Working Security For The Gathering Of The Juggalos

00:04
Brent Hinson
Between the lines with Virtual Academy. We all have a story to tell. Hello and welcome inside another episode of between the Lines with Virtual Academy, or a podcast going beyond the bads to allow members of law enforcement, public safety, and first response a place to tell their stories and also talk about the cases that have impacted their lives. Let to have you guys along. I’m your co host, Brent. Hinson. And have you ever had a friend or a coworker tell you something in passing? Maybe a year or two or ten years down the road after you’ve known them? That, in the grand scheme of things, is a pretty big deal? 

00:43
Brent Hinson
Yeah, that’s kind of what happened to myself and our executive producer, Aaron Bevel, when the host of this here podcast, Michael Warren, casually mentioned to us not that long ago, I might add, that he actually worked security for the very first gathering of the Juggalos Festival in Novi, Michigan, back in the summer of 2000. That was held at the Novi Expo Center. And once Aaron and I found this out, we kind of collectively looked at ourselves and said, well, we need to make that an episode, because that’s got to be a fascinating story. Sobefore we dive into things, let me introduce the Between The Lines executive producer, editor, and all around utility man, Mr. Aaron Bevel. And of course, our host. He works in partner support and content development for Virtual Academy and is a retired sergeant of the Novi, Michigan Police Department. 

01:37
Brent Hinson
Mr. Michael Warren. I swear to you, if you would have told me six months ago we’d be recording an episode about a music festival put on by a bunch of music clowns, not quite sure I would have bought into it. 

01:49
Michael Warren
You can imagine what it was like for me then who had no idea who said music clowns were. And then let’s just throw on there that as were getting ready for the episode, going back and looking at information about it, how depressed I became when I looked it up, it was described as the early years, which means that it’s been a long time. And that makes sense. 

02:13
Brent Hinson
23 years ago. It’s been going on strong. I mean, they have a solid fan base. And before we jump around too much, I think we have to set the foundation for people who aren’t familiar. I don’t know if the people who listen to this podcast are aware of who the Insane Clown Posse are. They’re commonly known ICP. But just to give you guys some framework, just a brief little summary of what the band kind of is, they’re a rap group originally from Detroit, who, in case the name didn’t give it away, they wear clown makeup when they perform. They got their start in the late 80s, early ninety s, and they perform kind of like this, hardcore rap. And they have these crazy stage performances. And for the most part, it’s two guys. 

03:02
Brent Hinson
I believe there’s Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope, and they have a loyal fan base. So much so that they have a festival called the Gathering of the Juggalos. And I guess, Aaron, that’s what they call their fans, the Juggalos. Is that right? 

03:19
Aaron Bevill
Yeah, the juggalos. And then I think female fans are the Juggalettes. Okay, now, I have to say up front, before this episode, I knew nothing about ICP. I’ve heard them talked about for years and years, and they’ve had video games made. So they have had a place in pop culture since were growing up, since were in high school. You guys are both from Michigan. How much knowledge did you guys have of them other than just we know about them? Have you heard any of their music? 

03:47
Brent Hinson
I didn’t for this week listened to a lot of their music. But I remember, you got to remember, in the mid ninety s, this was kind of a taboo type group based on their lyrical content. So I remember being in high school and somebody saying, hey, have you heard of the Insane Clown Posse? And they played a song and read some of the lyrics. And again, now, it may not be as crazy as it was in 1995, but they have some interesting lyrical content. I know maybe you might not have been as familiar, Mike, as the rest. 

04:23
Michael Warren
Of us, but I wanted to point out something to Aaron here. When he first started talking about this band wearing makeup and everything, I thought were going to start talking about Kiss, and I know what a big fan you are of that particular band, but to be very upfront, I knew more about Kiss than I did about ICP, at least until that weekend. And I probably learned a little bit more than I really cared to know. 

04:45
Brent Hinson
Now, I happened to see how they kind of came up with the idea it was the brother of Violent J. Rob Bruce said that he got the idea to have a festival for the fans of the band after going to a gaming convention in 1998 in Milwaukee. He thought, well, if we can do this with games, video games, we can do this with our fans. And this is pulled out of a Detroit News article that came out a couple of years ago. So they thought, nobody else is doing this. Why don’t we do it? And the perfect place to do it, we could do it in New York, los Angeles, chicago. No, let’s do it. Nova. 

05:27
Aaron Bevill
That is the thing I’m trying to figure out is how did this that’s. 

05:31
Michael Warren
Kind of the story, because as were told, and you never know how accurate these stories of legend are, right. But were kind of told that mainly it came to Novi because they had offices there at the time, and. 

05:45
Brent Hinson
Probably primarily because ICP had offices in. 

05:49
Michael Warren
Did that’s where they had offices, their main corporate headquarters, if you will. 

05:56
Aaron Bevill
Yeah, they have their own go to. 

05:58
Brent Hinson
Work wearing the makeup, because that would be fabulous. 

06:01
Aaron Bevill
That’s a good question. I saw that they originally were on Walt Disney Records, which I don’t know how that happened. They got kicked off of Disney Records because of a Southern Baptist convention, I think, through a fit, and was like, we can’t have these. And so Walt Disney, I think, responded, this is all from a Wikipedia article, but the Disney company responded rather that got slipped through the cracks. These clowns rappers slipped through the cracks somehow at Disney, and so they kicked them off of see. So I think they started their own label and their own company. 

06:34
Michael Warren
I think their label was it Psychopathic Records? Something like that? 

