Local bar confiscates legal Pa. identification

Olympia is cracking down on confiscating fake IDs — as well as confiscating real IDs.

On Friday, Feb. 25, Amanda Musselman, 22, and Courtney Lucci, 21, went to Olympia Bar and Sports Grill to enjoy free drinks for ladies night. Unfortunately, they never made it past the front door.

"When (Lucci) handed her ID to the bouncer, he said, ‘Oh, you have a Pa. (Pennsylvania) ID, my manager has requested we give them to him to verify them,'" said Musselman, a junior majoring in special education. "I said you might as well take mine too since I have a Pa. ID."

When the manager checked the IDs with a blacklight, he turned to the bouncer and said, "These are both fake; confiscate them."

 "He said he knew every state in the country puts a hologram image of the person in the bottom corner and that ours didn't have that," Musselman said. "We kept trying to tell him that Pennsylvania doesn't do that."  

Every state has specific features on licenses to ensure validity. There are also I.D. Checking Guides businesses can purchase to help identify fraudulent IDs.

The girls said the manager also told them there was an increase in fake Pa. IDs from a particular website and they had already busted 10 people earlier that week.

"He pulled out his own Fla. ID to show us his hologram and why ‘ours are fake…' He continued to get rude and belligerent with us," Musselman said.

Lucci, a senior majoring in marketing, pulled out her credit card to verify it was from Pennsylvania.  "He says, ‘Of course you'd get a credit card that matches your ID,'" Lucci said.

By this time, the girls just wanted to leave. But the manager would not return their IDs, even though Musselman said she'd provide her car registration to prove her identification.

"I said I'm not leaving without my license," Musselman said. "He said I can call the sheriff and he'd tell me it was a felony. So we decided to call the sheriff."

"People in line were making comments to the bouncers … one person said, ‘I think they're telling the truth — who would've put up this much of a fight for a fake ID?'" Lucci said.

When the deputy pulled up, the manager told the girls to "come on." The girls didn't move because they couldn't see the sheriff, and the manager said, "Well, you wanted to talk to the cops? He's here, you want to talk to him."

"As soon as we got in front of the officer, the manager's attitude changed," Musselman said. "Suddenly, he was a lot calmer. He also changed his story from saying ‘all 50 states had a hologram' to saying, ‘the states he was familiar with' had a hologram."

The manager also told the girls if he was wrong, they'd get top shelf on him for the rest of the night.

"It's 12:40 a.m. (by) now and they stop serving around 1:15 a.m… Five minutes of top shelf when I would've been drinking free anyway? That doesn't do me any good," Musselman said.

After the deputy verified their identities and returned their IDs, the girls sought out the manager for a final word.

"All I want at this point is an apology," Lucci said. "I have respect for what they do … because if there is underage drinking, it's their responsibility. But he was just being completely disrespectful — just yelling (at us) and wouldn't have a conversation (with us). It was completely rude and almost humiliating, yelling at us in front of people, making us seem guilty when we had done nothing wrong."

However, when the manager came out and talked to the deputy, the manager simply beckoned the girls inside saying, "Come on ladies, let's go."

"I said, ‘No, we're not going anywhere. We're leaving,'" Musselman said. "He said, ‘All right, well have a good night,' and went inside."

The girls thanked the deputy, returned to their vehicle and spent their night at Ale House.

Neither plans on returning to Olympia.

"I'm not going to support a business that handles (incidents) that way and finds it OK," Lucci said. "It made me lose so much respect … you can't even say sorry?"

"I've never been treated like that in my entire life by management, anywhere," Musselman said. "(I'm not going back) as long as he is still working there."

The Lee County Sheriff's Office has the incident documented, but no official report was filed because the IDs weren't fraudulent.

Several calls were made to Olympia to get a response to the girls' accusations. A man who identified himself only as Chris finally answered and said he was a manager at Olympia, but would not provide his last name or a comment about this incident.