Just to point put that shadow did not have any vans with cages... Stuart vehicles did. I would like to point out that class A drugs are illegal and if the police had caught you then things may have been a lot worse

K isn't a Class A though.

And was stopping and searching for them within security's remit? I thought they were meant to be stopping fencejumpers?

The only reason I would search somneone was if they were wasted or they were obvious in what they were doing. You would not be able to walk down your local high street openly sniffing coke or ket.

AS mentioned some people were lucky as some events run a zero tolerance and would have been arrested and ended upi in court. Anyone moaning about been caught with drugs really has no excuse.

It was a relaxed event but only those that were obvious in what they were doing would have been ejected or otherwise had a word in the shell like.

Maybe next year it might be a good idea to have police there and drug sniffer dogs and plus moaning about it on here is not the best place to air your views as im sure many read this including the local police.

I was caught speeding a while ago and i didnt think it was fair and neither will anyone if they get caught doing something they are not suppose to.

@security

You seem to be missing the key point here. You are not the cops. Your job is to make the festival better for us the paying punters, not to lay down the law.

Did the festival organisers ask you to go searching people?

I still can't believe they cut your wristbands off, what does this achieve? I ask this directly to the security guy replying to people on here, did you get told to take people's wristbands if you found drugs on them???

Exactly. Security at a festival are not there to make arrests.

To be fair, we met some top-class security guys. On one occaision, we were skinning up quite openly near our camp. A security guard kindly asked us to stop, and we did so. He was polite and still did his job.

However, a load of security had their priorities right out of order. Who cares about a few mash-heads snifing K when a load of tracksuits are jumping the fence and robbing people at knife point?

i would treat security at a festival just as i would at any club. come on, we all know what they can be like, we can't speculate on what each security bods personallity, character or background is. we don't know them just as they don't know us. you pays your money, you takes your chances. none of what i've been reading surprises me for an event where i saw even less old bill than the year before.

dance dissadent wrote:Next year across all the forums people need to make a concerted campaign to film anything they see security doing.

As the lottery says.



IT COULD BE YOU.

I agree totally, if someone had a camera Sunday night maybe one of our mates would'nt have gotten so roughed up by those meat head goons!!! :boxer:

Our job description for the event was as follows :

Look out for fence jumpers and people with no arist bands also to make sure there was no trouble. Patrol tent areas and numerous other jobs

If you went to your local nightclube and decided you wanted to do a line of coke right in front of the doorstaff then would you expect him to turn a blind eye. Its the same at a festival and if you want to be doing drugs right under our noses then you will be searched.

We have to work to guidelines and the SIA http://www.the-sia.org.uk/home

Once again drugs are illegal and if you have a problem with that then maybe you should write to the Prime Minsister and ask him to legalise them.

We dont make the rules up and have to work to strict guidelines with the new SIA badge which all of work under. Just lets say that you walk by me and you decide to take a big line of coke in front of me and i ignore it and theres a undercover police officer that sees me ignore it and not deal with it.

I would lose my door badge and would not be able to work again for anything upto 10 years and all because you or whoever wants to take drugs openly.

Lifes shit and if you get caught then you face been kicked off site. You would not be kicked off site if it was personal use but if you had to much say dealer amounts then you would be dealt with in an appropriate way.

Stop moaning about been caught for doing something illegal

I don't think people are moaning about being caught for doing something illegal, I think they are moaning about the overly aggressive security. We all know you have to at least take some care as to not be obviously taking drugs in front of a member of security, but some of the stories on here are disturbing to say the least. I have said before, was there any searches carried out by police on the security? because I expect if there had been they'd have found a hell of a lot of drugs that were supposed to be handed in that the security had "aquired" from people.

The drugs that were confiscated by us were all logged and handed over to the police. As stated in previos posts we cant just ignore it if someone decides to do drugs in front of us and i have worked many events and beleve me when i say that the apprach at this event was not heavy handed

I worked many events with zerro tolerance and 1 pill or a spliff would get you arrested and a night in the cells. You lot really are lucky at how relaxed an event this was and as previously posted maybe nexy year it would be a good idea to have a big police pres and drug dogs and maybe that would make you happier.

