Ames Police Commander Jason Tuttle and ISU Police Officer Anthony Greiter remember some of the the situations in which individuals were arrested or fined for possession of alcohol under the legal age or public intoxication. 

Veggie Tales

“We stopped a guy one night for suspicious activity at Wal-Mart,” Ames Police Department Investigations Commander Jason Tuttle said. “When we were patting him down for weapons, a cucumber fell out of his pants.”

Tuttle and his partner questioned the man about his intentions with the vegetable.

“He said it was common for him to wear [the cucumber] when he went out to the dance clubs.”

Drunks of Hazard

“One night I was in an unmarked car, but in uniform, just sitting on Welch,” Tuttle said. “We’re sitting there—another officer and I—watching the crowd walk by and this kid does a Dukes of Hazard slide across the front of our car.”

Tuttle said the young man looked at him and “puffed his chest out”—until the two officers got out of the vehicle.

“He saw our uniforms and you could see the look in his face like ‘Oh, what did I do now?’”

Uber Embarrassing

“Some of the things that I’ve encountered a lot are pulling up to stop signs at Welch and Chamberlain and having somebody jump in the back of my squad car and tell me where they live, thinking that I’m a taxi,” said ISU Police Officer Anthony Greiter.

After giving the students a moment to recognize their surroundings—the hard plastic seats, the doors that don’t open from the inside—Greiter said they often realize what they’ve done.

“The ones who don’t catch on as quickly, I tend to tell them I’m a taxi that goes to one location—and that’s the jail in Nevada. That’s when they start to recognize what’s happening.”

Star Snores

“We’ve had people that are passed out in the middle of the street. While the story that they give me that they’re watching the stars is entertaining, the fact that they’re passed out in the middle of the street is concerning,” ISU Police Officer Anthony Greiter said. “And I should note, while they’re watching the stars, their eyeballs are closed.”

Blame it on the Menthols

“I stopped a person for holding alcohol and they . . . pretended like it wasn’t there’s in the first place,” ISU Police Officer Anthony Greiter said. “So I asked them for their ID and they said they didn’t have it.”

Greiter asked the individual for their age and they said 18.

“I said, ‘You know I’m stopping you for alcohol, right?’”

Then the individual admitted to lying; they were actually 20.

“Either way, 18 or 20 is not old enough to drink alcohol,” Greiter said.

The individual confessed they used to smoke cigarettes underage and got used to lying to police about being 18.

Plead the Myth

ISU Police Officer Anthony Greiter said there are a lot of misconceptions going around about what constitutes possession of alcohol. While some students erroneously believe they can carry alcohol for their of-age friends or parents, one student made the argument that he is (for all legal purposes) the parent.

“I recently had a student bring up kind of an interesting argument that when you turn 18, you are an adult,” Greiter said. “He reasoned that you are thereby your [own] legal guardian. State law says that your legal guardian or parent can, in a sense, provide you alcohol in their home … and [the student] said, ‘Why can an 18-year-old not provide himself alcohol in their home?’”

Although Greiter says the student’s logic was less than sound, he gave it an ‘A’ for effort.

“Interesting argument. Not valid—it doesn’t work—but he tried.”