RCMP says Boonstock should reimburse for extra policing

Mounties are criticizing the organizers of a summer music festival near Penticton, B.C., saying police were forced to step in as security guards for a company that failed to do its job.

Instead of policing the Boonstock Music Festival, RCMP Supt. Kevin Hewco said officers took on the extra role of providing on-site security to keep people safe.

Hewco said Penticton RCMP compiled the statistics and now say they opened 150 files, which included 38 arrests, during the three-day festival in August.

"We can only speculate what the numbers might have been had we been left to simply police the event as planned," he said in a written statement. "A great deal of discretion was used during the event for lesser offences when our role changed from enforcement to security and public safety."

Police also stepped in when a 23-year-old woman from Alberta, identified later as Lynn Tolocka, died at the festival from what was a suspected drug overdose, though the B.C. Coroners Service has not released the cause of her death.

• Lynn Tolocka ID'd as woman who died at Boonstock Festival
• Drug and alcohol incidents result in dozens of hospital trips

Hewco said that the extra policing ended up costing the force $250,000, which is $50,000 more than the original estimate.

He said the extra $50,000 was incurred during the last two days of the festival, when more officers were brought in "to compensate for identified deficiencies" at the event grounds. 

He also said the festival promoter should pay back the extra policing costs.

"It is incumbent upon the promoter to reimburse the provincial government for these special event policing costs so that they do not become a burden to taxpayers," Hewco said.

He also said a lack of a liquor licence likely kept policing costs from going even higher.

"I believe that the security concerns that we identified would only have been compounded had the event been issued a liquor licence," he said.

One week before the festival was set to begin, the B.C. Liquor Control and Licensing Branch announced it was turning down the festival's liquor licence application, citing unaddressed safety concerns.

Before relocating to Penticton this year, the Boonstock ​Music and Arts Festival was held north of Edmonton in Gibbons, Alta., for nine years.

In 2013, neighbourhood backlash over alleged littering, trespassing, vandalism and other incidents that required police involvement prompted local officials to vote down permitting the massive event to continue in Sturgeon County.