Expect more Burning Man arrests, Pershing official says

Pershing County Sheriff’s deputies have made about 12 arrests so far since Burning Man opened its gates Sunday morning, with some arrests made and citations issued even before the festival started.

“Its kind hard to track because we’ve had so many as we speak,” Pershing County Undersheriff Tom Bjerke said Tuesday. “There were some before that. Most of it at this point is for controlled substances and maybe battery witnessed by the officer.”

Last year, deputies and U.S. Bureau of Land Management agents, who oversee law enforcement at the week-long event, arrested a handful of people. A major crimes team consisting of both county-contracted officers and federal agents charged one person with sexual assault, four with narcotic violations, one with domestic violence and two with trespassing, according to the BLM operational assessment of the 2014 event.

In 2013, federal authorities issued 225 oral warnings, 64 written warnings and 98 citations, according to the BLM. Authorities made only three arrests and evicted five people.

In 2012, there were about 350 arrests and citations during the event. That included drug violations, according to the BLM. Two years prior, the BLM reported 293 citations and eight arrests.

In an earlier interview, Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he and his deputies would be “upholding the law to the best of our ability.”

That meant enforcing all laws outside of restrictions on nudity while deputies worked at Burning Man, Allen said in an interview in late August.

Meanwhile, Bjerke said he absolutely expected more arrests as the festival continues. Details on the arrests made were not immediately available.

“We’ve seen a much, much bigger crowd earlier in the event this year,” Bjerke said. “The information system is being overloaded because of a combination of factors.”

That includes bad communication between deputies at the playa and officers at the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office.

“We don’t have the best equipment in the world here, and we’re trying to communicate with a lot of outdated stuff,” Bjerke said. “We were able to put more officers out there, so I anticipate that we’ll have more arrests.”

Still, the number of citations won’t be tallied until after the event because of the amount of time it takes to process a citation.

“We’re making more arrests because we have more officers out there,” he said. “We’re issuing citations for personal dope and seizing the dope and going on with the event.

Most Burners arrested on drug-related charges “made a life mistake,” Bjerke said. Those mistakes shouldn’t take away from the event, he said.

“You have a choice a lot of the times to arrest someone or issue a citation and a lot of the times it’s easier to issue a citation.”

Check RGJ for more updates as they become available.

Marcella Corona covers breaking news for the Reno Gazette-Journal. Contact her at 775-788-6340, mcorona@rgj.com or follow her on Twitter at @Marcella_Anahi or on Facebook at Facebook.com/Marcella.Anahi

The Reno Gazette-Journal archives contributed to this report.