As Summer Camp (2014) ends, the massive cleanup begins

Peoria Journal Star
May 2014
By Zach Berg 

CHILLICOTHE — Thousands of music fans slowly shuffled out of Three Sisters Park as the rising sun signaled the end of the Summer Camp Music Festival Monday morning.

The exodus of music fans may only take a day or two, but the cleaning of Three Sisters Park will take a couple of weeks of effort by many employees and volunteers.

Robyn Bowling of Bartonville sat under the entrance tent as hundreds and hundreds of people, with everything from tents to beers under their arms, walked back to the multitude of cars parked on the edges of the park. Bowling was a member of the event’s safety team, and as such, still had a lot of work to do.

“Everybody on the way out has been very nice. They’re telling us thank you for a great weekend of music,” Bowling said. “Now there’s mass confusion as people have realized what they’ve lost. People are needing jumper cables. I’m just here to be as helpful as possible.”

Bowling helped those in need find lost items and told individuals where they could find a locksmith to unlock a car and make new keys, but she had more to do as the day went on. “Later I’ll be searching tents and helping get those stragglers who haven’t left get out of here,” Bowling said with a chuckle.

“There will be a few straggling cars in the parking lot tomorrow,” Mike Armintrout, marketing director of Jay Goldberg Events and Entertainment, which puts on the festival, said. “Basically, a whole lot less cars and a whole lot less people tomorrow, but we will be here for awhile cleaning up.”

The cleaning process will take volunteers and employees a week or two as they tear down stages and tents while also picking up bottles and cups. In order to combat masses of garbage, those that planned the event used preemptive measures to make sure the park stayed clean.

“Our Green Team has been doing a good job cleaning as the weekend went. We had a sorting system on site, 10 to 15 people at a time separating garbage from recyclable and compostable materials,” Armintrout said. Anything not properly thrown away will be found by dozens of employees and volunteers combing the park for garbage over the next two weeks.

Though Armintrout talked about how the weather was nice the whole weekend and how that the event may have drawn more people than any previous Summer Camp before, he also knew that there was still a lot of work to be done to clean up.

(originally posted at http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140526/NEWS/140529285)

Drug agents keep pace at Summer Camp (2014)

Now, just be sure to take all this information in context...compare the arrests (type & number of them at the festival) from past years (say, oh, 2013...) and now (2014...future??)... Read on!!

Peoria Journal Star
May 2014
By Matt Buedel

CHILLICOTHE — Undercover drug agents seized more than three pounds of marijuana and a rainbow of other drugs during a 2014 Summer Camp Music Festival that resulted in a dozen of the most serious drug charges — Class X felonies.

Overall arrests between the Peoria Multi-County Narcotics Enforcement Group and Chillicothe Police Department, however, were slightly down in a year that saw increased attendance because of favorable festival weather.

“I think we were down a little bit, but we were also down manpower. More agents and more manpower certainly would have resulted in more arrests, but I’m happy with the results,” P-MEG Director Dave Briggs said Wednesday. “Our goal isn’t to go out there and arrest everyone. We just want to keep up with the drug trafficking out there, and I think we did.”

Agents with P-MEG made 37 arrests over the course of the festival, including assisting Illinois State Police troopers with traffic stops on the first day attendees began arriving at Three Sisters Park. Of those arrests, 12 people were booked on Class X felonies; seven on Class 1 felonies; three on Class 2 felonies; five on Class 3 felonies; and 10 on Class 4 felonies.

Agents also seized $11,762 cash, more than a pound and a half of psilocybin mushrooms, nearly half a pound of pills or powder being sold as Ecstasy, more than a thousand hits of LSD, various tanks of nitrous oxide and small amounts of cocaine and heroin.

“I think it went very well from a public safety standpoint,” said Peoria County State’s Attorney Jerry Brady. “It appeared the arrests were significant amounts of drugs, and that’s what we want to address.”

Chillicothe police made 42 arrests over the holiday weekend on the festival grounds and throughout the city, said Chief Scott Mettille. Six of those were felony controlled substance arrests, two were driving under the influence charges and the rest were ordinance violations for small amounts of marijuana or drug paraphernalia.

“There were no huge problems, and citizen complaints about the noise were actually down compared to past years,” Mettille said. “The summer campers we arrested once again were polite and courteous — they were relieved it was an ordinance violation, rather than a criminal charge going on their state criminal history.”

Mettille said his numbers, too, were down slightly from the previous year, but like P-MEG, he was down personnel for the holiday weekend.

Medical treatment at the festival more closely mirrored the increased attendance numbers, with a record number of patients treated for mostly mundane health needs, said Troy Erbentraut from the Peoria Area Emergency Medical Services group.

Each year, PAEMS uses the festival as a live training exercise to set up the mobile eight-bay emergency department and home of the Region 2 Emergency Response Team. More than 450 patients crossed the threshold of the blue, climate-controlled tent with a pneumatic frame this year.

“There was a lot of wound care issues. We removed some ticks and there were cuts from glass bottles that I hadn’t seen before,” Erbentraut said.

While the strong storms the previous year brought two trauma patients for treatment after a tree limb fell on their camp, the dry, dusty conditions presented different challenges this year.

“Everyone who had asthma who bought a ticket came to see us,” Erbentraut said. “We saw a lot of respiratory issues.”

(originally posted at http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140528/News/140528943)