FloydFest organizers are worried that what some festivalgoers describe as overzealous law enforcement along the Blue Ridge Parkway could tarnish the event's growing national reputation.

"It feels like harassment," said Erika Johnson, who co-owns Across the Way productions, the company that puts on FloydFest. "It's been a problem this year, it was a problem last year, but certainly it's going to be a problem for future festivals."

Now in its sixth year, FloydFest ran Thursday through Sunday and drew an estimated 10,000 people to its Patrick County location, for which the parkway serves as the access. By the festival's end, organizers were collecting stories of traffic stops, and more than 200 people had signed a petition protesting what they called heavy-handed police tactics. U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher's office had contacted the parkway's administration to relay concerns.

Even Floyd County Sheriff Shannon Zeman was pulled over by park rangers.

An article about the police outside the festival, titled "American gestapo," appeared over the weekend on Capitol Hill Blue, a politics Web site founded by Floyd Press reporter Doug Thompson. He said parkway rangers invoked the Patriot Act and threatened to arrest him when he tried to photograph a traffic stop.

On Monday, the parkway's assistant chief ranger, Steve Stinnett, was trying to make sense of the hubbub. He'd driven up from parkway headquarters in Asheville, N.C., to see the scene around FloydFest.

"It seemed fairly low-intensity to me," he said.

From Tuesday through the early morning Sunday, the rangers who patrol the federal parkway made 177 traffic stops along the 14 miles of road nearest the festival. Of these, 165 resulted in warnings.

Officers charged 49 people after the traffic stops, including 29 tickets related to drugs and 12 for traffic violations. Five people were taken into custody: two on drunken-driving charges, one for public intoxication, and two who had outstanding warrants.

In comparison, on a normal Saturday last summer, rangers issued 33 charges along the entire parkway, Stinnett said.

The number of violations varies with traffic and with the availability of rangers to patrol, and the perception of enforcement may also rise and fall with the number of vehicles traveling, Stinnett said. During FloydFest, "There are a lot more people there, so there are a lot more people seeing it," he said.

Virginia State Police and officers from other agencies were present around the festival but did not issue tickets on the parkway, Stinnett said.

During last year's FloydFest, rangers made 153 stops near the festival from Thursday to Sunday, Stinnett said. Last year's stops resulted in four drunken-driving charges. Stinnett didn't have information on other violations last year or during prior festivals.

As for Thompson's online account, Stinnett said he spoke to his officers and none remembered meeting a photographer. Stinnett said the behavior portrayed in the article was not the way rangers should act and that he was trying to reach Thompson to get more information.

Thompson could not be contacted Monday for this article.

Accusations that rangers targeted festivalgoers were aired locally last year when a Willis man was charged with possessing marijuana with intent to distribute it. Musicians rallied for a benefit concert in Floyd to help pay Patrick Bernard Harvey's legal costs.

Harvey, who prosecutors said had more than 7 ounces of marijuana in his car when he was stopped on the way to FloydFest, ended up being convicted. He has appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, arguing there was no probable cause for the stop and resulting search.

Peer Segelke of LeClair Ryan attorneys, who represents Across the Way Productions, said FloydFest organizers had hoped to prevent problems by meeting with state and federal officials last month. "I think everyone recognizes that the park service has the job to enforce the law on the parkway. ... It's more a question of how it's done," Segelke said.

He said the enforcement seemed to get less severe as the festival weekend went on, and anticipated organizers will continue talks to try to resolve matters before next year's event. As for whether the festival's attendees were singled out, "I think they're just pulling over everybody," Segelke said.

But many at FloydFest felt they were in the spotlight.

"We were told to get out and searched. It was ludicrous to me. I had done nothing wrong and she was profiling my friend because he had dreadlocks and didn't look like Captain America," Bayley Alphin, who signed the traffic enforcement petition, wrote in an e-mail.

"This kind of harassment is so unpleasant, scary and unnecessary," added Christy Arrington, a 39-year-old from Powhatan who had come for the festival and who signed the petition. "It will deter people from coming back. ... If this continues, the crowds from out of town will make other plans, attend other festivals and spend their money elsewhere. It's not worth the hassle and stress the police put people through to try and get there."

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