We cant keep everyone happy but im happy that i did a spot on job and was not heavy handed with anyone. My appraoch to peopel was freindly and even when walking round would try and say hello to as many people as i could.

your not really listening are you. lets not focus on the drugs and focus on the fact that a kid was wrestled to the floor, kicked, punched, thrown into a van and hadn't even been told what he had done wrong. when others around him try to give him water they were told to "fuck off" and people were afraid for their own safety, the complete opposite to what security.

What, in your professional opinion, would a person have to do to recieve that sort of treatment?

People were being intimidated while sitting around. i, personally, felt at first that the security was a good thing but as the weekend wore on, i began to feel more and more intimidated by the security people.

xXx

Lilyflower wrote:your not really listening are you. lets not focus on the drugs and focus on the fact that a kid was wrestled to the floor, kicked, punched, thrown into a van and hadn't even been told what he had done wrong. when others around him try to give him water they were told to "fuck off" and people were afraid for their own safety, the complete opposite to what security.

What, in your professional opinion, would a person have to do to recieve that sort of treatment?

People were being intimidated while sitting around. i, personally, felt at first that the security was a good thing but as the weekend wore on, i began to feel more and more intimidated by the security people.

xXx

Well said Lilyflower, i don't know where "security" is coming from frankly , yeah mate you may be good at "your" job but you have been patronising us a bit in saying that certain things were hearsay, why would people take the time to write it down, what are we all full of shit in your eyes ? Some of your associates were complete utter fuckin tosspots mate and don't try telling us different thankyou very much, we saw 1st hand some of your professinalism , you were there to do a job yes but not : 1 Rough people up, 2 Rob people, 3 threaten ladies, 4 Drive arond flashing torchlights in peoples faces, 5 drive arond like complete knobheads with disregard for ravers, what if someone had been passed out in a field ? 6 General mannerism , your lot really need to learn some people skills.
As said before i know you have a difficult job but c'mon the reaction of this forum tells you something was up man, "you" may have been alright and also i've heard good things too about other staff but in general on Sunday night the thugs came out to play, i put it down to boredom.
I really wish that someone from the Glade would come on here and address us too Answer your public, it is our festival too and one we love, i would be more than happy also to sit down with you and discuss as we can't let that happen again.
I realise not everybody witnessed such behaviour but enough people have said things now that really need addressing, thankyou rant over.

I cant answer for every thing that happened and sometime you get bad staff such as in the police force and all security companies have this problem. Was this situation on the Saturday night ?

If you saw someone been beaten up or robbed by security then i question why you didnt report it to the police or why out of 15k people neither did anyone else.

If i was in a town centre and witnessed someone been robbed or beaten up then im sure i would be calling 999 and reporting it. I:m not saying you are making it up but if you witnessed someting that bad then why rant on here and instead goto the police and make a statement.

Youy have made some strong allergations and nothing to back it up apart from your rant on here

AcidTekno303 wrote:I really wish that someone from the Glade would come on here and address us too Answer your public, it is our festival too and one we love, i would be more than happy also to sit down with you and discuss as we can't let that happen again.

Damn right man let us try and talk some sense into the organisers, yes they need security but do they need an army that size?? Plus most of the people there were festival heads you can spot the scallies in there trackies a mile off, i saw three get there wrist bands walk through the gate on friday with no tents bags or anythin wonder how they were gonna survive???

Security, I understand you probably did a bang up job. I also saw some security guys escorting an obviously wasted fencejumper off the site and I thought they handled the situation admirably. At the same time, you are being quite patronising in your responses.

Nobody is suggesting that the security should simply ignore blatant drug taking but my impression and the impression of many people on the board is that many security guards were being needlessly aggressive and in many cases endangered lives with their reckless driving. No word of a lie, from what I saw and given the state people were in, I'm amazed no-one got run over.

