Photo of Mountain Jam 2011 by Peggy Fusco. From the Mountain Jam Facebook page.
The town of Hunter is riled up about the level of police presence at Hunter Mountain's annual Mountain Jam music festival. Local elected officials paid the Greene County Legislature a visit at their regular meeting last night to complain about the overabundance of cops, especially state troopers, the Daily Mail reports.
Village Of Hunter Trustee Mike Tancredi pleaded his case as an official, taxpayer and citizen to offer varied voices to the issue of Mountain Jam security procedures.
“The road blocks and sniffer dogs were not restricted to visiting populations and can be seen as fairly egregious offenses. In Tannersville residents feared being harassed by police. There was some heavy-handedness,” Tancredi said.
Tancredi also said there was an apparent triplication of police services as he noted state troopers, Hunter police and Greene County sheriff’s deputies in the area during the 7th annual Mountain Jam Festival.
Every year, Mountain Jam yields a crop of out-of-towner arrests (and a crop of "Dozens arrested" news stories in local papers). But for the most part, the Jam tends to be peaceful, and the charges for those arrested are usually minor misdemeanors like (unsurprisingly) marijuana possession.
A discussion on the official Mountain Jam online forum took up the topic of police presence at the Jam a few years ago. At the time, one commenter offered some words of wisdom for attendees seeking to avoid trouble with the law; today, the advice remains as fresh as ever:
Rolling down your window and releasing a haze of skunk with a spliff in your teeth and a poorly secured trunk showing a suitcase full of mind bending pills alongside a home made multi-pipe triple chamber 5 gallon water jug bong will always get you in trouble.
