The Coachella festival will have more security this year than in previous years. According to new reports, the two-weekend concert series will have additional law enforcement present to avoid potential massacre scenarios.
According to a report from TMZ, event organizers are not taking any chances with this year’s festival.
“In most every instance when a large public gathering takes place, there are security issues, ” explains Fast Guard Security Service, a firm that is not connected to the festival. “The reason we don’t hear about them, however, is because professional security personnel is on hand to ensure that small problems don’t escalate out of control. But increasingly this is a job that requires greater degrees of training and expertise.”
In January, tickets for the popular Coachella music festival sold out in less than hour.
After the deadly shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and 851 people injured, concert organizers are taking additional security measures to prevent potential future massacres. But violence is still an ongoing concern at events like these.
In November, a security guard was stabbed by a teenager at a Jennifer Lopez concert in Dubai after trying to sneak into the show.
Around 10pm that evening, an Iraqi security guard spotted a group of men attempting to enter the concert with fake tickets.
The security guard approached the men and asked them to hand in their fake tickets. They refused. One man stabbed the security guard and yelled for his friends to run.
The man was taken to a first aid room at the site of the concert to be treated before police and paramedics arrived.
Police were unable to find a recording of the incident, as there was a lack of surveillance cameras at the location. But they were able to find information about the stabber’s identity from the ticket he left behind.
Jennifer Lopez isn’t the only music artist to be plagued by security issues at shows. In March, The Roots was forced to cancel their “Roots and Friends” show at the South by Southwest conference due to security concerns. There were multiple reports of bomb threats.
The Roots were expected to appear with Jessie Reyez, Ludacris, Dermot Kennedy, Rapsody, and Tank and the Bangas.
A man was eventually arrested on suspicion of emailing the bomb threat to the Fair Market venue in Austin. The suspect was charged with making a terroristic threat, an offence that can carry up to 10 years of jail time.
The treat came amid several package-bomb explosions in Austin. The first series of blasts killed or wounded three people. The victims were all minorities, which sparked concerns that the attacks may have been racially motivated.
The fourth blast was triggered by a tripwire that injured two people. Both victims were white, which quashed the belief that racism was the motive.
The fifth and final explosion happened at a FedEx facility near San Antonio. The suspect took his own life using his own explosive device before police could apprehend him.