t may not come as a surprise to anyone that teenagers in Homer drink alcohol. To many people, experimentation is an expected, if not accepted, part of growing up, a rite of passage.
But the situation in Homer has grown beyond the experimentation stage, according to Alaska State Troopers and Homer police; Homer is seeing increasing alcoholism and drug use among teens.
Trooper Sgt. Jim Hibpshman said the frequency with which bouts of violence, vandalism and sexual assaults are happening at teen parties is disturbing. Perhaps even more alarming is that the problem seems not to be limited to high school students.
"We're seeing junior high kids, 12-, 13- and 14-year-old girls, turning up at these parties and getting incredibly intoxicated, and having sex with 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds," Hibpshman said. "The picture is so ugly, we need to tell the truth."
Recently Hibpshman and the Homer Police Department invited the Homer News to talk about the issues.
"I get parents calling me all the time from all over this peninsula, saying, aMy God, you've got to do something about the drinking problem,'" Hibpshman said. "What do I tell them? They need to do something about it too.
"We all need to take some culpability parents, schools, churches, police, troopers, kids, even the guy driving down the road who sees something and doesn't report it," he said. "As a community, we need to decide what we expect law enforcement's response to be."
How bad is the problem? It depends on who you ask.
"It happens in every other town, in every other place," said Jane, a Homer High School teen who agreed to speak for the article. "It's not really a problem."
Jane has been charged with driving while intoxicated in the past, and has more than one minor consuming charge to her credit. Her name and personal information has been changed to keep her identity secret.
In 2000, six minors were arrested in Homer for driving while under the influence of alcohol. In 2002, there were 23 such arrests.
Similarly, the number of repeat minor consuming offenders tripled.
The number of juveniles younger than 18 who were charged with consuming alcohol rose in those two years from three to 18.
Jane believes the figures are misleading.
"There isn't any more drinking, there are just more cops," she said. "This has been going on for years. It's not a new problem."
Homer Police Chief Mark Robl agreed that the problem is not a new one, but said that the addition of one officer on the street since 2000 has not had a significant impact on the MCA statistics.
"There's always been parties, and there probably always will," Hibpshman conceded. "But they're getting bigger and more out of control.
"I can't tell you how many 13-year-old girls have cried to me and told me their first sexual experience was when they were raped at a party because they drank so much, and they don't remember who it was," he said. "Thirteen years old. If that doesn't disturb a parent, I don't know what does."
The influx of new drugs into Homer also has police concerned, he said. Methamphetamines and prescription drugs are turning up, and recently inhalant abuse, commonly known as huffing, has begun to appear with increased frequency.
"Date rape drugs are showing up in the community now, among teens," Hibpshman said. "This is not Anchorage, this is Homer. These are our teenagers."
Robl said police also are concerned about the higher blood alcohol content of teens charged with minor consuming.
"They're drinking more and more," he said, citing a recent arrest of a 16-year-old girl with a BAC of .3, nearly four times the legal limit for adults. "It's hard to believe parents don't see that. She didn't get that way overnight. She had to have been drinking for some time to build up that kind of a tolerance so that a .3 didn't kill her."
In just the past year, teens have been stabbed at parties and dragged by cars, Hibpshman said. Vehicles have been recovered following serious accidents, and others have been stolen and burned by drunk teenagers.
"The worst part is that one of these nights we're going to have a car full of dead kids in Homer," Hibpshman said. "It's not if, it's when."
According to Jane, that might be the only way to get through to teenagers the seriousness of drinking and driving.
She said a typical party might be as small as a group of friends, or as large as 60 or 70 people. While some take place in people's homes, they more commonly are held outdoors.
While not all teens attend the parties, Jane said those who do represent all groups or cliques, and are not limited to the teens you might suspect.
"Athletes are there, the most popular kids are there, good students, bad students, everybody," she said. But, she said, if junior high students have been at the parties, she's not seen them.