06:37
Brent Hinson
Yes. 

06:38
Michael Warren
It’s funny, I think that they came to Novi because the Expo Center was one of the few places that was large enough that said yes. And I think the said yes part was really important. 

06:50
Brent Hinson
I read there’s a quote in that Detroit News article that it’s so funny, it really sums it up. It’s a bizarro contrast because you have clown rappers from Detroit putting on a festival convention in suburban Detroit. It seems like Detroit would have made more sense. And there’s got to be tons of venues for them. Maybe they couldn’t secure them, or maybe it was cheaper to host it in Novi. I don’t know. But when I saw the very first one was in Novi, I thought, you gotta be kidding me. This is nuts. 

07:24
Michael Warren
That area right there for our listeners, if you’re familiar with Michigan at all, it’s right near the intersection of I 96 and 275. There are a lot of hotels in the area. One of the largest shopping districts in Michigan is right there at Novi in 96, and the Expo Center at the time set right there in that southwest corner. So there were plenty of restaurants, plenty of places for people to stay, easy access from the airport and from you’re. 

07:51
Brent Hinson
On the tourism commission there, mike, listen. 

07:54
Aaron Bevill
I was signed up. I was like, I’m going for vacation, family. 

07:57
Brent Hinson
We’re going to Nova next summer. 

07:59
Michael Warren
Speaking of sign up, that’s how I got to know it, because I signed up for the overtime, not understanding what the heck I was getting into. 

08:05
Brent Hinson
Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you, is I want to try to do what you do and walk us through this story. So when do you first find out that there’s going to be a festival coming to Novi and it features a rap group of clowns with a huge fan base? And did you know anything about this thing? 

08:29
Michael Warren
It should be noted that any type of thing like that requires some oversight from the city. Right. That you’ve got to get a permit, especially something that’s going to be lasting multiple days like that. So at least mine. And listen, I was a nobody. I’m working the road. I think at the time I was on afternoon shift and we got these inklings or these things from these rumors, these hush whispers, if you will, coming from the city, that there was perhaps going to be this festival at the Expo Center. We had a lot of conventions and stuff at the Expo Center. One of my favorite ones, we used to have this the 50s Festival, and it was a several days long and had a classic car parade. Eddie Money, different type of audience. 

09:11
Michael Warren
Eddie Money was one of the ones that was consistently there as a performer. And so when I first started hearing about it, that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m like, it’s going to be some overtime. There may be a few drunks and I don’t know what the big deal is. And they said, no, you don’t understand. It’s ICP. I’m like, well, what is this ICP? You speak so and that’s when it started. 

09:32
Brent Hinson
Do you think the city signed off on it because of they wanted to bring in? Obviously, I guess the money coming in to Novi was the determining factor because their crowd gets a little rowdy. So was that even a factor for them? 

09:47
Michael Warren
It probably was. You have to look at several other factors too, because there’s the money that it’s bringing into the city, not just for the city itself, but for the owners of the Expo Center, for all the restaurants and hotels around there. In a strange way, you’re supporting a local business because remember, their office was a no buy. 

10:07
Aaron Bevill
I don’t even know when I should have looked it up, but when was this in their career when this happened? Like, were they even a known entity that the town would have even known at that point? 

10:17
Brent Hinson
They have a connection to wrestling. 

10:20
Aaron Bevill
Okay? 

10:21
Brent Hinson
So by this time, they had already been on national television with the WWF, WWE, whatever you want to call it, WCW. So they were known entities at this time. 

10:30
Michael Warren
It should be noted too, that at the time, I think there was some type of feud that was going back and forth between them and another Detroit area rapper, Eminem. And there was this I think you guys talk about from a music perspective, that there are times where you can be one genre or the other, but you can’t be both. And I think that’s the kind of the way it was. You could be an Eminem fan or you could be an ICP fan, but you couldn’t be both. At least then you couldn’t Nintendo or Sega. 

11:00
Brent Hinson
Yeah, right. You got to choose. 

11:02
Michael Warren
VHS or Beta. Let’s date ourselves. 

11:04
Aaron Bevill
Okay, well, so real quickly, just a funny aside that happens on this podcast that would not be funny to anyone else. And I think you actually said this a little bit earlier. Often, Brent and I would get this confused with IACP which is a very different thing. 

11:20
Michael Warren
Very different. 

11:21
Aaron Bevill
And so every time you said that earlier, it made me laugh. But every time in a meeting, youor somebody else would say, IACP, brent and I would both be like the insane clown posse. Soif you’re out there and you thought this was a very different episode, that might be why. 

11:39
Brent Hinson
So this was just two days. And I looked up the cost. Again, this is 23 years ago, but the cost to attend this festival for two days, $60. So even I think back 23 years ago, that was probably reasonable. Maybe it was expensive for their fans. I don’t know. But you have I don’t want to say massive, because it was the first one. Now I think they’re much more larger in scale, but I’ve read anywhere between two and 7000 people for that first one. Do you know the accurate number of how many people were there? 

12:11
Michael Warren
We were told that it was closer to the 7000 than the other, and obviously they probably weren’t all there at one time, but there was a lot of people. It’s funny people, man. I could come in, and I had no idea there’d be this many people here. And there were a lot of local fans that I think that were surprised. I can tell you that the guy sitting here talking to you right now was surprised at the number of people from out of state. There were a ton of people from out of state. 

12:40
Brent Hinson
Let me ask you this as someone who’s working in law enforcement at the time, was the band, to your knowledge, pro law enforcement? 

