Coachella uses vast security ops to keep festival safe

Coachella uses vast security ops to keep festival safe

Every security agency from the FBI to the FAA will have their eyes on the desert this weekend as tens of thousands of people stream into the Empire Polo Club grounds for the start of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

For the past 10 months, Indio and Goldenvoice officials have worked through every detail of putting on the festival. Security is a big part of that conversation, Community Services Supervisor Jim Curtis said, and involves all levels of law enforcement and safety preparedness.

As per the agreement between Goldenvoice and the city of Indio, the festival promoter is required to have a safety operation plan for Coachella that includes medical, police and fire services. The city coordinates police, contracted security, medical services and outside law enforcement, but Goldenvoice is required to reimburse it for any out-of-pocket costs. Private security guards patrol nearby neighborhoods and campgrounds and the city has a concert hotline set up at (760) 391-4112 that locals can call with questions or concerns.

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Indio police Sgt. Dan Marshall and Curtis said they couldn’t disclose the details of their safety planning, but Marshall said there are contingency plans for everything from a natural disaster to a mass shooting.

“We have staging areas throughout the city; we have plans to get people out as fast as possible; we have plans to shelter people in place,” he said. “We’re definitely not a soft target like somebody might think.”

Historically, there have been few major incidents during the Coachella festival weekends, excluding the believed overdoses of two attendees in 2013 and 2008.

Last year, police arrested 226 people over the two Coachella weekends — less than 0.1 percent of the number of people who attended the festival. The vast majority of arrests were citations for drug and alcohol-related offenses. No violent crimes were recorded except for a misdemeanor domestic violence incidence.

“We take each year as its own year, but we do know that the majority of our issues for the most part are really alcohol-related,” Marshall said.

To help ensure that concert-goers party responsibly, alcohol consumption is confined to the beer gardens and campgrounds of the polo grounds. Medical aid tents and security personnel also pepper both the concert venue and the campgrounds in case people find themselves in crisis.

With almost 100,000 people in one venue, making sure the crowd doesn’t get out of control is also a priority for law enforcement.

Eliminating choke points as well as offering free water and cooling stations helps people keep calm despite the cramped quarters, Marshall said.

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“All these things as a whole keep the festival very enjoyable, so people don’t want to ruin that,” he said.

Law enforcement’s work doesn’t end after the festival lets out for the night.

That’s when the “zombie patrol” begins, Marshall joked, where officers and security personnel patrol the polo ground perimeters for people who need help figuring out where they are and where they’re going after a day of imbibing.

Using their knowledge of the area, officers often direct people who have forgotten where their campsites are or call a cab for those who shouldn’t be driving.

“I think every year I’ve given people rides home and I know I’m not the only one,” Marshall said. “It does us no good to have people wandering around a town they’re not familiar with.”

Anna Rumer covers the Eastern Coachella Valley for The Desert Sun. She can be reached at (760) 285-5490, [email protected] or on Twitter @AnnaRumer.