Providing an almost contagious atmosphere, music festivals have skyrocketed in popularity, expanding \”festival season\” to almost a year-round possibility. But security and police officials believe that the exponentially growing number of attendees at these festivals, makes the crowds nearly impossible to control. Using statistics from 2014 HARD Summer festival, L.A. County sheriff\’s deputy Dan Whitten put 373 officers on the ground each day which collected over 4,700 work hours to monitor the 38,000 guests each day. Thanks to the intensity of the of the security checkpoints, pat downs, and drug-sniffing dogs, officials collected over 31 pounds of drugs. Even with that manpower, Whitten believes it\’s still \”impossible to police large-scale festivals\”.
Whitten made a statement in regards to the Live Nation event, “You just do all you can and try to keep people safe. My experience with Live Nation — they were very responsible. It cost them an arm and a leg, but they did everything we suggested that they do when it comes to safety. They had more medical staff than I’ve ever seen, every cop I wanted to put out there, they said ‘OK.’ ”
Spokeswoman from Live Nation, Melissa Zukerman also responded, “Live Nation plans to fully cooperate with the county supervisor’s request for an investigation. The festival plan was designed with direct input and approval from all the relevant county and government agencies as well as the fairground’s management.”
As festival deaths hit home, this year\’s HARD Summer suffered the tragedy of two teenage girl\’s drug-related deaths. L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis called for an investigation as well as a temporary ban on all rave-like occurrences. As much as security measures are constantly being increased and re-assessed, festivals are packed to such a capacity that sometimes they are too much to handle, even for an entire police force.