12:51
Michael Warren
I was informed before said convention that they were not pro law enforcement. That was confirmed during said convention that they were not pro law enforcement. 

13:04
Brent Hinson
So how does that affect you as someone who’s there working security? Is that you just put on your professional hat and you just turn your back to them and you’re just checking the crowd or what? 

13:14
Michael Warren
It is. What it is. And a lot of people, especially folks that perform like that, they’re there for the shock factor. And so at least part of me believes that it’s done for the show. It may not necessarily be entirely true. They may not be pro police, but I don’t think that they maybe necessarily hate the police. After the show, I thought less of that, but I was shocked, number one, by how nice people most of the people were. Every crowd’s got idiots in it, right? But most of the people were pretty nice. And this one right here, especially you, Brent. I was surprised at how young some of the people were. And when I’m talking young, I’m talking like 12, 13, 14 year old, primarily boys showing up to this. 

14:03
Brent Hinson
They are wearing clown makeup. That does appeal to a young. I don’t know. 

14:07
Aaron Bevill
Listen, I was terrified of clowns. It does not appeal to me at all, it does not appeal as an adult. 

14:13
Michael Warren
I will say this. 

14:14
Aaron Bevill
Some of the videos that Brent found were Vice videos that were about the festival, and they had footage there and interviews. And I probably went in with a lot of people being like, these people are weirdos, but they’re very kind. Like, everybody there was very kind to each other, and it was a big family kind of event and stuff. So it kind of changed my framework. I’m not saying that bad things didn’t happen, and they certainly did things that sounds like Woodstock 99 and some things like that, but I think it became such a bigger thing than this band. Like, it started as that thing, but then it became a whole cultural thing. I think now they’re up to, like, 20,000 people coming to these festivals. Just for context, I think Bonneruthis year was 70,000. 

14:56
Aaron Bevill
So this is not a small event by any standard. One of the things I thought was interesting about this episode and why I thought it’d be interesting to hear this is becoming a bigger thing. As somebody who goes to a lot of concerts, I’m seeing more and more police at concerts. I assume they’re working overtime like you were. But as we’re seeing more shootings and these sort of things happening, and we saw like the Travis Scott Astroworld thing where fans died, and we saw the Queens of the Stone Age in Paris where there was a gunman. So it’s a thing that you have to consider when you’re going to a show. 

15:28
Aaron Bevill
You’re like, things could go south really quickly with this big of a gathering, thinking, why we have police there and when the band is actually against having police there, why would you not want it to be safe? And that sort of thing is an interesting conversation. 

15:44
Michael Warren
Let me frame it like this. For decades, we haven’t blinked an eye at extra police presence at college football games. Now, granted, most of those larger crowds because they’ve got larger venues, but they serve a variety of purposes. They ensure traffic safety. They direct traffic, keep traffic flow, but they are there primarily for the safety of those attending. Because, as we stated earlier, in every crowd, statistically speaking, you’re going to get some people who are going to have nefarious thoughts, nefarious acts, and there has to be that. When I went into this thing, what I thought it was going to be was primarily music based, that it was primarily going to be a concert. That was a very small part of what the overall event was about. 

16:33
Brent Hinson
Well, Aaron alluded to it. We were a year removed from Woodstock 99 when chaos ensuedand everything went sideways there. As a city, as a law enforcement agency, were you aware of what happened at Woodstock 99 and maybe a little unsure if it would be recreated at this first gathering of the Juggalos. 

16:58
Michael Warren
Again, I will go back to because of my insulation, if you will. From what? 

17:04
Brent Hinson
I naivete. 

17:05
Michael Warren
Yeah, well, we didn’t want to use that word. Okay. I had no idea how large their following was, and even the organizer of the event, I don’t think they had any idea when this thing started, how many people were going to show up. I think maybe everybody kind of underestimated, but I think there’s also psychologically this false feeling of safety because most of the events were going to be indoors. 

17:30
Brent Hinson
You bring up a good point because I wanted to find out when did your shift actually start? Were you there at the very beginning, or did you come on later? Because I had read that so many people showed up, they kind of were making them open the doors earlier than they wanted to, and there was some looting going on, taking of some merchandise, and I didn’t know if you were there when that type of thing happened. 

17:53
Michael Warren
Can we start at the very beginning? Do you mind if I start there? 

17:56
Brent Hinson
Please, sir. 

17:57
Michael Warren
Most of the people are going to be arriving the next day, so the event doesn’t start for another day but that first night. So two nights before it began, one of my shift partners was doing extra patrol because they’re already starting to get trucks and stuff like that, setting up for the event even though it’s still a day or so away. But he’s doing x patrol around the building, and in the northwest corner of the building, there’s this big water tower. So as he’s driving up to the water tower, he sees this small group of people there. And so, I mean, being prudent, he went to check on it, and what he found was a young lady who was shirtless who had four or five dudes around her because of the type of event it was. 

18:44
Michael Warren
They were pouring fago over her, and then we’re licking it off of her. Obviously, that’s not acceptable. He rolls up, we get some other units there. Well, it turns out that she was a 15 year old female, which it makes it even more unacceptable. And then it turns out that she was a runaway from the state of Wisconsin who had told her parents that she was going to be spending the weekend with her friend, left the state of Wisconsin and had come to novi, michigan for the gathering. And so as a shift, I could remember they’re sitting there going, so this is what this weekend is going to be like. 

