Whether it’s in the puckerbrush or their parent’s basement, underage drinkers are going to have a harder time partying this spring and summer.

Between grants from the state and collaboration among departments, police are using their resources to ramp up efforts to catch underage drinkers.

For the second year, the Office of Substance Abuse in the Department of Health and Human Services issued $2,000 grants to communities that submitted proposals to reduce youth access to alcohol. This year, nine local law enforcement agencies received the grants, including Cape Elizabeth, South Portland, Gorham and Westbrook police departments.

The grants are meant to be used to pay officers overtime in order to complete underage drinking details, in which officers go out solely with the purpose of finding underage drinkers.

Erica Schmitz, director of 21 Reasons, an underage drinking prevention community coalition that oversees the distribution of the grants, said police departments tend to conduct the majority of their underage drinking patrols as the weather gets warmer and proms and graduations are being held almost every weekend.

South Portland police have already completed five underage drinking details, where officers checked out “all different places around town” where underage drinking typically occurs, according to Officer Bob Scarpelli.

Scarpelli said golf courses and wooded areas tend to be popular drinking spots. Police also keep their eyes out for teens on the street with backpacks full of alcohol.

“You can assume they’re not carrying clothes to go over someone’s house,” he said.

Scarpelli said cell phones make it easier for underage drinkers to stay in touch with each other and send out warnings when police are around.

“Kids are a lot more mobile,” he said. “We try to stay one step ahead of them.”

According to Officer Mark Dorval of the Cape Elizabeth Police Department, underage drinkers have learned some tricks to evading police, like shuttling each other to parties to avoid lining streets with cars – a dead giveaway that there’s a party nearby.

“We’ve got to do our homework,” Dorval said.

In Cape Elizabeth, from the woods to the beaches to Fort Williams, there are “so many places that are appealing for kids to go and drink,” Dorval said.

In order to cut down on house parties when parents are out of town, the Cape police department has implemented a program where parents can register their houses to be checked on when they’re away.

“It’s a great deterrent,” Dorval said.

Westbrook police will be adding the same program this spring, according to Capt. Tom Roth.

Roth has been working with Cape Elizabeth and South Portland police through another $6,000 grant issued by the Office of Substance Abuse. The three departments share tactics and approaches to dealing with underage drinking.

“This is always going to be a pervasive problem,” Roth said, but he believes that the message has begun to get out that underage drinking – in Westbrook, at least – isn’t as easy anymore.

Roth said when Westbrook teens were caught drinking in Portland recently, they said there was a reason they crossed the border – it’s too hard to drink without getting caught in Westbrook.

“I don’t want to move the problem,” Roth said. “I want the perception to be, if you’re doing this, there’s a good chance you’re going to get caught.”

Though local youth are at odds with police when it comes to underage drinking, the young people who don’t drink are a valuable resource for officers combating the problem.

Gorham Youth Voices is a group of young people in Gorham who discuss issues that teens are facing and plan activities that don’t involve drinking in order to give teejs options for how to spend their Saturday nights.

A similar group in Westbrook, the Leadership Resilience Program, based at the Mission Possible Teen Center, recently held a teen fun night, which included a hip hop class, a cooking class, flower pot painting and watching movies.

Now, the group is finishing up a project for which they designed business cards advising high school students to stay sober at the prom. The cards are being handed out along with corsages and boutonnires from local florist Harmon’s and Barton’s.

In South Portland, Scarpelli works with teens in an interactive theater group called Students Teaching Other People, or STOP. The members perform skits for their peers about facing tough decisions during which the audience can ask questions.

South Portland and Gorham police also work with teens, visiting local business and slapping stickers on beer and liquor they’re selling with warnings about the penalties of providing alcohol to people under 21.

Because of the University of Southern Maine campus in Gorham, police there also work with the Higher Education Alcohol Prevention Partnership to educate local retailers about what to look for in an ID to determine whether it’s real.

Gorham, Westbrook and University of Southern Maine police are also working together through a $15,000 grant from the Office of Substance Abuse to catch college students who are drinking illegally. Roth said Westbrook got involved in that effort because police found out that many students from the Gorham campus live in the city.

Though Gorham’s underage drinking issues are unique to the other communities because of the college campus’ presence, according to Lt. Chris Sanborn, the local youth who are drinking can’t be ignored.

“That’s what we’re trying to utilize this funding for,” he said about the $2,000 grant from the state.

During a detail in April, Sanborn said, police issued eight summonses for possession of alcohol by a minor in one night. But writing tickets and handing out fines isn’t what’s at the heart of their effort, according to Dorval.

“We just want to make the community a safer place,” he said.

Since underage drinking is a civil offense, police issue summonses, rather than arrest the teens. According to the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, fines vary, depending on the number of prior offenses. For a first offense, the minimum fine is $200 and the maximum is $400. For those under age 18, community service is also usually imposed.

Furnishing a place for minors to consume liquor is, however, a criminal offense. It’s punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and 48 hours in jail.