For the most part, Jane thinks the parties are harmless fun for teens with what she sees as little else to do. But she admits that drinking and driving is a problem.
"There are designated drivers, sometimes, but some people are really stupid about it," she said. "I admit it. I've been stupid about it."
She said that a DWI-related death probably would scare teens away from drinking and driving. "I know it sounds bad, it sounds really bad that it has to go that far, but I think that's the only way some people are going to learn," she said.
Jane is not alone.
"Unfortunately, it takes something devastating happening before it opens up their eyes," said Joe Huftel, assistant principal of Homer High School. "Kids have this notion that they're going to live forever. Until something disastrous happens, they play hard."
As for the drug use among teens, Jane admits that marijuana is prevalent, and that harder drugs have been around for some time. But, she said, those users tend to keep quiet about it unlike alcohol and that drug use is limited to certain groups.
"Look at this town," she said. "It's stereotyped as a drinking town, aA quaint drinking village with a fishing problem.' There's so much drinking already in this town. There's a bar on every corner, or a liquor store. No wonder kids drink so much."
"That's actually an excellent point," Robl said. "I've talked to a lot of parents about this issue, and a lot of them think it's OK for their kids to drink, and an MCA is a pain in the butt. As long as parents don't support us, this is going to continue to be a problem."
Hibpshman said that many kids are learning about drug use in their own homes.
"A lot of times we'll pick up a kid, and when we ask where they got the pot, or the pipe, they'll say at home," he said. "Parents need to think about who their own friends are."
But, said Robl, most parents genuinely are concerned about their children. Often, parents will call to report a teen party, but as law enforcement, Hibpshman and Robl said their response options are limited.
Homer Police Department has 12 officers within city limits, and four troopers cover 100 square miles around the city.
"Teens aren't stupid," Hibpshman said. "They know that if they go outside city limits, they stand a better chance of not getting caught.
"If I respond to a call about a teen party in the woods somewhere, and I pull up and there are 20 vehicles, 60 kids, what can I do?" he said. "I can single out a car or two and catch those five or six kids, but then I have the other 55 kids who take off, drunk, in their vehicles, or run off into the woods very intoxicated.
"I don't want to have to tell parents that six kids are dead in a drunk driving car accident because they were fleeing the police, you know?" Hibpshman said. "But if we do nothing, are we telling them it's okay?"
That, he said, is not a message anyone can afford to send.
"Some of these young boys and girls are getting so drunk, they're in danger of hypothermia, alcohol poisoning, and drunk driving," he said. "But parents need to know that many of them, especially the younger ones, are in danger of sexual predators, which can be anyone.
"When they sober up, they're not even able to remember who," Hibpshman said. "We have kids having five or six sexual partners at a single party. These are high school, or junior high, kids."
In Jane's opinion, the teen parties are, for the majority of those who attend, harmless fun.
"It's just a social thing," she said. "It's fun to be outside, with your friends. It happens everywhere, not just Homer. Our parents did it."
Robl admits that, to a certain degree, teens drinking is considered by many to be a rite of passage. But, he said, Homer's situation has grown beyond that.
"To anyone who says these are other people's kids, I'm telling you, you're wrong," he said. "These are everybody's kids."
He said parents need to start getting more involved, and all areas of the community <> including teens <> must come together to find a solution before it is too late.
"Like Sgt. Hibpshman said, one of these times we are going to have a car full of kids get killed, or kill someone else," he said. "I don't want that to have to happen."
"The only solution is going to have to start with parents," Hibpshman said. "There's no good solution, and there's no one solution.
"Homer has a problem, and it's only going to get worse. Not all kids are doing it, and I'm not saying that because a kid goes to a party he's a bad kid or has bad parents," he said.
"But if there were a deadly disease out there that was affecting our kids, wouldn't we do anything we could to prevent it? Well, there is one," he said.
Chris Bernard can be reached at cbernard@homernews.com.
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