19:18
Brent Hinson
Then that was your first. 

19:20
Michael Warren
Yeah. And seriously, there was nobody else in line, but once people started showing up in line and there are pictures online where you can see them, they started climbing up on the roof of the expo center, and they were dumpster diving. And it just was like, hey, for the safety of everybody, you guys may not be ready, but it’s probably better to give them something to do than to allow them stand around outside waiting to get in to do something. Somebody’s going to get hurt. 

19:47
Brent Hinson
And I don’t know how accurate this is, but I read this spin, had an article about ten years ago that kind of detailed the festival. And according to Shaggy Too dope, he says that the group rarely makes any money from these festivals, and they primarily do it for the fans. He said, we lose big every time we lose however many tens of thousands of dollars. But that’s our gift back to the juggalos. It’s our thank you a effing big ass party. 

20:17
Michael Warren
Just think about it. $60 for this event. I could believe that they’re losing money, because, again, it wasn’t just the musical aspect of it. There are all kinds of other ICP type of entertainment going on inside the building, which was another thing in and of itself. 

20:36
Brent Hinson
Yeah, I just want to mention some of the things that went on. In addition to some of the music, they had autograph sessions, seminars, which I don’t know about you, when I saw seminars, I thought, what kind of seminars? ICP. Anyway, wrestling, which I was excited to see because they have a close connection to that tattooing haunted house video games that had Aaron’s ears perk up. And then they had ICP memorabilia museum. 

21:04
Aaron Bevill
That’s what I wrote in my notes. I thought, wow, they have a museum of memorabilia. I think one of the things that happens is, and I could be wrong, but looking at the history of these in Wikipedia, everyone they have to keep moving. And there’s different reasons. I think towns started being like, well, we don’t want this here kind of a thing. So on the third gathering, they said that a riot ensued because police were trying to stop females from showing their breast. And apparently the crowd started trying to get the police, so they ended up having to tear gas the crowd as well as using pepper balls. And it took them about 30 minutes. ICP negotiated with the police to have to continue the festival. This was at a civic center. 

21:47
Aaron Bevill
They had to wait for it to air out from the tear gas. From that point on, they were like, okay, we have to do this outdoors. As a city council, I’m sure that you’re like, okay, there’s a lot of benefits from this, but we’re opening the doors to a lot of other stuff, too. 

22:01
Michael Warren
And you’re absolutely correct. I can remember our dispatch center at night because the concerts primarily were at night, and they were outdoors. Okay. And we would get people from the neighborhoods around it and I’m not talking really close around it that were calling the police about the loud music. And it got to the point where a dispatch was instructed to tell the callers to call city hall and complain, because if they have the permit to do this, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. Listen, this isn’t just about music. Whenever you have big events like this in places that aren’t designed, for example, for the traffic, the vehicular traffic, what, you’re going to have traffic backups. There’s a new convention center. Nobody that has a Comic Con there. 

22:53
Michael Warren
It gets so backed up sometimes that we have to shut down ramps from the expressway trying to push people farther away because they just get backed up and it starts causing accidents. Is it better to have an event like there in a space where help can be provided if needed, rather than what was it, the Burning Man thing this past a few months ago where I mean, people were in danger of dying because they were so isolated. I don’t know what the answer is. 

23:19
Brent Hinson
Now, you said that you found the fans to be quite friendly. Did that continue on as the festival continued, or did you get some were there some animosity or any stories of things not going quite right? 

23:34
Michael Warren
All right, apparently weren’t the only ones that had this happen. Brent, you’re a wrestling fan. 

23:39
Brent Hinson
Live and die. 

23:40
Michael Warren
Okay, well, then you’ll appreciate this. There was some female wrestling going on inside, and I need to point out that it was inside the convention center. The girls ended up topless, so now we’ve got topless wrestling. And that was one of the people from my agency made the decision that they were going to try to intervene. You can imagine that did not go over very well. And so now we’ve got people running. I’ll ask you guys from a non police perspective, you have this type of event going on, the reputation, you can kind of get an idea of what may go on there since it’s indoors, and only the people who bought tickets are the ones that can see what’s going on. Do you just let it go? 

24:26
Michael Warren
But then you have to turn around and say, but, man, there were a lot of 1213, 1415 year oldboys that were there. I don’t know what the right answer is for that. 

24:35
Brent Hinson
You’re asking me and Aaron, we’re similar of age. I’m 46. You ask me now, and I’m like, if there’s little kids in there, I’m not quite sure, but their parents brought them. But if I was a 20 year old at that time, I’m like, let them go, man. But your perspective changes over time. 

24:55
Michael Warren
I got to correct Brent there. Brent, it was amazing the number of parents who showed up and dropped their kids off there like they were dropping them off for school. 

25:06
Brent Hinson
Hey, I’m going to I’m assuming like you, maybe they just didn’t. 

25:09
Michael Warren
I think they probably didn’t, but it’s like, in my line of work, this would call a clue when you’re driving along to drop them off at the front door and you can see the line of people. Boy, this isn’t like any concert that I remember going to I would find. 

25:25
Aaron Bevill
It hard to believe, like you said, that you could get anywhere near this festival and not at least get an inkling of what it’s going to be like inside because it’s the crazy circus. I don’t know. I can understand, like if I was that age and the cops are trying to harsh your buzz or whatever, but then you have a crowd and it starts to turn violent and that’s a real bad powder keg. But in the 7th gathering they said they originally were going to have it in Brooklyn, Michigan, but the board of Woodstock Township said they denied them the permit. So there are places that are like, hey, you guys have a reputation. We don’t really want to deal with this. 