You are not the police and it is facetious to simply "oh well, lucky the police didn't catch you". Personally, I think it would have been better if the police had handled the area because security seemed intent on stirring trouble rather than preventing it.

Two questions:

1) How did the organisers suggest you deal with people who were caught taking drugs?
2) Did the organisers ask security to ensure there were no stereos played on Sunday night?

That said, it really would be best if the organisers could give a comment on this issue.

Sorry, I should add - I don't mean to be getting at you personally security. You were good enough to come on the board to try and explain things from your side. That's greatly appreciated.

badlordbrian wrote:Sorry, I should add - I don't mean to be getting at you personally security. You were good enough to come on the board to try and explain things from your side. That's greatly appreciated.

I'd like to second that. Thanks, security, for putting the other point of view so patiently.

As for comments from the organisers, I'll give them a nudge on Monday. They're not going to be happy about the overt references to drug-taking at Glade, in all honesty, so we may not get a direct reply, but I don't see how it could be avoided in this instance when it's so central to the discussion.

just to counter all this "oooh you better think yourself lucky that it was security and not the Police" stuff, a little info: my ex's uncle used to be CID for Somerset - he worked every Glastonbury of the 90s. Their rules were as follows:

1. Get the people who are there to take criminal advantage of others: fence touts, robbers, dealers.
2. Stop any fights


that's it.

personal drug use was to be absolutely tolerated for the duration of the festival. As it should be.

security wrote:If you saw someone been beaten up or robbed by security then i question why you didnt report it to the police or why out of 15k people neither did anyone else.

If i was in a town centre and witnessed someone been robbed or beaten up then im sure i would be calling 999 and reporting it. I:m not saying you are making it up but if you witnessed someting that bad then why rant on here and instead goto the police and make a statement.

Youy have made some strong allergations and nothing to back it up apart from your rant on here

I didn't report skinny naked guy being beaten up instantly because i was on my own & utterly freaked out by the whole incident including being shoved back myself. Was worried that if i did try to report the thing to security i would be "taken care of" Also didn't see any police to report to, plus didn't have a phone. Thought about reporting it to Oxfam but there was an Oxfam steward there so figured that he would.

I wasn't on anything but mild codeine for my damaged arm and a few spliffs that night. I know exactly what I saw and I really hope that guy was so out of his mind that he can't remember what was done to him. I asked my police sergeant best mate what i could do about it now and she said there was almost certainly no point in trying as the local squad would be overwhelmed with other stuff, particularly as i had no photos etc and even if it did get anywhere i couldn't remember exactly what the perpetrators looked like, plus despite the fact that i was almost completely sober, the state of my mind could easily be brought into question by defence lawyers, so it was going to be virtually impossible to get anything done about it.
So I'm dealing with the whole thing in the only way available to me - word of mouth. Powerful thing.

DBM wrote:As for comments from the organisers, I'll give them a nudge on Monday. They're not going to be happy about the overt references to drug-taking at Glade, in all honesty, so we may not get a direct reply, but I don't see how it could be avoided in this instance when it's so central to the discussion.

bloody hell, if that wasn't so funny I'd cry. Who do they think they are fooling? Honestly, every festival in britain is chock-full of people taking drugs - not much point in listening to half the stuff played at Glade without them! Maybe if they stopped sticking their fingers in their ears and going "lalala I'm not listening" we could all have a better festival without all this nonsense about people being busted for spliffs. Might get the sound levels sorted too.

It's almost certainly down to the location. People that close to London don't care for their "half-a-million pound for a 2 bed shack" peace & quiet being disrupted by people from the cities out to have a few days fun in the countryside So the pressure on the organisers is so much higher than if we went to an old coal-mining district where there was not much employment left - those people would probably welcome us all with open arms, a spliff and let us turn all the amps up to eleven, 24/7 for a week.