WEST WARWICK — Town police officers yesterday learned about emerging tools and strategies for combating underage drinking, in a training session sponsored by the West Warwick Substance Abuse Task Force.

“Any tool we can give the Police Department to eliminate any death of a teen on the road is important,” said Assistant Attorney General Jay Sullivan, who led the session. Across the state, an average of two teenagers die each month in alcohol-related crashes, Sullivan said.

Officials of Substance Abuse task forces in East Providence as well as the Chariho Tritown Task Force — which serves Charlestown, Richmond and Hopkinton — also attended yesterday’s session.

The training sessions are financed with a three-year, $500,000 grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. West Warwick teens have been involved in at least two high-profile drunken-driving cases in the last year.

In March, Luisa Avila, a 46-year old mother of two, was killed when her Toyota Camry was struck by 17-year-old Graeme Kapko’s Volkswagen Jetta. Police say that Kapko had been at drinking at a house party before the accident. Kapko faces charges of driving to endanger with death resulting, a felony; and transportation of alcohol and possession of alcohol by a minor.

In March of last year, Darien Plass, 14, of Main Street, was killed when he drove his mother’s Ford minivan into a utility pole near their home after a night of drinking. Five hours later his friend Andrew Coit, 18, was grieving at the accident scene, where a makeshift memorial had been set up, when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Instead of focusing on a particular population of youth, the local task force thought about what else could be done to change the way residents look at underage drinking.

“We want to change the environment the kids live in,” said Nancy Devaney, grant manager for the task force. “We have to change the entire population –– not just the 8th- or 10th-graders.”

The grant helps pay for overtime details for the Police Department to participate in training sessions like yesterday’s, as well as for additional patrols for party control and other activities, Devaney said. Over the next two years, $78,000 of the grant will go toward staffing additional police patrols, Devaney said.

The task force has also been working with alcohol sellers to discourage underage sales and will soon provide devices to local liquor establishments to detect fake IDs. The agency has also launched an educational campaign, “Underage Drinking: Not a Minor Problem,” to raise awareness about the problem of youth drinking.

“People think underage drinking happens, that it’s a rite of passage,” Devaney said, “that all kids are doing it when that’s not the case. A large majority of kids aren’t doing it. Underage drinking is not okay.”

This is the third training session the task force has sponsored in the last two months, Devaney said. It opens up the sessions to other departments, to share the information and help educate as many officers as possible.

“We came here to learn more about what it is we can do to stop underage drinking,” said Danny Nesmith, program manager for the Chariho task force. “It’s an excellent training, where officers get a chance to have their questions answered.”

Officer Robin Spears Jr., of the Narragansett Tribal Police, said he took a notebook full of notes from the training session. Though his department normally works under federal and tribal laws, it is trying to become better versed in state laws, and sessions like yesterday’s are helpful, he said.

His colleague, Sgt. Edward McQuaide, agreed.

“It all boils down to the same bottom line,” he said. “Everyone wants to stop underage drinking, it doesn’t matter where you are.”

tbuford@projo.com