26:00
Aaron Bevill
So they do have to keep trying to move it and find other places that are because it’s become an even bigger reputation as it’s grown. 

26:07
Michael Warren
It’s a drain on public safety resources. Every public safety agency has an overtime budget and if they’re not contributing to help pay the overtime for the services, then the citizens are having to eat that and you only have a limited pool to draw from. I mean, think about it. Population of Novi at that time was probably between 45 and 50,000 people. And if you’re bringing 7000 people in there, you’re increasing your population a lot. Plus you’re clogging one of the main travel arteries for the city. So if I’ve got a fire run in the north end of the city and my fire truck has to come through that area, it could delay the response. I mean, there’s just a whole bunch of unintended consequences that perhaps people don’t consider. 

27:00
Brent Hinson
I’m sure you love the overtime, obviously. Did you work both days? 

27:04
Michael Warren
Listen, there was so much overtime. I worked significantly more than I slept during that time period. 

27:11
Brent Hinson
Well, that’s what I was going to ask you because you had to be exhausted even after the first day because it’s in July. 

27:17
Michael Warren
It’s just a lot of people. The most dangerous part in my opinion, was the parts that took place at the concerts, which were outdoors, which were the most well attended part of the convention. So that’s when you’ve got the most people there and you still got calls for service that the people working regular duty have to answer. The city is still going on. 

27:39
Brent Hinson
Right. 

27:40
Michael Warren
It was an exhausting weekend. 

27:42
Brent Hinson
If you could explain in detail, you mentioned some dangerous things during the concerts. What types of things in response to that? 

27:50
Michael Warren
You can imagine, even though there wasn’t supposed to be that there was alcohol use. You can also imagine that even though at that time, marijuana, strange smell in the air. Maybe there was a haze, shall we say. 

28:06
Brent Hinson
Yeah, a healthy doobie, as Paul McCartney might. 

28:11
Michael Warren
Mean. There was other drug use that was going then. You know, you’ve got the whole crowd mentality. And I remember when there. Was a particular song that was anti police, that was being we’ve got the explicit rating, so we can throw it out there. It’s called fuck the police. And I can remember that when this song was going on, every time that phrase was part of the song, everybody in the crowd, because were along the edges, the perimeter of the crowd, everybody would turn to the closest cop, two fingers up like this right here, and yell at the top of their lungs. And I can remember working there with former guests from the show, Kevin Ray. So this is how it ends. 

28:57
Brent Hinson
I want to ask you, how does that make you feel? Do you feel like you’re in danger in any way? Because you’re outnumbered, you get a little I don’t know what’s going to go on here. 

29:11
Michael Warren
If I were to be completely transparent with you, I didn’t get worried. And the reason why I didn’t was because I was young and stupid. Okay. Because there’s a part of your life, especially your life as a police officer, where you will often feel like you’re invincible. It wasn’t true. I mean, the reason why weren’t hurt was because they didn’t try to hurt us. That’s the reality of this, to be very transparent, too. If that had turned into something like a riot, were woefully unprepared in terms of resources, number of people, equipment and training. It wasn’t until several years later that our county, Oakland County, created a group called Oak Tech that did county level training on what we called Mobile Field Force, where it was riot control, that type thing. But before then, it would have been a free for all. 

30:08
Brent Hinson
So what you’re saying is there’s a silver lining coming out of this for your agency is that the training was implemented because, hey, maybe we need to know how to handle these kind of things. 

30:18
Michael Warren
I would like to say that was the catalyst for it. Oftentimes when nothing bad happens, we tend to say, oh, well, that turned out okay. I guess we did good. And I’m not badmouthing the agency because we did the best we could with the knowledge and resources we had at the time. 

30:35
Aaron Bevill
Have either of you been to a festival just as a festival? Goer, like, I’ve been to Bonner a few times and, like, you there’s it’s so much more than just concerts. There’s all kinds of things happening. I went to a weird rave, like a skrillix rave, and saw things that my little mind is not prepared for. And I this is so many more scales of extreme from that just from the footage I’ve seen. But, like, at like, everybody’s happy, everybody’s friendly, and you’re having a good time type environment. Yeah, but there were so many times where, for instance, you talked about drugs getting in there. At Bonnaroo, they make a big show of they check your stuff as you’re going in and they’re checking for drugs. Literally, the first table that you see when you get past that line is, quote, unquote, water pipes. 

31:26
Aaron Bevill
And I’m like, what did we just do for an hour? Really? 

31:30
Michael Warren
But you guys have been to a bunch of concerts. I think you’ve seen people get into the music where they start physically reacting to it. In most cases, except for you, Aaron, turn into something that was dangerous. You know what I’m saying? That it wasn’t eliciting that type of response where I think in this case right here, they did want that hyped up response and people responded the way they wanted. 

31:56
Aaron Bevill
And I’ve been to some heavy metal shows where there were moments I thought, am I good standing here, or should I? Because things have definitely turned and you start to feel that in the air as a crowd. You start to feel when the crowd is starting to turn. And there is like a moment of like, this could go bad with mob mentality. But from things I’ve seen, you have situations where, like Fred Durst at Woodstock 99, did he provoke did he encourage the crowd to go crazy and destroy the place? It kind of seemed like he did. So if you have the people up front that everyone is there to see, encouraging that’s going to blow. 

