If this doesn’t make you shudder, you’ve got eisbock running through your veins. It appears the Volstead Act is alive and well in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. According to an account of Pennsylvania’s Beer Storm Troopers entitled Troopers Raid Popular Bars for Unlicensed Beers, by Don Russell, with Bob Warner, earlier today in the Philadelphia Daily News. What happened was three Philadelphia bars were raided simultaneously, Swat team-style, looking to confiscate — gasp — unlicensed beer brands. The police raid netted a few hundred bottles of beer, much of it lawfully registered. The cops simply couldn’t find many of the beers on their list because the names didn’t match exactly. For example, they took bottles of Duvel because the bottle reads “Duvel Belgian Golden Ale” but the PLCB (Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board) has it listed as “Duvel Beer.”
Perhaps more unsettling is the raids were prompted by “a citizen complaint,” but authorities are refusing to reveal the complainant. Whatever happened to the right to face one’s accuser as guaranteed by the 6th Amendment? [As Andy Crouch, lawyer by day, points out, the 6th Amendment pertains to criminal proceedings, which this was not.] That aside, what possible motive might someone have? Jealous competitor? Rabid neo-prohibitionist? Annoyed neighbor? I’m perplexed.
From the article:
“No actual investigating was done,” [bar owner Leigh] Maida said in an e-mail to the Daily News. “The police sent a shoddily typed list to the PLCB, some drone fed it into the machine verbatim and returned what came back, without . . . even trying to offer us the benefit of the doubt by double-checking on some of the so-called unregistered beers.”
“My main beef with this whole convoluted situation is that the PLCB is the sole regulator of a set of products that they do not even know the names of,” she said.
The State Police has given the bar owners until this evening to prove the beer was licensed, in effect making them prove their innocence. So in this case they’re presumed guilty unless they can show otherwise. Am I missing something? Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around? Either way, the confiscated beer will be held for 6-8 months. Given that it’s unlikely it will be stored cool, most of it will likely be ruined in that time, anyway.
No matter how you slice this, it sure seems like we’ve stepped into some alternate universe where McCathyism is going strong, only its target is no longer Communism, but beer.
UPDATE: Jack Curtin has some more information on this incident in the form of an e-mail from bar owner Leigh Maida with additional details.
UPDATE #2: Lew Bryson has some great stuff about the incident on his No PLCB Blog.
Hey Jay-
Not to be intentionally contrarian, but I’m having trouble getting too worked up over this whole PLCB/cop raid situation. At least one of these bar owners acknowledges having run afoul of the law by procuring a keg from outside the state and driving back to their bar and putting it on tap. Putting aside the issues of whether brand registration is a meaningful regulation and who share bear the financial burden for offering/selling products that are not registered, these bar owners likely know that several of these brands, especially the one-offs, are not registered in the state and that they are therefore violating the law in selling them. There is certainly an argument that the theatrical nature of the raids, from the undoubtedly one-sided reports we’ve been hearing, was over the top and that governmental (and certainly police) priorities could likely be better placed elsewhere. And there is room for criticism where the police confiscated beers whose names are somehow slightly altered from that found on the state’s lists. But these bar owners know how heavily the beverage alcohol business is regulated and they well know the rules in Pennsylvania and they’ve cleared flouted them on occasion. Someone, somewhere along the way, could very easily have noticed that a beer such as Pliny the Younger does not appear on the state’s list. Be it the distributor or the bar owner, rules are rules, stupid or not.
As to your Sixth Amendment point, the right of confrontation only applies in criminal proceedings, a point these raids have not yet (and hopefully will not) reached. The PLCB and cops are certainly within their authority to protect the identity of the informant/tattle-tale/competitor/actually concerned citizen.
Yeah, I get what you mean. I initially reacted viscerally not so much because of the underlying law, but because of the methods employed.
Well, maybe not strictly speaking a Sixth amendment violation by the police (you sure it’s not criminal?), but very probably a Fourth Amendment violation (“unreasonable siezure”; especially because it sounds like their paperwork didn’t properly identify beers) and/or Fifth (“deprived of […] property, without due process of law”); especially since it sounds like the beer will effectively be destroyed (rendered less tasty) regardless of whether or not the beer or bar is in violation of the law.
Yet another reason to never move out of California to some primitive backwards state. I love dropping into the Bistro, for example, to see what rare keg the proprietor has fetched in the back of his truck from some exotic brewery for his appreciative patrons.
easong, don’t get too happy about California as they contemplate going after coffee stouts (not to mention infusions). http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-241-Beer-Examiner~y2010m3d2-Coffee-ales-and-lagers-threatened-in-California
Maybe the PLCB can have a page on a web site somewhere listing the approved beers — using bar codes to identify them.
That way, the police or whoever could just enter in a short string of numbers instead of some name that might be shortened, etc.
Of course, most kegs aren’t bar coded for retail sale — but since you can buy a permanent bar code for something like $10 and print up a label on a computer — it shouldn’t be a big deal for breweries to comply.
Andy, only a lawyer could argue your points. The law is stupid and unjustified. Stupid and unjustified laws should be defied, not defended with the flabby response “well, it is the law, you know.”