Are we paying for an agency that's simply trying to stop us from having fun? 

I have no problem with a police presence to stop drunk driving that can result from such an out-in-the-sticks event as the Pozo Saloon show (“What happened in Pozo?” July 8), and I am more than happy the police intervened to bring down one drunk dude—I hate it when “that guy” bumps into me on the dance floor and spills my $6 beer. Yes, a few arrests may have been necessary to protect the citizens of SLO County from an immediate threat, but couldn’t those arrests have been accomplished without dozens of officers who likely received special pay?

Let me offer an analogy. I go to a baseball game and bring my own hot dogs. A man walks up and asks to buy one. Since I consider myself a reasonably nice guy, I give him one. He insists on paying, but I object in the spirit of sharing an experience with my fellow man. I let him have a hot dog, with relish. When he insists and shoves a bill into my shirt pocket, the FDA helicopters in and arrests me for not having a permit to prepare and sell food.

The analogy may be faulty but the main points are there. In California people can smoke marijuana for medical purposes (isn’t California great!), so Marcus Wolf (I don’t know him) was well within his rights to have pot. Furthermore, he was at a concert, not looking to sell his pot but looking to enjoy live music with his friends. A man comes up to him and asks him for a hot dog (I mean, a sack of weed) and of course, in keeping with the spirit of collectivism that only a concert seems to bring about, Marcus succumbs to the undercover cop’s query and gives him a dog … er … pot. And goes to jail for it.

We’ve all been to concerts. We know people seem to be much more likely to help us at concerts, so why should such events that seem to have such a positive effect on people be so heavily policed?

When the SLO County Narcotics Taskforce throws a ton of money at something like this and gets little to no results, it’s disheartening. It’s disheartening because the Pozo Saloon is the only large-scale outdoor venue of its kind in this area and now people will be less likely to spend a weekend there, because we’re paying for an agency that is in effect trying to stop us from having fun together.

This operation was simply lazy police work. Was the reasoning behind it that wherever there are large groups of people, there must be drug dealers to catch? Should we pay for a special taskforce to focus on rooting out all the illicit drug use at the concerts in the mission plaza in SLO or the Harbor Fest in Morro Bay?