32:36
Brent Hinson
And I have kind of an idea, because I actually got to see Pantera in Saginaw, Michigan in 1995, and that was if you know the band Pantera. They are a little not a little, but they’re a heavier band and they’re fans. Maybe not as intense as ICP, but there is kind of an aggressive, testosterone filled environment. And I’m assuming that was the same type of environment that you dealt with. 

33:06
Michael Warren
Think about wrestling. Wrestling primarily I will do that all day is primarily a sport. The fans are overwhelmingly male, and then testosterone is especially high in younger males. And again, that’s who this group catered to. I would be willing to bet that you guys have pet peeves about behavior at concerts. There are certain things that people do that just drive younuts. Well, one of the things that would drive me nuts doesn’t matter if it’s at a concert or if it’s at a sporting event, if somebody spills a drink on me, it really pisses me off. Not at this concert, because the accepted behavior because one of the things that they’re known for being in the city of Detroit is that they have fago. And they literally had two trailers, semi trailersfull of fago right up there. I remember it very clearly. 

34:00
Brent Hinson
It’s like a rite of passage to get sprayed by. 

34:02
Michael Warren
It is not only did it not piss people off, it ramped them up even more. When people were spraying the fago. 

34:09
Brent Hinson
Did you get sprayed by fago, Mike? 

34:11
Michael Warren
No. And part of that is because Mike hates to be sticky. 

34:16
Brent Hinson
Oh, that’s very sticky, too. Yeah. 

34:19
Michael Warren
When the fago started coming out, michael started giving a little bit more distance, discretionary, time. That’s what I was looking for. 

34:26
Brent Hinson
Now, we heard about the young girl, which is a terrible thing, 15 years old. What other types of crazy things did you experience during that weekend? Or did it kind of level out after a while or did it get worse? 

34:42
Michael Warren
I guess it depends on your perspective. Here are some things that I witnessed that kind of made me say number one. I mean, obviously when you have that many people together involved in that type of activity, you’re going to have medical runs. And so we would get called for medicals. It just seemed like people wouldn’t get out of the way no matter where you stand on things, to me, allowing medical treatment to get through should be a priority. That wasn’t necessarily the case. I still struggle with the fact that there were kids there. This is going to sound, I don’t know, stereotypical. It bothered me that there were so many young men there, but young men, when they get to typically speaking, they just act goofy. 

35:27
Michael Warren
What really bothered me were the young females that were getting dropped off because of what happened that first night right there. I just couldn’t understand people. And especially there’s news coverage of what’s going on. They may not know everything, but there’s news coverage and parents can watch the news and they can see video clips of what went on day one, yet day two, guess what? There’s still kids showing up at this concert. I struggle with that. It was almost like and I’m not saying they were on meth, but I’m saying it’s almost like the group was on a meth like state for a couple of days because once it ended, it’s like everybody crashed. It’s like, okay, it’s Overway and everybody so it was frantic and then it was deathly quiet. 

36:16
Brent Hinson
Well, let me ask you this, so as it’s going on, and feel free if you don’t feel comfortable answering this, but amongst yourselves, amongst your fellow officers, what are the rumblings? What are you guys saying to each other? Like, what did we get ourselves into? Or is it just another day on the job? 

36:36
Michael Warren
Turn to your buddy when you’re maybe on hour 16 for that particular day and you realize and go, what was I thinking? The money’s not worth know that lasted until the paycheck came around. Aaron, if I could, I want to go back and talk to something you talked know, we had undercover people there. We had them in the crowd and they weren’t there for making arrests unless there was something very serious going on. But much like our previous guest, Justin Witt, when he talked about being in the know, it’s about finding the problems before they happen and so they don’t become bigger problems. In fact, previous guest Victor Lauria was actually working undercover at that particular I. 

37:23
Brent Hinson
Was going to ask if he was a part of that. 

37:25
Michael Warren
Yeah, he was part of a group called Net at the time, and they later became Sonic, and he was there working that. 

37:33
Brent Hinson
It’s funny that a band that has a song called F, The Police, you’re there under not you personally, but you have members of your agency there undercover, trying to make them safe. 

37:44
Michael Warren
That’s what true law enforcement is about. In fact, the overwhelming majority of law enforcement activity isn’t about making arrests. It’s about making the public safe. And sometimes to make the public safe, arrest has to be made. And sometimes it means that, hey, you know what? Let’s redirect the attention. Let’s remove this one person here. But I worked several the concerts we had. I remember one working with had, the Spin Doctors and Smash Mouth. Completely different. And those guys. I was fortunate to work backstage and got to spend a little time with them. And they were incredibly gracious and appreciative because, in fact, both of them, both bands recognized the police several times from the stage, saying, hey, we just want to point out thanks for you being here and making sure things are good. Now, that wasn’t the case at ICP. 

38:42
Michael Warren
There was no thank you. The mission remains the same, though. 

38:46
Brent Hinson
What I didn’t realize until just when I was researching is that day I think it was the day of or the day before the first festival appeared on The Howard Stern Show. Now, Stern wasn’t this was before he was on satellite radio. He was still just a jock in New York, but he had a huge following, a huge audience, and they’re promoting this festival on such a big platform really draws a lot of attention to your particular city. 

