CBS News reports this morning that police are investigating sexual assaults that were reported by three women at last weekend’s Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park.
According to SFPD spokesman Officer Carlos Manfredi, no arrests have been made yet, and police are still interviewing the victims and possible witnesses. Manfredi said that reports of sexual assaults at the festival are rare.
Police do not believe the attacks, which happened in three different locations – around the bushy area of the Polo Fields, near a windmill prop at the festival and near white tents affiliated with the music event – were related. Descriptions of the men in each case also differed.
SFAppeal reports that the three women are between the ages of 18 to early 20s, and that two attacks happened on Saturday night, and the third early Sunday morning.
Police are struggling to pull together details of the attacks because the victims don’t remember much. The women had been drinking and believe they may have been drugged.
SFWeekly reports that police are also awaiting results from forensic tests to determine if the women were drugged by their attackers.
This was the fifth year for the Outside Lands music and food festival, which drew an estimated 200,000 people to Golden Gate Park over 3 days.
Sarah B.
This sucks. In just 1 person’s opinion it also sucks that there is comment after comment ranting about noise days later not a peep about these incidents. This festival better or worse is here for a couple of years.My question is how to tune up the operation to try and insure this does Not ever happen again and what can be done to improve life for everyone
n the RIchmond for every day including the three days of this festival
What does the lack of response to this posting mean? I fear it may mean that, as a community, everyone wants to ignore problems associated with these events, and pretend they don’t happen. The media does this, Another Planet Entertainment (APE) does it, and the SFPD at the Richmond station do it. This concert is an absolute gravy train for the SFPD — tons of officers make an extra 3 days of pay. Same with Hardly Strictly. And those paychecks come, not from the city of S.F., but from APE, te promoter. That’s a pretty big incentive for the SFPD to be any quiet about any concerns they have. Call them this year and you were told to call Outside Lands hotline — “that’s what we’re told to say, just call the hotline.” Our tax dollars at work: the police in the Richmond station just turn over all policing duties to APE,ask them to enforce the laws and infractions they break, meaning they can effectively to anything at all that they want. does that concern anyone? And members of the press who might write something negative are shut up with a “would you like a backstage pass to that? How about an interview with [insert name here]? I’ll see what I can do…”
Works like a charm. And don’t forget that Rec&Park is the S.F. government’s candy store — they can hand over tix to the best seats for the Giants,49ers games, Outside Lands, shows at Bill Graham Civic Aud, etc. There are a whole lot of things people don’t like and are concerned about – -but SFPD, APE, Ent. Commission, Rec&Park, and our supervisor, Eric Mar, are much too busy riding the gravy train to care.