Saturday's Octoberfest crowd reaches 30,000
In what resembled an Octoberfest of the 1980s and 1990s, last Saturday's crowd may have topped 30,000, according to Hermann's police chief. "It was without a doubt, the biggest crowd I've seen in the nearly eight years that I have been here," said Frank Tennant, chief of police. "I've never seen traffic backed up like it was Saturday; all the way from the middle of town to the Loutre Market grocery store." Tennant put the crowd at 30,000, surpassing the esti mated 20,000 the previous Saturday. "This was a typical third weekend crowd--25ish in age," he said. "There were a lot of younger people, where the week before, they were a little older." The police chief said approximately 65 buses were directed to the Gutenberg Street parking area, and a dozen or more could have been at Stone Hill Winery. Tennant said if there isn't a football game at the University of Missouri, and the weather is as pleasant as it was last Saturday, you're going to see large numbers of younger people in Hermann. He said everything became gridlocked before noon Saturday as vehicles started arriving, looking for parking places. As far as problems, Tennant said officers issued two DWIs this past Saturday, and in some years as many as 15 have been issued on one day. "We really didn't have that many situations where we arrested people," Tennant said. "We had sev eral people ticketed for public urination and open containers, but the severity of problems were worse the previous Saturday." Two persons from Cole County, one from Jefferson City and one from Eugene, were arrested and charged with property damage after breaking a window at the White House Hotel. They will have a court date in a few weeks. A.J. Plummer, owner of the historic building on Wharf Street, said his staff Saturday, when late in the day two young men were looking for a place to urinate in the alley-way of the hotel. When they were noticed by staff and asked to leave, they threw a rock, breaking a 141-year-old window pane, according to Plummer. Tennant said he has had a lot of problems with open containers, but 99 percent of the people dump their alcohol when told to do so by officers. "We give them a chance to get rid of the alcohol when they're on the streets, but when they ignore us and keep on walking, they get a summons," he said. Tennant said he continues to remind bars and business owners who sell alcohol that they should do a little "policing" of their own, and tell patrons not to walk out of a business with alcoholic drinks. "We can't do this by ourself," said Tennant. The open container violations did not upset Tennant as much as other things he saw last Saturday. It's the urination in public and property damage that he won't tolerate. "It irritates me to no end when they urinate in somebody's yard, dump over flower pots or pull signs off walls," he said. "I don't understand adults doing little petty things. They're not respecting our town, and people should not have to put up with that." Tennant also said he has officers specifically looking for drunk drivers late in the day when guests start leaving town. "We are going to do everything to get them off the road, so they don't hurt themselves or someone else," he said. "Any least thing we see in their driving, we are going to pull them over to make sure they are not intoxicated." Tennant said he had 25 officers working over the weekend. During the month of October, he budgets $30,000 for extra police officers, all of whom are certified law enforcement officers from other Missouri cities. 
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