39:16
Michael Warren
When you see kids I say kids, but when you see young adults showing up on Greyhound buses, that was another issue, too. Remember, most hotels have policies that you had to be at least 21 and sometimes 25 in order to rent a hotel room. Well, you’ve got a lot of these people that are showing up thinking they can get a hotel room, and now they can’t get one, at least in their name. So they can either sleep outdoors or, in my opinion, a worse choice to take up the offer of a stranger to sleep in their room. So it may be not something that happens at the event, but that’s a problem. People flying in. 

39:53
Michael Warren
I think it was almost like a discovery for a lot of the fans, too, because as popular as they were, they still were kind of a niche group, and so you probably didn’t have a whole lot of fans at each school, so they kind of felt like outcasts or loners or whatever. But then they show up to this thing and it’s like, oh, my goodness, I’m not strange. And it was an incredibly interesting experience. And I love the Detroit News comment, how they described it. I just want to read this. It was two days of fago soaked madness, raised middle fingers, and unabashed clown love. And that really was a good description, one sentence description of what that festival is like. If I can point out, too, overtime wasn’t just at the event. 

40:45
Michael Warren
Just about all the hotels in the area, they were hiring officers on overtime, which I ended up working that the last night of the event. And because I think there was one person that was interviewed that said, yeah, when we checked in, the hotels had no idea what was going on. I don’t know. It was a wild weekend. 

41:07
Brent Hinson
So when the dust settles, the event’s over. Obviously, they didn’t come back for the second year. I don’t know. Did the city say, all right, we’ve had enough, or did they find it a good experience because they brought in so much commerce? Or what was the aftermath of the first? 

41:29
Michael Warren
The city made the decision rather quickly that type of event would not be entertained again. Listen, these aren’t serious crimes, but obviously they cause issues. The number of dine and dashes that we had that weekend for our listeners who maybe don’t know, people go into restaurant, they order the food, they eat, and they leave without paying. Well, those types of events, you can also imagine these kids that are coming that aren’t accompanied by an adult and they fall ill. You got to have a parental permission to treat those people. I mean, it didn’t just tax the police department. It taxed the fire department, EMS, the hospitals. It was a taxing weekend. 

42:17
Brent Hinson
It’s not just ICP that performs. I mean, they get big name artists. Maybe not at the first one, but as it’s progressed, I looked at the list because I wrote some down, too, and I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. 

42:32
Aaron Bevill
Yeah. The one that cracks me up, the second gathering, the first one, I didn’t know any of the names. And as they continued, you’d see, like, okay, I know that one. I know that one. I know that one. The second one was Vanilla Ice. So 6600 lucky fans got to see Vanilla Ice after his prime, but during. 

42:52
Brent Hinson
His prime, ice Cube is a performer at many of these festivals to this day. Guar has been there. Bone Thugs and Harmony, two Live Crew, and then they get celebrities, a lot of wrestlers. Big night. Rick Flair has shown Nature boy, this thing has grown and grown over the years into just massive thing. 

43:13
Aaron Bevill
On the fifth gathering, it said that they started that juggalo championship wrestling. They actually wrestled people from TNA, which I assume you know what TNA is. 

43:23
Brent Hinson
It’s total nonstop action is what it stands for, but they know what they were doing. 

43:27
Aaron Bevill
Thank you for and this thing has gotten so big, just continuing to have bigger and bigger crowds. I don’t know if it’s gotten tamer or if it’s gotten weirder or I don’t know. 

43:39
Brent Hinson
The most recent one was in July of this year is in Thornville, Ohio. And I should mention, they pick a lot of these smaller towns. I live in Union City, Tennessee. I’m very close to Southern Illinois, and they had the Gathering in the Juggalos in Cave in Rock, Illinois, which is in southern Illinois for like six or seven years. And I worked at the TV station in town. We would always cover that event. So for whatever reason, Cave and Rock welcomed them in for six or seven years. They must have loved the attention, but they’ve moved on since then. 

44:12
Aaron Bevill
One of the other places is Peoria, Illinois. And I’ve driven through there, and I thought, how did this happen? How did this ever happen? 

44:20
Michael Warren
I will defer to your two guys’musical knowledge. The people that I saw that performed that first one was obviously ICP. Then twisted and psychopathic ritus misery cottonmouth Kings blaze your dead homies Heard of them? And project born. None of those people, I think, like the police. 

44:45
Brent Hinson
Well, yeah, I could see that. So out of your entire law enforcement career, where does this rank as the craziest thing you’ve come encounter with? I’ve got to say, it’s got to be up is. 

45:01
Michael Warren
And I’ll refer back to Kevin Ray, my partner and previous guest on the show. It’s one of those things. In fact, I saw Kevin recently when I was out in Arizona and we talked about this thing, and all these years later, we can laugh about it now because we’re not in any danger of getting sticky. It’s an experience. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it was enjoyable, but it’s something that stuck with you. And to be able to say you were a part of it is kind of cool. 

45:33
Brent Hinson
It is a moment in history. And the very first one now it’s grown 23 years later, and everybody it’s just kind of an accepted things like the very first Woodstock. I don’t want to compare the 69 Woodstock to The Gathering of the Juggle. That’s what I heard in pop culture. In pop culture, it is a major event that you were a part of. 

45:54
Michael Warren
It’s interesting to be in a part of it in the context of where it was. This wasn’t downtown Detroit. This wasn’t New York City. It was Nova, Michigan. And that makes the story even gooder, in my opinion. 

46:08
Aaron Bevill
Well, to bring it full circle, just you talked about the original one was $60. Now it’s a five dayfestival. And was that one two or three days? 

46:17
Brent Hinson
Two days. 

