Lucy’s Retired Surfer’s Bar on South Crouse Avenue, adjacent to Marshall Street, was raided by the Syracuse Police Department at about 1 a.m. today.

As part of the Syracuse Police’s Operation Prevent, the raid resulted in about 25 tickets for underage students who either possessed another person’s identification or fraudulent identification or were consuming alcohol under the age of 21, said Lt. Shannon Trice of the Syracuse Police. When the officer entered the bar, there were about 50 to 75 people there.

Since the bar is located a block away from campus, it can be inferred that many of the ticketed people were Syracuse University students.

Trice said undercover police officers were in the bar all night long observing the bartenders serving underage patrons and underage drinking. The bartenders will be fined individually.

When the raid took place, the officers immediately began scanning IDs, taking the ones that were false identification and ticketing the individuals.

Representatives from the New York State Liquor Department said there were fly eggs, or maggots, in the alcohol, Trice said. The bar will be fined thousands of dollars for the selling of contaminated alcohol.

‘This is the first time this has happened since I was a sophomore,’ said Joe Dambroso, a senior in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management who was at Lucy’s tonight. ‘The last time I can remember was at Konrad’s and (Planet) 505.’

Dambroso was proud to say he is 21 years old. He showed his legal identification.

However, there was some confusion as to how many times raids have occurred.

Marc Ritt, a sophomore engineering major who works at Lucy’s as a bouncer, said this is the third time this has happened this semester.

As men and women exited the bar, they complained of the treatment they received from the police officers. One girl said a female officer busted into the woman’s room while she was using the restroom and she was kicked out even though she hadn’t been drinking that night. The girl said she was 18 years old.

Another man was waiting outside for almost 45 minutes trying to retrieve his coat from the coat room, he said. He showed his license to the police officer monitoring the door, and even though it showed he was 22 years old, he couldn’t get back inside.

All of the ticketed people will have to go to a court hearing to determine how much money the fine they receive will be, Trice said. Most of the ticketed people will get their charges dropped if they opt to participate in the Syracuse Police’s Project Responsibility, a program designed to keep underage people from drinking.

Published on February 9, 2006 at 12:00 pm