Nearly 500 Arrested At Music Festivals In Southern California

Halloween is known for being a weekend of mischief, but this past weekend in Southern California there were a lot of people caught for their alleged misdeeds. Nearly 500 individuals were arrested at two electronic music festivals around Los Angeles - HARD Day of the Dead and Insomniac's Escape: Psycho Circus.

According to the LA Times, 162 people were arrested at Day of the Dead on Sunday in addition to the 148 who were arrested on Saturday. Authorities say that Escape: Psycho Circus saw nearly 180 arrests over the two day festival held at the National Orange Show Events Center in San Bernardino.

Hard Day of the Dead was held at the Pomona Fairplex.

Of the nearly 320 arrests at HARD, the majority of them were on charges of public intoxication, possession of illegal under the influence of a controlled substance. About 100 people were arrested for changes of carrying a fake I.D.

HARD Day of the Dead has been under increased scrutiny lately after two individuals died at their big summer festival, HARD Summer in August. This forced Hard Events to cancel a one-day September event and limit the scope of Day of the Dead. The age limit was upped from 18+ to 21+, which didn't help too much with the arrest count and festival limited the number of attendees from 65,000 to 40,000 per day.

They also had to foot the bill for extra police officers, free water distribution points, of which there were 24, on site physicians and more medical and security personnel than normal. Initially it did not credential media, but after some push back, Live Nation gave credentials to "qualifying media."

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