How to Protect Your Event from Fake or Stolen IDs
Underage attendees at music festivals evading detection can carry big ramifications for those running the show and serving alcohol. Whereas minors caught attending such events may be held accountable for a non-criminal offense with a small fine, those who allow them to purchase a controlled substance are likely to be met with misdemeanor charges, fines, and more.
Avoiding underaged drinking involves getting ahead of such problems well before they occur. Here are some preventative measures you can take to protect your business.
Take Proactive Steps
Festivals and large events are often difficult to effectively monitor. Once the event itself is underway, it may be too late to address the kinds of issues that a fake ID can cause. Ideally, you should be prepared ahead of time. Consider the following:
Create a Policy
To avoid lawsuits and criminal charges for incidents involving alcohol or any other controlled substances offered on-premises, you should be prepared to set ground rules and abide by them at all times.
A working policy for sales of controlled substances such as alcohol should be drawn up and thoroughly explained to all personnel. Details to cover include the following:
- Validating identity and age before a sale is made
- Refusing to serve any individual who appears to be visibly impaired
- Preventing intoxicated individuals from driving
- Consider making your policy publicly visible with appropriate signage as well, especially in spaces where alcohol will be available.
Create Consequences
Enforcement of your policy should be a top priority and establishing reasonable consequences for lapses in judgment can help discourage bad behavior. You should aim to create consequences for both personnel caught skirting the rules as well as patrons attempting to sidestep limits in any way.
- For patrons, this could mean cutting off their access to all alcohol across every one of the concessions stands at your event. You could also remove patrons who are visibly intoxicated from the premises to maintain a safe environment for other attendees.
- For staff, there should be clear consequences for failing to follow preventive measures in your policy.
Keep Records
Maintaining a record of what has been sold can go a long way in curtailing potential lawsuits and charges should anything go wrong at your event. However, there is more to keeping records of alcohol-related activity at your festival than logging sales. Records of the purchase of liquor should be kept as well.
Keeping a record of past fraudulent IDs that specific individuals have attempted to use can also be beneficial. Instead of being duped by the same person’s 2nd or 3rd fake ID, you can keep tabs on them for future reference.
Train Employees
Training your employees is essential if you want to ensure the rules you’ve set forth can actually be enforced. Without proper training, your employees could wind up making costly mistakes with long-lasting repercussions.
Staff at your festival should be instructed on how to process alcohol sales safely and what signs to look for when someone is trying to flout the rules. Making sure your team members request a valid ID from each patron before any alcohol is sold or given to them should be the first step taken to curb potential noncompliance risks.
It is important to consider the fact that a quick manual inspection of an ID is unlikely to be effective on its own.
As fake IDs have become more sophisticated, so too have the techniques needed to detect them. Spotting fake IDs manually requires skill and impeccable attention to detail. Even law enforcement officers have difficulty detecting modern fake IDs, especially when there are many IDs that need processing at once. The best solution is simply to use modern technology to your advantage instead.
Use Technology to Validate Your Patrons
The right advanced technology can effectively validate all the various types of official IDs you are likely to see at an event. In some cases, it can even keep track of people who have had too much. Intellicheck offers a powerful solution.
Intellicheck provides you and your team with a highly effective, easy-to-use mobile app that will work on any Android or Apple phone. Novice users can validate an ID in under a second and know if it is real or fake with 99.9% accuracy. The solution also offers “do not serve” lists to ensure that people don’t drink too much by going from stand to stand to see who will serve them.
Intellicheck is trusted by a wide variety of events providers and law enforcement throughout North America, and is the best way to avoid the consequences of losing the fake ID game. Contact us today to see how we can help fake ID proof your festival or large event.
