Coachella 2nd weekend sees arrests rise 40% from last year

With the annual Coachella Festival taking over the California desert across two weekends in April, the music world watched in awe as some of the best talent took to the stage. Unfortunately for the city of Indio and those attending, the number of arrests this year saw a sharp increase.

Fortunately, the minor criminal element didn’t overshadow the feelings of joy and entertainment that define the annual Coachella event, but they surely will impact how law enforcement in the region prepares for future events in Indio. Amidst the exciting new stages and the thunderous return of No Doubt to the stage, the second weekend of the festival saw a significant increase in arrests from the previous year. The Indio Police force revealed a 40% increase in arrests, which sounds dyer, but the figure becomes more palatable when the figures are broken down and the the crimes committed are revealed.

In 2023, across the second weekend of Coachella, 80 arrests were made. The same weekend this year, that number rose to 112. Obviously, music fans and industry insiders don’t want the figure to rise, but these numbers comes in contrast to the tens of thousands of individuals in the area. The majority of the arrests, 41 of them, were for drug possession or attempts to sell while another 26 were simply for showing false identification. An additional 26 arrests came for public intoxication and six citations for property crimes. While the remaining 15 arrests were not given a cause publicly, none of the arrests came for serious or violent crimes.