An August 1 drug raid during the Church of Universal Love and Music's Funk Fest resulted in the arrests of 23 people and the seizure of marijuana, hash brownies, hallucinogenic mushrooms, LSD, nitrous oxide, other prohibited substances, and drug paraphernalia. Dumpstaphunk was bringing the dirty funk on the day police swarmed the festival grounds in Bullskin Township, Pennsylvania. According to this report in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:
Thirty officers divided into five teams upon entering the site's concert grounds to explore five main areas: the stage, two camping areas, a vendor area and an office area.
Upon seeing the police, many concert-goers fled to surrounding woods, leaving behind large amounts of marijuana, unspecified pills and baked goods laced with drugs, Brooks said.
Church members made this video about the raid and its effect on their children:
Maybe the kids' parents used marijuana or some other intoxicants. These kids still seem nice enough to me. Police officers should not point their weapons at unarmed and obviously nonthreatening children. NIne years ago, eight-year-old Alberto Sepulveda was killed by an accidental shotgun blast to his back during a drug raid that turned up no drugs.
Could this raid set a precedent for music festivals to be raided by SWAT teams and drug task forces? Of course you don't have to use drugs to enjoy or perform music. But every genre of music has been associated with some type of drug use, legal or illegal. So it's no surprise that many musicians support reforming drug policies.