With alcohol on hand for the more than 50,000 people piling into a 200-acre Gibbons farmers’ field over the weekend, it was bound to get a little rowdy.
The four-day Boonstock Music and Arts Festival is in its eighth consecutive year and had a record number of attendees pass through the gates over the long weekend.
This increase in numbers meant an increase in calls for service for Morinville RCMP.
“It was busy for us. Pretty much all of the calls involved alcohol use,” said Sgt. Mark Mathias. “We dealt with sexual assault, assault, impaired driving and general complaints of intoxicated people, fights.”
He said officers were busier than expected as a result of larger-than-predicted attendance numbers.
“It was an amazing festival,” said Colin Kobza, founder and operations manager of Boonstock Productions. “Our crowd was wild as always but well behaved as well.”
He said the festival is growing at a rate of 20 to 30 per cent each year, and a small percentage of festival goers are bound to stir up some trouble.
“We had the population of a small city and the majority of them are, you know, enjoying a couple of beverages, so you are going to have some incidents,” he said. “For the most part, everybody was very well behaved.”
Mathias wasn’t able to provide the exact number of calls that came in from Boonstock partygoers, noting police reports are still being filed from the four-day event.
“A lot of the stuff doesn’t come in as calls for service over 911,” Mathias said. “A lot of it is just people walking up to members that are on the grounds dealing with issues that way.”
Boonstock Productions reached an agreement with Sturgeon County and the Morinville RCMP to provide enhanced policing, meaning officers on site at the festival are focused solely on that event.
Kobza said a debriefing will take place in the coming weeks where organizers will discuss the event and determine if changes need to be made.
Discussions will take place with the promoters and RCMP to determine if more officers are needed in the future.
“We came out with none of our officers seriously injured and the public was safe and any other issues, we’ll deal with with the promoters,” Mathias said.
