The Summer of Busts | high times

Although the summer of 2023 was packed with great music events, from jam band retirements to EDM get-togethers, there was also the unfortunate reality of drug-related police operations, which resulted in numerous arrests and the confiscation of large amounts of party favors.

Much of this article will revolve around a specific location where some of the drug raids — along with a tragic mass shooting — took place: the idyllic Gorge Amphitheater in Grant County, Washington, an iconic venue on the banks of the Columbia River in the eastern part of the state.

The canyon was the site of the latest music event to be tainted by drug arrests: the Bass Canyon Music Festival, a celebration of EDM (electronic dance music) held over the weekend of August 18-20. The Grant Co Sheriff’s Department arrested 13 people and seized $20,000 worth of merchandise, including cocaine, LSD and ketamine, and cannabis. Although weed has been legal in Washington for over a decade, it is still against the law to sell it without a license.

The Grant Co. Sheriff’s Department conducted a total of 14 separate investigations. Her heightened reaction stemmed from an earlier shooting at the same concert venue in June – more on that story to come.

In its official statement to the media, the sheriff’s department appeared to rationalize its overzealous operation, explaining that the concert site can accommodate up to 25,000 people, the same population as nearby small towns. However, modern music festivals have always been such cramped conditions, and the vast majority run smoothly without the need for an intrusive police presence.

Similar drug raids were also carried out on the East Coast, including at the Elements Festival in Long Pond in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. A total of 11 people were arrested and charged with selling various substances to festival-goers at a self-proclaimed “autocamping” electronic music festival held over the weekend of August 11-14.

The increased police scrutiny this year was reportedly prompted by overdoses at Elements Fest the year before, in 2022. The Sheriff’s Department’s claims again raise the question that the priority should be to provide people with proper medical care, with the use of safe substances first. Because no matter how big or small the police presence actually is, people will take drugs at festivals and concerts because most dealers don’t get caught.

It was an actual shooting — not just an overdose — at the Beyond Wonderland EDM Festival, held at the gorge on Saturday, June 17, that made national headlines. Two people were horribly shot and two others were injured – including the shooter’s girlfriend, who left her with permanent injuries. The festival’s Sunday schedule was promptly canceled after the mass shooting.

It is worth noting that the two murder victims were an engaged same-sex female couple; They were walking together when Kelly shot her. A man who wanted to help the victims, as well as the suspect’s girlfriend mentioned above, were shot and wounded. The accused gunman, 26-year-old James Kelly, who was captured at the festival site, is an active duty soldier stationed in Washington state. It is not yet known whether the shootings were politically motivated or not. Kelly claimed it was a nasty “mushroom trip” that prompted him to shoot down his fellow concert-goers, which the mainstream media was quick to exploit in their coverage of the shooting. Full of thoughts about the end of the world during one of the concert performances, the stumbling Kelly, police were told, rushed back to his tent where his gun awaited indiscriminate firing.

The Wonderland incident provided all the justifications needed for an intricately coordinated, multi-agency operation to carry out excessive drug activities during popular jam band Dead and Company’s farewell tour of the Gorge on July 7-8.

Dead & Co.’s arrests involved the Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team (INET), the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, the Moses Lake Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit, and the Homeland Security Investigations, meaning the U.S. government was involved.

Various substances with an estimated combined retail value of over $200,000 were seized, including over 28,000 grams of weed, dabs and edibles, as well as cola, shrooms, molly and acid. A total of 13 people were arrested for drug-related offenses.

The Grant County Sheriff’s Office released an official statement about the arrest on its Facebook page on July 12, in which it did not apologize for the arrests and seizures:

“The Gorge Amphitheater encourages law enforcement proactivity at its concerts, which are known to have an illicit drug culture based on the number of overdoses and incidents over the years.” The statement also referenced the recent EDM festival shooting .

However, the Sheriff’s Department failed to address the main issue of the Wonderland incident, which was not the mushrooms but the firearm that was illegally brought onto the concert site, which is prohibited under the venue’s official rules. While psychedelic mushrooms were also banned, this substance cannot be used as a weapon to impulsively kill innocent people. Law enforcement had no comment on an apparent plan to prevent future gun violence in the canyon, focusing solely on the drugs.

The arrests and confiscations at the Gorge weren’t the first time during Dead & Co.’s two-month summer tour that major arrests at one of their performances made headlines. When the band performed at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (aka SPAC) in upstate New York on June 17-18, local law enforcement was in overdrive. So packed, in fact, that the New York State Park Police reported that these two D&C shows were among the busiest they’d ever experienced in terms of drug busts and some actual violent crimes they had to deal with at the venue. Park police confiscated LSD, cocaine, shrooms, ketamine, meth, scales, and even black market “packages.” In addition, 54 tanks of nitrous oxide were seized, over 30 people arrested and $33,000 in cash seized from a hapless drug dealer.

Concerts by Phish, the biggest jam band outside of Dead & Co., also saw unwanted — and possibly unwarranted — treatment from law enforcement. As phish fans reported on Reddit, along with photos visually corroborating the claim, a circulated memo revealed that a joint effort by federal and local law enforcement agencies had targeted two phish shows that took place in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, should take place.

In a memo circulated far and wide on the Internet, the document was headlined “Washington County Sheriff’s Office,” with the addition of “Internal Dissemination Only.” The subject line read, “Joint County Task Enforcement Operation ‘Phish in a Barrel’,” with the next line noting that the operation was scheduled to be conducted July 21-22, 2023 at Star Lake Amphitheater, a concert venue outside of Pittsburgh.

The memo listed the “chain of command” of the various agencies allegedly involved in this operation in hierarchical order identified by phonetics: “Ops Alpha” was the Department of Homeland Security, “Ops Bravo” was the Sheriff of Washington Co and “Ops Charlie” was the infamous Drug Enforcement Administration, just to scare even more of anyone who believes in that printed chicanery.

The memo called Highway 22 the “primary checkpoint” and Highway 18 the “secondary” checkpoint where anti-drug squads with colorful nicknames like “Team Wolverine” and “Team Badger” would crack down on any potential party-phish fans . Perhaps using a codename based on an actual animal-based Phish song like “Ocelot” or “Possum” would have been too obvious.

Although the memo was deliberately comical in hindsight, this document was firmly believed by the Phish and the wider jam band community for a time prior to these concerts.

So much so that Washington Co Sheriff Tony Andronas felt compelled to post on his Facebook page that “Phish in a Barrel” was indeed a fake and that a similar prank was actually pulled on the Virginia State Police in 2018 had been. In this case, as in this most recent case, none of the perpetrators could be identified.

Despite the hoax, it turned out that the presence of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department at these phish shows was still extremely unwelcome, as the officers were actually on the Star Lake “lawn” (the general admission area behind the seats) stopped, documented both visually and visually on social media. It wasn’t a scam/prank this time, as photos posted to Reddit showed police disrupting the good spirits of concert-goers and issuing tickets to those who only smoked weed on the lawn.

Given the widespread paranoia over the “Phish in a Barrel” hoax and all the excessive actual coast-to-coast raids, it goes to show that law enforcement at festivals and concerts continues to prioritize drug control over public safety — so let the attendee on be the hat.