sobriety tests are administered.