KINGWOOD — The Resonance Music Festival does not anticipate returning to Preston County because of what a festival organizer characterized as “mistreatment” by law enforcement.
That’s according to Zack Szabo, who met with the Preston County Commission, Preston County Sheriff’s Office, Masontown Volunteer Fire Department, and Preston County Office of Emergency Management/911 for an after-action review of the festival.
“But honestly, if it wasn’t for the mistreatment by the, you know, local police, and we would probably be happy to come back and try to work there and have a long-term plan in terms of, you know, putting in the telephone lines, creating greater water lines, electricity, all that kind of stuff, but the local police force was honestly the worst I’ve ever seen in any festival experience or any public event I’ve ever seen,” Szabo said
He said police pulled people over for expired tags and not obeying traffic laws, making roadblocks that people couldn’t get by without passing drug-sniffing dogs and making illegal stops.
Law enforcement arrested multiple out-of-state people with drugs such as LSD, heroin, ketamine, ecstasy, and psilocybin mushrooms.
“I think a lot of their initial meetings with us were to try to appease us and put us in a position where we would just go out there and prop our feet up and collect what they felt would be easy money in our direction,” Sheriff Paul “Moe” Pritt told The Dominion Post. “We didn’t do that. We went out there and did our jobs. … He was upset about our officers that were working there pulling over cars with expired registrations and lights being out and however else his wording went. Those are all criminal offenses in West Virginia, that’s what we’re here to do is enforce the law.”
Szabo also said they are facing complaints and possibly lawsuits because items confiscated, such as pistols and blades, which were not allowed at the event, were not returned by law enforcement. He did not specify a department the items were turned in to.
Pritt said it was event security that took the items and not his department. What they take goes into evidence.
“They have private security in there,” Pritt said. “They’re responsible for contracting that and anything that was seized from a vehicle, per se, in that regard that he was complaining about. Something with a security company he had contracted or with his own personnel, anything that we would have seized — it’s evidence.”
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