Amish Girls Gone Wild

The waitress interrupts, asking if anyone needs anything. June mischievously eyes Tina. "I'll have one more," she says.

As forgiving as June's family may be, the law is not.

While police elsewhere in rural Ohio focus on meth labs and wife-beaters, Middlefield's cops have a curious fetish for busting the Amish.

June was first pinched at 17. She and her friends had killed a six-pack before hopping in a buggy to buy more. They noticed a cop trailing them and stuffed their mouths with Listerine strips just before they were pulled over. It was no use. Everyone was forced to take a field sobriety test. June failed miserably. The cop delivered her home.

Tina was once cruising around town with her cousins when one accidentally dropped a 12 of Bud into the street. They were instantly pulled over. "They'd been trailing us for a while," Tina says. "I wasn't even drunk, but they're always following buggies around."

Locher wags his head in agreement. "You'll never see a buggy parked in front of a bar," he says. "They're instant targets."

Former Chardon Municipal Court Judge Craig Albert admits as much, but cites safety as the reason. "The car will go right into a ditch," Albert says. "But the horses will go right through an intersection. These kids will get in their buggies and pass out and just let the horses head home on their own."

After four years of dealing with the law, Tina and June are now well practiced in deceiving it.

The last time Tina was pulled over, she was riding shotgun, alcohol wafting off her porcelain skin. Though she wasn't driving, she was forced to take a field test. When she failed to walk a straight line, she invoked her diabetes. "I told him my sugar was low," she says. "I really do have diabetes, so I got out my stuff and started testing my sugar, and they let me go."

Then there was the time she passed out on the side of the road. Next thing she knew, she was waking up in a patch of grass to an officer's flashlight. "I showed him my ID, and he was like, 'You're Amish?!?" she says. "He just let me go."

Others aren't so lucky.

In 2000, Geauga County Amish leaders asked police to help curb public drinking. Albert, now a Geauga County Commissioner, was happy to take the job. "He'd always cuss out the Amish when they were caught drinking," Tina says.

If an Amish kid walked into Albert's courtroom, he or she could be sure to spend a weekend in jail. Albert says he was simply honoring elders' wishes. "It was usually enough just to give them a weekend in jail," he says. "After that, they'd never come before you again."

Albert's tactics have proven effective. These days, you'll find few Amish driving buggies home drunk -- and even fewer at the bars. "It's been quite some time since we've had any negative run-ins with the Amish community," says Middlefield Sergeant Michael Fabian. "When we see them leaving bars, they usually catch rides. But, for the most part, they're not out at the bars much anymore."

It's around 1 a.m. and Twister's has filled out nicely.

Amish guys in straw hats and bowl cuts keep to themselves, playing a video scavenger-hunt game. The rest of the room talks loudly over the Pussycat Dolls and Fergie. Tina and Martha are the only Amish girls to be found.

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me, they sing.

After several hours of drinking, they are the color of fleshy nectarines, ready to mingle. A glassy-eyed Yank approaches. "You got a cell phone?" he asks a blushing Tina. "Can I call you some -- I mean, what's your number?"

As Tina recites it, he drunkenly punches in the digits while struggling to keep his balance. He flashes the phone at a friend before turning back to Tina. "They bet me 20 bucks I couldn't get your number," he says.

Then he erases it, making clear that she's nothing more than the punch line. "Thanks," he says, oblivious to the embarrassment he's planted on Tina's face.

She doesn't say anything as he walks away. She's used to the rudeness of shit-faced Yanks.

Just the week before, a group of middle-aged men sat next to her, going on about having sex with Amish girls. "They were talking about Amish pussy and if I wanted to have a threesome," she remembers.