Officials Upset By Pop Festival

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32344, 9 July 1970, Page 17

Officials Upset By Pop Festival

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) ATLANTA (Georgia), July 7. Georgia officials today described the Byron rock festival as “Sodom and Gomorrah all over again” with open drug sales, nudity and sex. They said police were frustrated by riot threats.

“We saw several hundred people on trips, messed up terrible, in our sight,” said a state representative, Mr Bobby Johnson, one of four legislators who observed the festival this week-end. “We also saw nudeness on the public highways, at the festival headquarters, in a creek and in a private lake where they (festival-goers) broke in.” FEW ARRESTS A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent said that his men made few arrests because of threats of violence by some of the thousands of youths present. The committee, headed by a representative, Mr Haskew Brantley, took two hours of testimony before going into executive session. Mr Brantley said afterwards that a sub-committee was instructed to document the experiences of the lawmakers and come up with recommendations to police such gatherings better. Governor Lester Maddox has said that he may ask the legislature to pass laws prohibiting such festivals. A state representative, Mr Marshall Keen, of Macon, said that he saw one couple “in the full throes of intercourse in the middle of a path and the girl was smoking a cigarette the whole time . . . and this was at midday. I imagine at nighttime it was just one big orgy.” He said the age of the girls was “the most tragic” thing

about the four-day festival, estimating the average at about 14 to 15. Lieutenant J. B. Stanley, head of a new F. 8.1. Narcotics Department said that his agents made only about 30 arrests in spite of open sales and advertising of drugs because “it was plain the people in the immediate area would not let us take prisoners out without resistance.”

Two of the 20 agents on duty were assaulted when they attempted to make arrests and one had to draw a pistol to get out of a “very hazardous” situation. Lieutenant Stanley said. Mr Johnson said as an individual he did not want to ban pop festivals but “somewhere we have got to arrive at the point that we can’t be threatened with riots in order for people to do their thing.”