The city of Athens has a few officers patrol the streets, while others survey the fests to deal with fest-related crimes.
While about 50 police officers — some from out-of-town — stay on the streets where the fests are taking place, three lone patrol officers cruise the streets of Athens to keep the city safe.
In order to serve the Athens area during fest weekends, the Athens Police Department has allocated officers to specific tasks during the season.
The Athens Police Department has patrol units assigned to non-related fest calls, Tom Pyle, Athens police chief, said.
On a normal busy weekend, a noise complaint would be forwarded to the control division, Pyle said. During a fest, that is not the case.
“They are basically prohibited from being involved in anything fest related,” Pyle said. “We don’t allow them to take calls on the fest area, the special units take care of that.”
Pyle added that the city invites a “considerable number” of resources from outside the city to help patrol fests. In the past, Summit County has been one of the many outside resources brought in.
“It would be very difficult to channel all of your resources to one area knowing that the community has needs elsewhere,” Ron Lucas, deputy service-safety director for the city of Athens, said.
Last year, officers from multiple agencies arrested 137 individuals participating in fests throughout the season.
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“We still have (patrol officers outside of fest areas) in tact since you have the support from other agencies,” Lucas said.
That’s put in place in case there’s a call to the department that officers need to respond to, Lucas said.
“We still have officers in cruisers that are able to patrol so if there’s a vehicle accident or a crime elsewhere we can still respond,” Lucas said.
Officers responsible for the crimes that happen in the fest zone find it harder or easier to solve the crime, depending on what is happening.
About four years ago, Ohio University Police Department Chief Andrew Powers said a couch caught on fire on Palmer Street. Undercover cops on the scene were able to take pictures of the individuals who set the couch on fire. OUPD put the pictures online to try and identify those individuals.
"Nobody goes to a fest by themselves, so somebody knows who they were,” Powers said. “You can reach literally thousands if not millions of people with the web, and somebody’s going to know who this person was.”
Powers said the department ended up getting five out of the seven people after posting the pictures online.
Other things, like figuring out who threw a can of beer that hit an officer, can be difficult, Powers said.
Officers don’t realize a beer can has been thrown until a person gets hit, Powers said. Then, the officers have to figure out who threw it in a whole crowd of people.
“Sometimes it’s more difficult, sometimes it’s more easy,” Powers said.
-Bailey Gallion contributed to this report.
@Fair3Julia
Jf311013@ohio.edu
