By Heather Michon
Correspondent
“I understand my position on this is probably not popular,” Lake Monticello Police Chief David Wells told the LMOA Board of Directors at its meeting on Thursday (Aug. 22). “My job is not to be popular, my job is to keep everybody safe.”
Wells gave a detailed presentation on his safety concerns surrounding the annual Fourth of July weekend fireworks, the most popular event on the community’s yearly calendar.
Its popularity is the problem, bringing too many people into an area never designed to handle large crowds.
Three years into his tenure as Director of Public Safety, Wells has become increasingly concerned about managing such a complex event.
He and three officers, plus maybe one off-duty deputy, are tasked with monitoring thousands of people milling around in the dark near the Main Beach. Plus, they have all their usual calls for assistance. “People don’t stop doing dumb stuff on a holiday,” he said. “They usually do more dumb stuff on a holiday.”
Increasing the number of law enforcement staff for the day is difficult; most off-duty deputies don’t want to spend the holiday doing crowd control. In the case of a major incident, Wells said that support from area agencies is often 45 minutes away.
Parking alone is a major issue. There are only 135 spaces near the Main Beach, so the majority of people park on the streets, creating chokepoints for emergency vehicles and dangers for pedestrians. There is no viable place to create overflow parking.
There’s also no viable way to set up perimeters to control access to the community. This year, the Main Gate let in 735 visitor vehicles, which could have added up to 3,000 people to the crowd, plus an unknown number of walk-ins. “It’s basically a free-for-all. Once you’re in, you’re in, you can do whatever you want to do.”
“The pool’s the one thing I actually kind of like,” he said. “It has a secured perimeter, it’s enclosed by a fence, it has a central point.”
This is in stark contrast to the Main Beach, which has an inadequate number of poorly designed and unlit pathways that make it difficult to get emergency services onto the beach and difficult to evacuate people off the beach safely – to say nothing of the people paddling around in the dark waters.
Along with all the normal risks surrounding crowds, heat, swimming, and alcohol use, there’s a real risk of violence.
This year, Wells got word that a “gang of guys” from Charlottesville was planning to confront some Fluvanna counterparts near the basketball courts.
He and his team headed off any trouble, but he warned that may not always be the case. The dangers of brawls, a mass shooting, or even someone driving into the crowds are real possibilities. Along with the risk of harm to individual community members, it also brings a massive liability risk to the community as a whole.
“I just don’t think 15 minutes of fireworks is worth that,” he said.
“Not to be mean, but quite frankly, if something happens after I bring this to everybody’s attention, then y’all are going to own it,” he concluded.
Board chairman Larry Henson said he had seen the look on Wells’s face when crowds began pouring in on the evening of July 6. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what goes on outside this gate has a huge effect inside the gate. And we can’t keep them out. So we’re going to have to make a decision.”
But Henson stressed that a decision had yet to be made. Details of Wells’s presentation had been shared on the Lake News Facebook group days earlier, sparking vigorous online debate. “What you read on Facebook is garbage,” he said.
That said, any decisions will have to be made soon. Contracts for next year’s fireworks are usually signed in October.
The directors seemed to appreciate Wells’s candor and commitment to community safety.
“I don’t like it, David,” said Gary Sellick, “but I 100 percent understand it.”
