Sheriff’s department braces for Bonnaroo

By DUANE SHERRILL / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

With tens of thousands of festival-goers converging on neighboring Coffee County this week, Sheriff Jackie Matheny says deputies will be “highly visible” as much of the traffic for the nationally known Bonnaroo concert passes through Warren County.

“We will be highly visible and monitoring traffic throughout the week,” Matheny said. “We’re going to do our best to see this is a peaceful week.”

Matheny said traffic will not only be monitored at the 45 mph speed zone through Morrison, but also on other major highways which cross the Nursery Capital.

The announcement comes after deputies ticketed 27 people last year in the days leading up to the weekend festival. There were also a handful of drug arrests.

One year before, 24 cases were thrown out of court after defense for the out-of-state motorists convinced the court the citations smacked of profiling. Last year’s cases were not thrown out and mostly involved minor speeding violations.

“The year everyone was making such a big deal about us writing tickets was blown way out of proportion,” Matheny said. “That year, many of the people who were stopped were friendly and complementary about how nice our officers were to them.”

However, Matheny said vigilance is important since the festival and its predecessor, Itchychoo, spawned criminal activity, especially toward the county line with Coffee County.

“We had quite a few break-ins we know had to do with people at the festival,” Matheny said. “The break-ins have gone down since we stepped up enforcement the last couple of years.”

Matheny said drugs used by some festival-goers likely impacts criminal activity, citing a case a couple of years ago.

“There was a guy from Maryland that was so high that he tried to get into a house out at Viola, thinking he was at his home,” Matheny said. “He’s lucky he didn’t get shot before we got there. It’s stuff like this that worries us.”

Bonnaroo returns to a 700-acre farm in Manchester for its fourth year. Last year, two drug-related deaths marked the first fatalities of the popular music festival. A 23-year-old female from Kentucky and a 20-year-old male from Michigan were the two to die.

Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves has vowed his men will crack down even more on drug use this year. Drugs could best be described as widespread on the festival grounds. Graves has said his officers will use drug dogs at the gates to try to filter out some of the drugs being brought into the event.

As for motorists traveling through Warren County, Sheriff Matheny said there will be no breaks for drugs.