Local officers to be highly visible for Bonnaroo

With the world’s largest music festival set to kick off in neighboring Coffee County tomorrow, local lawmen say they will maintain a high profile to help ensure the thousands of festival-goers passing through Warren County get safely to and from their destination.
‘We will be highly visible since there will be quite an increase in traffic crossing through the county,’ said Sheriff Jackie Matheny of plans leading up to Bonnaroo which runs Thursday to Sunday near Manchester. ‘We haven’t had any problems for a long time and honestly, most of the folks passing through here are wonderful people.’
The high-profile approach comes following an incident three years ago when General Sessions Judge Larry Ross dismissed 24 court cases against festival-goers, suggesting lawmen had profiled out-of-town motorists heading to the festival for traffic stops. The ruling sparked a debate between some local residents who felt the traffic stops left a bad impression about Warren County, prompting some Web sites to suggest avoiding passing through here altogether.
Others maintained that if local residents were doing illegal things like possessing drugs or breaking traffic laws then they would be stopped by lawmen, and that festival-goers should not get special treatment.
Matheny said his main goal is to make sure the heavy traffic passes safely through the county since traffic patterns mushroom at the beginning and ending of the festival, which annually sees over 100,000 fans attending. Manchester Highway going through Morrison is the highway which generally sees the greatest increase in traffic during Bonnaroo.
The highway patrol will also be highly visible with Sgt. Billy Prater said one of his local officers has been called to help with the Bonnaroo traffic in Coffee County.
Metallica and Pearl Jam are the headline acts of this year’s festival. This is the seventh Bonnaroo.