46:18
Aaron Bevill
Two days. So now general admission, $230. And then this part really made me reasonable. Oh, yeah. Compared to Bonner. I think Bonnering is like I think it’s like $300 for a three or four day pass. They also offered this was in Ohio. They offered the IACP alien probe adventure. 

46:37
Brent Hinson
The IACP. 

46:38
Aaron Bevill
I know. I said sorry. Alien probe adventure. For $350 extra. So they would take you to the forests with ICP, and these were like, known hotspots for UFOs. You could go UFO tracking with the two dudes. 

46:54
Brent Hinson
So every year they’ve just got to add something. 

46:57
Aaron Bevill
Hats off to them for their business acumen. But, yeah, it’s such a weird thing that I’ve heard of since high school. Never had any interest to go look up what they sounded like until this week. I finally went and listened to them, and I was like, well, I mean, it’s for somebody. It’s always everybody likes something weird. 

47:15
Brent Hinson
But it’s so strange that we’ve known mike for quite a while, and it was just like, maybe a month or so ago, he just casually just buries the lead. Oh. I worked security at the gathering juggalos the very first time. 

47:30
Michael Warren
Like, what? 

47:31
Aaron Bevill
It was definitely in a meeting where somebody said, IACP. You and I both giggled about insane cloud posse, I think. I asked, do you know any of their music? And mike said, I was at that first. We were like, wait, what? 

47:45
Michael Warren
Listen. What? I don’t doubt that they lose money, okay. But I would have to say that ICP has sold more bumper stickers than any musical group in history for a long time, especially when they were based here. They were all over the place, and that’s pure profit right there. I know they’re making money grateful that bumper stickers. 

48:08
Aaron Bevill
Well, they can say they’re not making money, but if you’ve seen footage of that, everyone in there is wearing ICP clothing and stuff. They’re making money. Like, come on. They’re making just to be clear, at. 

48:19
Michael Warren
The IECP conference, not everybody’s necessarily wearing an IACP shirt. 

48:24
Aaron Bevill
Yeah, it’s very confusing. When we show up, we’re like, this is not at all the gathering of the juggalos. I thought it would be some poor. 

48:30
Michael Warren
Guy makes the trip out to san diego, thinking he’s going to see a gathering of the juggalos, and it’s just a bunch of police chiefs out there. 

48:37
Aaron Bevill
He’s the only guy there saying, f the police. 

48:40
Brent Hinson
Wrong place. 

48:41
Michael Warren
Just kidding. Just kidding. 

48:43
Brent Hinson
So I know there’s got to be a large portion of the audience listening that are like, I’ve never heard of ICP or in st clown posse. And maybe you’re curious to find out more. We’ve got some articles, detailed articles. They’re, like, quotes from the people that were there. I’m surprised you didn’t get interviewed for these articles, Mike. I’m a little upset that they didn’t reach out to you, but detroit news spin, they’ve got some oral history. 

49:11
Aaron Bevill
He was hiding somewhere, being worried about getting sticky. 

49:15
Michael Warren
He was not available for know at the time. I still don’t have any tattoos or body piercings, but there were a lot of tattoo artists and body piercing folks set up inside. I was a little bit afraid to get near them because there’s no way explaining that away. Once I got home, they had those. 

49:33
Aaron Bevill
At bonner where you could get tattoos at little booths. And I thought, There is so much smoke. And secondhand, this is not the time you want somebody to be doing some very precise operation on you and you’re not going to know if it was good or not five days later when you realize you’re like, that’s not a. 

49:51
Michael Warren
Unicorn, and they’re back in Nevada, wherever they live, and there’s no getting your money back. 

49:56
Brent Hinson
Listen, we do a lot of these episodes and there are some that just tug at your heartstrings and I’ve learned so many things and I get a different perspective on law enforcement. This one, for me, has been a blast. Just to hear a first hand account of what you experience, not really knowing what you’re going to get into. This has been fantastic. 

50:19
Michael Warren
I realized that I had lived a very sheltered life up until that point. Very sheltered life. 

50:26
Aaron Bevill
And it hit you like a truck. 

50:27
Brent Hinson
When you saw Fago Truck again. We’ve got some articles and some links to some Vice videos, if you want to check those out at your discretion. You can find out more just by going to between the Lineswithvirtualacademy.com. If you were asked to work another festival, yesor no? Maybe if it wasn’t ICP, you’d sign on for it, but maybe not. 

50:54
Michael Warren
Listen, if we’re talking an air supply festival, maybe, you know, I’m all in, let’s go. 

51:01
Brent Hinson
Or your speech. 

51:02
Aaron Bevill
There we go. 

51:03
Brent Hinson
I don’t know. I heard Satera gets down. 

51:05
Michael Warren
Yeah, he gets crazy, but based upon who I think listens to him, not going to have to worry about people get rushed. 

51:10
Aaron Bevill
Me, you got to be careful. You never know who likes Peter Satera. You can’t make assumptions. 

51:14
Brent Hinson
Thanks for recounting your experience. It’s fascinating to hear about it. And it was really coolto hear just what exactly went on over the course of those two days, because I don’t think they knew what to expect. The band themselves, the city, law enforcement, it was just sounded like it was the wild west. And when the dust settled, it was a moment in time and they moved on. And now they’re on to different places in the country. 

51:43
Michael Warren
Probably better off for it. I know nobody is. 

51:46
Aaron Bevill
I’m like, Mikey. They’re like, let’s do it again. 

51:48
Michael Warren
I’m out.