Wright City police will likely soon start recruiting underage confidential informants to conduct compliance checks at area convenience stores and similar businesses to ensure retailers are asking for identification when selling alcohol and tobacco products.

The new effort is a partnership with the Warren County Addiction Reduction Support (WARS) Coalition. WARS recently received grant funding for the program through the Missouri Department of Mental Health, according to Kim Rodriguez, a community strategist with nonprofit PreventEd who works closely with the WARS Coalition.

Part of the work Rodriguez has done with WARS has involved conducting a community assessment, she said during the Thursday, Aug. 27, Wright City Board of Aldermen meeting.

“And out of that community assessment we did some listening sessions with high school students, we’ve got surveys of middle school students, and what we’re finding is that high schoolers were telling us directly, ‘You need to go to the source of where we’re getting alcohol and these nicotine products, primarily vapes.’ They’re saying that they’re going to retailers and purchasing these products without getting their IDs checked,” Rodriguez said.

Compliance checks to make sure retailers are asking customers for ID are “an evidence-based intervention,” she added, “that’s been proven to work” in deterring alcohol and tobacco sales to minors.

“They do them in Troy, we work with Chesterfield PD, St. Louis County, different areas where they’re already doing compliance checks, and what we’d like to do in Warren County is just get a baseline,” Rodriguez said. 

“We have this data, we have this information from our young people. Let’s do some compliance checks and figure out: Is there a problem with some retailers selling these products to minors without checking IDs? And then go from there.”

Roridguez said she has been in discussions with Lt. Aaron Sutton of the Wright City Police Department, as well as the Missouri Department of Public Safety’s Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC), about the compliance check program for Warren County.

“We have funding where we can pay overtime for police officers, and we can also pay for the confidential informants, which would be your 18 or 19-year-olds that go out with the police officer to try to do these buys,” she said.

“If there’s mileage, if there’s fuel costs involved, we would be able to fund that, and then in turn, we would get the information from the police officers on what businesses passed and what businesses failed the compliance checks.”

In response to a question from Mayor Michelle Heiliger, Rodriguez said once a confidential informant successfully buys alcohol or tobacco, it would be up to local law enforcement whether citations or other penalties should be pursued. In the case of alcohol purchases, the ATC could also enforce penalties, she added.

Rodriguez said that for businesses that fail their compliance checks, one option is to offer an hour-long server training session through the ATC, which covers topics such as how to detect fake IDs.

Lt. Sutton said that, initially at least, the confidential informant program will aim at educating rather than punishing retailers. He added, however, that Wright City has already made attempts to educate local business owners about checking IDs, with limited success.

The Wright City Police Department has visited every business in town that sells alcohol or tobacco and handed out flyers for the ATC’s server training, Sutton said.

“I can tell you exactly how many people in the entire county showed up to it: Zero,” he said.

“So, with that in mind, they were warned. We gave them a heads up. But the first go-round of compliance checks, for sure, and I’m not 100 percent sure what to say for the future, but at least this first round that we do is definitely educational and informational, right, so we’re going to go around and find out which ones are in compliance, which ones are not.”

Sutton said he has already reached out to the Warrenton Police Department about participating in the program.

“They are very much onboard,” he said. “They are likely going to present it to their board here very soon also.”

One benefit of having multiple police departments involved in the program is that confidential informants from Wright City could be used for Warrenton compliance checks, and vice versa, Rodriguez said, and potentially have more success due to their not being a familiar face in the community.

In response to a question from Heiliger, Rodriguez said the compliance check program will not target bars that only allow people 21 and older to enter, or marijuana dispensaries, because the underage informants would be breaking the law simply by entering those establishments. She said she was not sure of the rules for restaurants that allow minors and also serve alcohol.

“We would be doing primarily convenience stores, and then there’s some vape shops and things that don’t really have a requirement on that as well,” she said.

In response to a question from Alderwoman Karey Owens, Rodriguez said the confidential informant program would not be open to people who have already turned 21.

“If we want ATC, Alcohol and Tobacco Control, to be able to step in and look up penalties, they have to be 18 or 19,” she said. “That’s the only ages they can be to comply with the ATC regulation.”

Owens said she was “very much in favor” of the confidential informant program, having participated in a similar effort as one of her “little side hustles” in college. Alderman Don Andrews similarly said he has seen first-hand the success such efforts can have.

“I did this as an explorer with the police department when I was teenager, so I’m all for it,” Andrews said.

Heiliger said police should try to recruit confidential informants who are already hoping to pursue a career in police work or a similar field.

“If we could find people who are interested, like their goal is to go into law enforcement or criminal justice, it would be kind of a path and an experience toward what they’re doing,” she said.

Sutton said the compliance checks can also be valuable experience for his officers, especially those that don’t have previous experience with things like undercover narcotics purchases, which have many similarities to the compliance check operations.

The Wright City Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to approve the confidential informant program.

For those businesses that pass their compliance checks, Sutton and Rodriguez said there could be some kind of public recognition. The city will have until the end of June 2027 to implement its confidential informant program and spend the WARS grant money.