Police praise festival goers

Police in Dumfries and Galloway want to thank festival goers who attended the annual Wickerman Festival at East Kirkcarswell, near Dundrennan at the weekend for their good behaviour. The festival, which is now in it’s tenth year provided the largest crowd yet over the three days, with some 15,000 attendees, was policed to what is now a well tried and tested plan which resulted in only a handful of minor offences which required to be dealt with.

This year, those attending the festival were met with a police operation as they entered the festival site which was aimed at combating the misuse of drugs. Vehicles and people were searched, with the assistance of police sniffer dogs in an attempt to stop illegal drugs being taken on to the site. As a result of this operation 63 people were found in possession of illegal drugs and will be reported to the Procurator Fiscal. In addition, five offences in relation to the supply of illegal drugs will be reported to the Procurator Fiscal. In total drugs with a value of just under £3500 were seized in the operation. The drugs seized included cannabis and herbal cannabis, cocaine, amphetamine, ecstasy and diazepam.

As the festival goers left on Sunday, those driving off the site were offered the opportunity to take a voluntary breathalyser test to check on their fitness to drive on the public roads. In total, nearly 500 drivers too advantage of this initiative and police are again encouraged by the level of responsibility taken by drivers in this initiative.

Inspector Stuart Davidson, who was responsible for pulling the policing plan together said “once again the good working relationships developed over the years between all those involved in running the festival has paid dividends. The low numbers of arrests in high numbers of attendees is a credit to those who come along to the festival. While there is an increase in the number of people found in possession of illegal drugs, the positive factor in the manner in which we carried out our searches has ensured that none of theses drugs were able to be taken into the festival site to be misused. Our officers engaged with the festival goers and there was a good atmosphere about the place. The majority of those being searched for drugs were fully supportive of the measures taken to stop this type of activity inside the site.”