PORTSMOUTH — The parents of a teenage girl who suffered alcohol poisoning and hypothermia at a binge drinking party, as well as other parents whose children may have knowledge of the incident, are refusing to cooperate with a police investigation that seeks to trace the source of the liquor, police Chief Lance Hebert said yesterday.

Several parents, including the parents of the 14-year-old girl, initially indicated they would cooperate with the investigation but have changed their minds, Hebert said.

“We are at a standstill,” he said.

The parents “feel they want to handle this on their own,” Hebert said.

The police understand that “the first human instinct” of parents is to protect their children, he said.

“But sometimes by protecting them, then they are not doing them any good,” Hebert said.

And by not cooperating with the police, the parents are “not setting a good example,” he said.

The chief said the public attention drawn to the incident prompted parents to change their minds about cooperating with the police — even though the mother of the girl who fell ill took the initiative to let other parents know about the binge drinking as a cautionary tale.

He said that “media attention is good when all fronts agree on the end point.”

But in this case, the police and others concerned with drug and alcohol abuse in the community disagreed.

Some said they believed the incident served as a catalyst for issues that deserve extensive public discussion.

But the police did not want a spotlight on their investigation in this case.

“Any time the police are doing an investigation and the rumor mill starts, it’s more difficult to do our jobs,” Hebert said.

The mother of the girl who became ill asked high school principal Robert Littlefield to share the story, with the cautionary message that parents should check to confirm their children’s whereabouts.

In an e-mail message to high school parents, Littlefield said the teenagers gathered around a bonfire in the woods to drink the weekend of Jan. 19-20.

When the 14-year-old girl passed out, no one perceived the danger until a stranger — another youngster of driving age — came upon the group and took the girl home.

Her parents called 911, and rescue workers rushed her to a hospital, where she was treated.

Littlefield’s message said the drinking party could have been prevented with a couple of phone calls.

“With the sensationalizing of the entire event, it put parents on the defensive,” Hebert said.

They feel they or their children might be charged with a crime, he said, or that the children’s names might become public.

All kinds of pressures have been brought to bear on the parents, Hebert said.

Hebert said the police do not have a legal case against youngsters who may have gotten drunk two and a half weeks ago.

Nor are the police interested in prosecuting young people when there are other alternatives, such as referrals to community agencies or to the town’s Juvenile Hearing Board.

The police have made it clear to the parents that the investigation is not about punishing teenagers who got drunk one night but about finding any adults who provided the alcohol for the underage party, Hebert said.

Hebert said the parents have indicated they “don’t want their kids giving up names.”

In all, the police seek to interview “more than a half-dozen people,” including several underage teens who cannot talk to the police without parental permission and those who have reached the age of 18 and are legally adults.

Lawyers for the older teens have told the police their clients will not cooperate, Hebert said.

In the last two decades, Portsmouth has come “a long way” in curbing teenage drinking binges like the latest party, he said.

Such incidents do not occur as frequently as they once did, the chief said, drawing from his personal experience as a police officer in town for the last 20 years.

The police have an “excellent relationship” with businesses in town that sell alcohol and are required to check identification cards for proof of age, he said.

And the police have a history of cooperating with parents, to the extent that the police have tipped off parents who plan a weekend away that their children are planning a party in their absence.

In the past, parents have asked the police to keep an eye on their houses or have given the police advance permission to enter their homes in their absence, Hebert said.

The investigation into the source of the alcohol for the most recent party remains open, he said.

But the police are experiencing “frustration, as is usual in our line of work,” he said.

gmacris@projo.com