SALEM — A downtown restaurant will lose its liquor license for three days following one of the biggest underage drinking busts in city history.
Bangkok Paradise, 90 Washington St., had become so popular with under-21 drinkers that it was getting mentioned on Facebook and MySpace, two popular Internet social networking sites, police said.
Police found 13 underage drinkers, mostly college students, there one night during the January winter break.
"We looked it up (on Facebook), and they said they were 'going to Bangkok tonight,'" Detective William Jennings said.
A hearing on the incident was held Monday night before the Licensing Board.
Phone calls from parents and inquiries from city officials, along with the Internet mentions, prompted police to stage a sting at the Thai restaurant on Jan. 17.
Police said they sent two undercover operatives — students from Endicott College in Beverly, criminal justice interns working with the department — inside the restaurant to order drinks on that Thursday night. One was 21 years old and the other 20, police said.
Jennings sat in an unmarked car in front of the restaurant, while Detective Peter Baglioni kept an eye on the back entrance.
Jennings said he saw at least a half-dozen former Salem High students, all of whom he knew to be underage, enter the restaurant. One girl was even dropped off by her mother, he said.
Inside, the Endicott students called Jennings on a cell phone to say they had ordered drinks without being asked for identification. They also said they saw a large group of young people drinking at a nearby table and did not see any of them carded either.
When police entered, they found the group sitting at a large table with beers and mixed drinks and no food. The students admitted they were underage and said they had not been asked for IDs, Jennings said. The waiter also admitted not asking the customers for identification, police said.
"He told me he did not card the group of kids," the detective told the Licensing Board.
The Licensing Board suspended the restaurant's liquor license for April 28 to 30 and ordered every employee to take an alcohol server's training course. Bangkok Paradise was told that, until the training is done, every customer ordering liquor, regardless of age, must be asked for identification.
Although this is a first offense for underage drinking, the board said it was taking strong action because of the number of violations and because it appeared illegal drinking had been going on for some time.
"Clearly, this was not a one-time event," Licensing Board Chairman David Shea said.
Board member John Casey said he feared that the restaurant "has morphed from a restaurant to a nightclub."
Bangkok Paradise did not dispute the charges at the hearing Monday night, but blamed the violations on a new employee who did not know the law.
A lawyer for the restaurant said the business is a popular dining spot, has a good record and has not had violations like this in the past. He said the longtime owner instructs employees to card any customer who looks young and said doormen check IDs on Friday and Saturday nights.
After the bust, the underage drinkers were loaded into a van and taken to the police station. The large group was not charged, police said, but was shown a holding cell, warned about the dangers and penalties of underage drinking, and turned over to their parents.
"I don't think we've ever taken that many kids out of a bar like that before," Jennings said.
