29 replies to this topic

[ScotLad]

"POLICE are appealing for witnesses after a 19-year-old man was slashed across the face during the Creamfields music festival.

The victim, from Liverpool, was assaulted in the Swedish House Mafia tent at 5.30pm on Sunday, August 28 and had to have stitches in hospital.

He was speaking to a friend when someone reached over the crowd and slashed his face with a bladed weapon.

DC Neal Davison said: "There would have been a lot of people around at the time of this assault.

“Most people would have been in high spirits and enjoying the atmosphere of Creamfields but if you saw anything please call the police as it is important we catch the unfortunate minority that choose to ruin the experience for others.”

Anyone with information should call 0845 458 0000 quoting incident number 862 of 28 August, or call Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111."

Thought I'd post this here because I didn't want to link it, just incase anyone knows anything. Who was on at half 5 in shm tent?

[girl_in_the_fire]

megman, on 05 September 2011 - 11:29 AM, said:

Really sad to hear about ppl who had stuff taken as it puts u off ever coming to the amazing festival again. Was really surprised with security again this year, arrived for when the gates opened no one looked in our bags, no police, no dogs only question asked was why my bf had two crates when the allowance was one, we explained one was mine and off we went.

We were given the incorrect wristbands at the gates and were refused entry in to the luxury campsite until we showed tickets that had Hospitality written on them - that’s another story in itself.

First time poster here *waves*

It was my first Creamfields this year and I LOVED IT. I was lucky enough to be in the staff campsite, which was small, out of the way and felt completely safe despite the fact there were no security checks apart from wristband checks going in and out of the campsite. I'm planning on paying to go next year (the falsy advertised shifts, poor organisation and horrible management/supervisors of the people I worked for has put me off working for them EVER again!), but I have to admit that I'm pretty nervous about camping in the regular campsites after some of the stories I've heard from this and last year. It certainly won't stop me from going, but as a lone camper (none of my friends like dance music!) it really does make me cautious...I'm leaning towards hospitality, which I'd definitely feel more comfortable with, but I'm just not sure if I can afford it.

Anyway! I was wristbanding, and I'm really surprised to hear that you didn't get searched, megman. Which gate did you go through? I worked a 12 hour shift on the South gate on both the Friday and the Saturday, and saw most people get all their belongings searched, as well as a pat-down and a sniffle from the sniffer dog. Police were present at our gate the whole time, as was a sniffer dog (1 out of 3 - they got rotated regularly) apart from a 20 minute window where it was raining so heavily they decided to give the dogs a break!

It doesn't surprise me that you were given the incorrect wristband, to be honest. The briefing we got before starting our shifts was really, really poor. We were shown no sample tickets, and were basically just given a bag of wristbands and told to get on with it. Most of us didn't really feel like we knew what we were doing when the gates were opened...!

[megman]

We were one of the first through the gates on Saturday – the gates were not supposed to open till 7am but they opened them at about 6.30 and we got through then. They shouldn’t have opened as they were so unorganised at that point. We kept saying that we were hospitality tickets and we were told it was one Q for everyone – even though there were signs for hospitality campers. There were only about 4 (max) lines open for searches and wristbands – some security guard was blocking the other lines off. But the lines were really far apart from each other.
We walked up to “security” the lady said to my BF “why have you got 2 crates, the limit is 1” he replied that one was mine and she said “fine” and waved us through. Where the police was supposed to be there was two police men looking at the other queues and none for ours. We walked straight up to the wristband Q, once again we said “hospitality camping” they nodded and gave us our Gold wrist bands (we didn’t think anything of it as hospitality was gold last year) Wasn’t until we had problems getting in to the campsite that we realised the bands were wrong.
We waited at the box office for nearly TWO hours later on Saturday morning trying to get the correct wristbands – we saw the “manager” but he wasn’t interested. In the end it wasn’t till we had our ID with address on, original tickets and receipt that we got the correct bands and food vouchers – they then told us they fort we were just trying it and found the tickets – like we would bother waiting for nearly 2hours in the rain!!!  
While waiting at the gates for our correct bands we saw about 20+ people that walked through without getting bands and were either called back by mates or came back 5mins later to get them.

I was never patted down and the only time my bag was ever searched was when leaving the campsite into the arena. The only time my BF was searched was from campsite to arena and going in to the hospitality tent – to be fair the hospitality tent was the toughest security we came across all weekend.

