Riverfest crime low, police presence high

Despite an increase in alcohol-related offenses, Little Rock police and Riverfest officials said they were pleased with the lack of major crimes during the annual summer music festival downtown last weekend.

Police reported 84 drinking-related offenses inside Riverfest grounds and at adjacent city blocks over the three-day festival that ended Sunday, up from 49 such arrests last year.

There were only a handful of thefts, fights and arrests this year.

DeAnna Korte, the executive director of Riverfest, said that help from law enforcement and private security in the planning and supervision of the event paid off.

“When you’re planning a large event like this, you have to think about the good with the bad,” Korte said. ”Crime was almost nonexistent.”

Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said the large police presence may have helped. Although she declined to give the exact number of officers or undercover detectives working the event, the heightened presence was difficult to ignore on either side of the Riverfest fence.

“As far as the Police Department is concerned, it was a successful event,” Davis said. “We didn’t have anything that occurred that was unexpected. We didn’t see any surprises.”

While department officials said there were just under 20 crimes committed inside the festival grounds or in the downtown blocks in 2012, a preliminary report from Davis shows there were fewer than 10 police incidents that involved more than minors with alcohol or adults who had had too much to drink.

Early on Saturday night, officers broke up a fight between two Star City men over a woman outside of Stickyz restaurant.

At 8:25 p.m. Sunday, police used pepper spray on a Donaldson man, David Alexander, 26, who, police said, was spotted “groping several females” and, when confronted by officers, became upset and threw his sunglasses at officers. Alexander was charged with public intoxication, disorderly conduct and assault in the third degree.

Among the drunken scuffles and misdemeanor thefts at the event, Riverfest itself was targeted by crime when a volunteer admitted stealing $150 in beer tickets from a beer stand and using them for himself, police said. He turned over his volunteer shirt and was banned from the grounds, police reports said.

In total, officers fielded 123 calls for service in the Riverfest area over the course of the event. While that number more than doubled the 49 calls for service in 2011, the crimes reported this year paled beside that year’s, which included robberies, a stabbing and a shooting.

The only major violent crime reported this year was the robbery of a Mississippi man after the event ended late Sunday.

Travis Curtner, 23, was standing downtown when his cell phone was taken at gunpoint. Police arrested a suspect, 17-year-old Ricky Ventress, after a brief pursuit and charged him with aggravated robbery and resisting arrest as well as possession of a firearm by a minor.

The most violent event occurred a day before Riverfest started, when police had to use a stun gun on a vendor several times to stop him from mutilating himself with a screwdriver.

That man, Shelby Easter, 41, was eventually released from the hospital and booked at the county jail Monday, where he remained Tuesday in lieu of a $5,000 bond, charged with four counts of aggravated assault as well as disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and making a terrorist threat.

Lt. Heath Helton, a River Market supervisor who worked the weekend’s event, said that the more serious crimes have occurred in the adjacent blocks, especially at the end of each night’s festivities.

But with only one robbery, one reported car break-in and no shootings or stabbings, Helton said his officers have worked hard at embedding themselves into the crowd as festivalgoers leave the event grounds. He thinks the deployment, as well as the visibility, were a big deterrent to crime.

“With the weather as nice at it was, there was a lot more people here,” Helton said. “If we had one [car break-in], considering the number of people here, that’s not bad, not bad at all.”

Teams of paramedics from Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services and firefighters roved through the crowd to provide on-site care. MEMS Executive Director Jon Swanson said that of the 52 calls for medical attention, most of them were for falls or pre-existing conditions, and only three needed to be movedfrom the event by ambulance.

In addition to Little Rock police, Pulaski County sheriff’s deputies worked security on parts of the grounds and arrested only one inebriated woman.

Lt. Chris Ameling, who supervised the county’s security detail, said people told him they were happy with the security presence. He said he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“I think it went smashingly,” he said. “Normally, we have a lot more intoxicated people.”