State Patty’s Day EMS Calls Decline

For the second consecutive year, emergency medical service personnel in the State College area saw a decrease in calls during State Patty’s Day weekend.

But once again, the majority of those calls were alcohol-related.

Centre LifeLink EMS responded to 34 calls between 6 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Sunday, coinciding with the Penn State student-created drinking holiday weekend.

About 75 percent of those calls were alcohol-related, ‘meaning that the patient had overdosed on alcohol or had suffered some other illness or injury that was related to alcohol consumption,’ according to Centre LifeLink.

In 2018, Centre LifeLink responded to 50 calls during State Patty’s weekend, 80 percent of which were alcohol-related. That was a decrease from the 95 total calls in 2017, about one-third of which were alcohol-related. 

According to a state police news release, a liquor control enforcement patrol on Saturday resulted in 14 citations for underage possession or consumption of alcohol and four citations for public drunkenness.

Police have not yet released their total numbers of calls for service and arrests from the weekend. State College and Penn State police were joined on weekend patrols by the four other local departments in Centre County as well Pennsylvania State Police and liquor control enforcement.

Last year, police made arrests or issued citations in a total of 160 cases, an increase over the previous two years, but saw a decline in the total number of calls for service with 183.