Oxford Police Department (OPD) officer Gregory Moore sighs when asked about the department’s preparation for Green Beer Day.

Moore, who has experienced 24 Green Beer Days, emphasized that the unofficial drinking holiday will be handled as it always has been.

“Our third-shifters are going to stay over a little later than they usually do and the day-shifters are going to come in a little earlier than they usually do,” Moore said.

John McCandless, Miami University police chief, said the Miami University Police Department (MUPD) also plans no exceptional or abnormal operations for Thursday. He added that while there are not necessarily extra officers on patrol, the department typically does not grant leave on GBD.

“We really don’t do anything incredibly out of the norm,” McCandless said, adding he anticipates no anomalous problems this year, either.

While there is an increase in OPD manpower, there will not be vastly more officers on duty than usual this Thursday, according to Moore. Rather, the strategy is shift overlap and public presence.

“We [aim to] saturate the city with patrols, hoping that our presence will prevent some acts from occurring,” Moore said, adding there will be officers on the streets and checking bars.

MUPD officers will be doubling up and collaborating with OPD Uptown Thursday, according to McCandless, which he said is quite normal.

Moore stated that many of the issues that make GBD extraordinary come not from the acts committed but from the environment in which they occur.

“Green Beer Day is nothing but a busy Friday night dropped into Oxford’s lap early Thursday,” Moore said.

Many more bystanders and residents may be affected by drunken revelry in the middle of a working day than on a late weekend night, according to Moore.

“There are a lot of observers who don’t know what Oxford on a Friday night really looks like, so we end up getting more calls for things that normally don’t get calls on a Friday night,” Moore said.

McCandless reiterated this.

“We worry about things we worry about anyway, but it’s magnified because we’re not used to people drinking in the morning hours.” McCandless said.

On the subject of some individuals continually drinking for an entire day, McCandless said MUPD’s greatest worry is binge drinking.

“What keeps us awake at night is the over-consuming of alcohol,” McCandless said.

Still intoxicated students driving from Oxford to their spring break destinations is a worry for MUPD as are assaults, many of which revolve around over-consumption of alcohol, according to McCandless.

Miami first-year Richard Vargas doesn’t understand the appeal of wasting an entire working day to drink.

“I don’t see why you can’t just go to class then get hammered… Last thing I want to do at 5 a.m. is get drunk,” Vargas said. “Why not just wait?”

It’s also a risky day to go Uptown, according to Vargas.

“It’s smarter to say at a frat house during the day so the cops don’t bust you,” he said.

Regardless of anyone’s expectations, local and university police are treating the 61-year-old drinking tradition like any other weekend, perhaps a bit amplified by daylight.