Anger on road to Burning Man — traffic stops, drug searches
Organizers of the desert frolic known as Burning Man are fuming about a series of vehicle stops and searches for drugs being conducted by Bureau of Indian Affairs officers on people heading to the annual festival.
As if concerns about the lingering smoke from fires burning across the western United States weren’t bad enough, officers have been stopping trucks and trailers this week on Nevada Highway 447 on the way to the Black Rock Desert and, in several cases, conducting lengthy searches using police dogs.
More than 60,000 people, in a variety of vehicles, RVs and buses, are expected to arrive at the Black Rock Desert, about 150 miles northeast of Reno, for the nine-day event starting Saturday, and organizers have been told the enforcement operations would continue “throughout the week and possibly into next week.”
“While we respect and appreciate the important work of law enforcement, we are greatly concerned by the real and potential negative impacts of this surge in activity,” said the notice, posted by the “communications team” for Burning Man. “The frequency and intensity of stops is already having, and will continue to have, negative implications and effects.”
Nedra Darling, spokeswoman for Office of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior, said federal, state and local law enforcement officers are patrolling the highway at the request of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, which has jurisdiction over that portion of the roadway.
Darling said tribal police are determined to keep opioids off reservation land, so they and the Interior Department’s Opioid Task Force are searching the vehicles they’ve stopped for violating traffic laws if they suspect there might be drugs inside. Only speeders, reckless drivers and other violators are being pulled over, she added.
In addition to speeding, motorists have been pulled over for failing to obey stop signs, crossing the center line, having a partially obscured license plate, not using turn signals and having non-functioning lights. “There have been arrests for possession of numerous narcotics, including prescription pills, methamphetamines, LSD, cocaine and more, but we won’t know how many arrests have been made until the end of the operation when all the data is compiled,” Darling said.
The stops have “nothing to do with Burning Man,” Darling said. “If you are driving through there, not breaking the law, then there should not be a problem. If you are driving through there breaking the law, you will get pulled over, and they do have the right to enforce laws on the reservation. We are not pulling people over willy nilly.”
The Burning Man organizers complain that the stops on Highway 447, which has no shoulder, have hampered work needed to prepare for the festivities. Adding to the delays is the time wasted, they say, by drivers forced to reload vehicles on the side of the road after the inspections.
“We have received numerous reports that the police dogs often provide false alerts,” the organizers posted. “We have also received numerous accounts from our staff, contractors and volunteers that they were not breaking any traffic laws when they were stopped . ... We believe these tactics are overly aggressive, unconstitutional, unnecessary, pretextual and unacceptable.”
Until now, the thick haze from fires in California has been the biggest worry, with several burners saying they had purchased masks to filter out the harmful chemicals in the lingering smoke. The anger over traffic enforcement has since overshadowed that issue and grown to the point that some Burning Man participants are calling for boycotts of local businesses, which would harm the tribe and local communities.
“In the coming days, artists, theme camps, and mutant vehicle projects will all arrive with carefully loaded vehicles and trailers, and these traffic stops may cause significant delays and roadside hazards,” the web post stated. “If the current rate of stops continues as the volume of travelers increases significantly over the coming days, traffic could back up to I-80,” a distance of about 16 miles.
Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite