DAN FORSTER, Dana Point
This is just a bit of feedback to the OC Sheriff’s Department and the City of Dana Point.
I believe it should be inherently understood that concerts and large crowd gatherings should be handled with some level of deftness that is either top-down trained, or at least handled by mature police officers who understand that large gatherings bring some level of unusual chaos (different signage, cones, street directions, crowd direction, etc.).
Our hard-working, humble Uber driver (driving an old Toyota Corolla) was merely attempting to drop us off to the concert, on Stonehill Drive (by the fire station), when he/we were blasted by a police bullhorn multiple times, instructing not to stop.
We more than heard it the first time. Our driver quickly understood and attempted to pull around the turnabout (which we believe was a dropoff point last year). This apparently wasn’t good enough for this young and seemingly angry officer.
He, lights on, pulled our driver over, walked to his window, verbally berated him and wrote him a ticket. (The groups of people walking, and witnessed this, were stunned and disgusted, as we walked in later with them.)
The poor driver lost more than the minimal profit he makes doing that work. (As an aside, we sent him money to hopefully cover the ticket, but not sure about his record.) Was this a top-down (“make your quota”) directive, or an angry young officer, who may need a bit more training in crowd control?
I realize everyone probably has “bigger fish to fry,” but treatment like this, on visitors just trying to navigate temporary, messy, and unusual situations is shameful, and not a great optic for the City of Dana Point or the OC Sheriff’s Dept.
