Phish concert spawns numerous arrests December 11, 1997 - The Harrisburg Patriot By Tom Gibb It was the same old routine for a concert by the rock group Phish. The crowds came. The band played. The police made arrests and wrote citations by the dozens. By the time all was tallied yesterday, Penn State University's Department of Police Services said Phish's appearance at the Bryce Jordan Center Tuesday night spun off 60 incidents -- from drug violations to a man who bit a state trooper and ran away. `We knew Phish was going to be a concern and a problem,` Wayne Weaver, a campus police supervisor, said yesterday. `It's a party crowd, a lot of drugs, and every drug you could think of was there.` For those who have never gone Phishing, consider the group and its following a new generation Grateful Dead. For those nonplused by the Grateful Dead, the best explanation is that Phish tours the country, tailed by a mobile celebration: Phish-philes who party vigorously at every stop. `Very few of these people we had contact with were students,` Weaver said. In parking lots near the Jordan Center, the party was under way by 2 p.m. Tuesday, more than five hours before the concert, Weaver said. Police were ready with 33 university officers and backup from state police drug investigators and state Liquor Control Board enforcement agents. Officers jailed two concertgoers on drug charges and expect to file charges on 31 other drug violations, Weaver said. The rest of the police docket ranged from 33 citations for underage drinking to the arrest of a parole violator. `The number wasn't unexpected for this concert,` Weaver said. `But for other concerts, it's far and away more activity than we'd expect.` The bright side, by police standards, is that Phish barely approached its own Penn State record -- 77 incidents at a concert last year. For other folks, there was no bright side. Yesterday morning, Elizabeth Tucker, a 21-year-old college dropout from Watkins Glen, N.Y., phoned grandmother Adele Tucker to give her the bad news: She was in jail, charged with a drug violation, and short the $3,000 bail she would need to go free. `I don't know what she sees in that band, but she followed them all the way from California,` Adele Tucker said. `Now, maybe she learned her lesson.` Article © 1997 The Harrisburg Patriot