I was really surprised at the lack of security again this year but seems that we just arrived very early and not all checks were in place yet. Neither of us had anything we shouldn’t of had but im sure that’s not the case with everyone, but im glad the checks were tougher later on in the day.

[Delboy71]

I think some of these comments need passing on to Cream. I can only comment on what I saw and when we arrived on Saturday afternoon security was tight. The fencinc was better than I last went in 2009. Both campers and day ticket holders were searched on arrival, sniffed by the dogs and everything was very organised. This was even more evident by the low scallie count (although the weather might have accounted for some of them) and the lack of any intimidating atmosphere in the Arena.

Perhaps it took them a while to get sorted (not an excuse for them, just an observation) which means that the training and briefings were not up to scratch and not enough planning had gone into it. This was probably not helped by it being the first time they have had the Friday on as well. Hopefully lessons will be learnt.....

[megman]

Yer I totally agree. I think it just took them time to sort it out and also they opened the gates before time so maybe they didn’t have everyone in place. Plus you cant really blame the people who gave out the wristbands if they weren't given good instructions. It was a hassle getting the correct bands but it didn’t put a damper the weekend, just drinking time wasted haha.
From what everyone is saying it got tight later in the day which is really good to hear. Security was defo better going in to the arena from the campsite this year and hospitality tent was really tight.
You can search bags, have sniffer dogs and police but at the end of the day there are ppl who go that are always going to get things in they shouldn’t for whatever reason, its just life unfortunately.

[ScotLad]

We arrived 11.30, like a said.. every bag got searched or patted down and only a handful of either suspicious looking people, or just random, got put into a holding pen where they got sniffed by the doggy!

[girl_in_the_fire]

Actually you know what - my bad. The first hour of Saturday completely slipped my mind. Probably because I was still half asleep - don't usually do 6am starts! We had been told on the Friday night that they wanted the gates open as early as possible on the Saturday, but we honestly weren't expecting them to open them before we'd even arrived there! To me, this just shows how disorganised both Cream and the people I worked for (Festaff - I really wouldn't recommend working for them) were. Even once all the stewards got there (on time, may I add. Unlike our supervisors who rocked up 30 mins late), we had to stand around for 40 minutes whilst waiting to be issued with bags of wristbands. Full security and the police only arrived when we were given them; probably at about 7. I.e. when the gate was supposed to open.

We saw quite a number of people get taken to the Police holding tent to be strip searched when they were singled out by the dog...but I'll also add that we saw no one get arrested. All the people we saw get pulled to the side ended up getting wristbanded 30 mins later because they didn't actually have anything on them!

[Dis©oDan]

Just like to say, I did hear about this and was saddened about the attack.. I do hope they get someone for it as this has been happening in Liverpool for a couple of months and it seems to be the same m.o all the time, it seems to me it would be the same group of lads doing this and the victims are 9 times out of 10 have never eaven spoken to the assailants. I think this is disgusting and I hope they jail the f**kers for a long time when they are eventually caught.

Or even better still release their details in the local press... an eye for an eye and all that

[Jenny2603]

girl_in_the_fire, on 07 September 2011 - 09:46 PM, said:

We saw quite a number of people get taken to the Police holding tent to be strip searched when they were singled out by the dog...but I'll also add that we saw no one get arrested. All the people we saw get pulled to the side ended up getting wristbanded 30 mins later because they didn't actually have anything on them!

girl_in_the_fire just out of curiosity what happened when someone did get caught with drugs or anything like that if they weren't getting arrested?  I know you said the people who were searched didn't have anything on them but surely they must have caught some people trying to sneak stuff in??

[girl_in_the_fire]

Jenny2603, on 08 September 2011 - 05:14 PM, said:

girl_in_the_fire just out of curiosity what happened when someone did get caught with drugs or anything like that if they weren't getting arrested?  I know you said the people who were searched didn't have anything on them but surely they must have caught some people trying to sneak stuff in??

Boring answer but...I'm honestly not sure! We didn't have much, if any, direct contact with the police, we just got to watch them and the dogs a fair bit; we had no idea about protocol when finding stuff on someone. We just saw the process of someone getting singled out by the dog, getting taken into the Police tent and then leaving it about 20 minutes later and picking up where they left off to get a wristband! I honestly expected to see at least a few people get busted, but we didn't see anyone leaving that tent in cuffs, or being escorted off the grounds...
Of course, we could have missed something because there were times when we were super busy. This is just going from what we saw first hand.