{"id":269090,"date":"2026-08-20T21:40:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/269090\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T21:40:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:40:27","slug":"musikfest-2026-arrests-more-than-double-from-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/269090\/","title":{"rendered":"Musikfest 2026 arrests more than double from last year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arrests more than doubled at this year\u2019s Musikfest compared to 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bethlehem police arrested 37 people, up from 17 arrested last year, according to statistics released Thursday by the department.<\/p>\n

More than 1.2 million people attended the festival, marking the third-highest attendance in its 43-year history.<\/a><\/p>\n

Police responded to 178 calls during Musikfest, which took place between July 31 and Aug. 9 in the city\u2019s North and South sides. Last year police responded to 113 calls during the entirety of the festival.<\/p>\n

The days with the most calls occurred during weekends. The first Saturday, Aug. 1, had 28 calls, the most in a single day during this year\u2019s festival.\n<\/p>\n

Most of the calls this year, about 138 of them, were made from the North Side, which is centered along Main Street.<\/p>\n

Medical calls accounted for 39 of all calls, while hang-up calls to 911 accounted for 30.<\/p>\n

There were 16 calls for public drunkenness, an increase of 10 from the year before, city police said.<\/p>\n

Of the 37 people arrested, 31 were from outside Bethlehem, an increase from 16 the year before. Twenty-nine of those arrested were men, and eight were women.<\/p>\n

Most arrests were summary arrests; however three people were arrested for felony offenses, according to officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusikfest continues to be an incredibly safe event, especially considering the hundreds of thousands of people who visit Bethlehem during the festival,\u201d city police Capt. William Audelo said in a news release. \u201cWhile we did see an increase in arrests compared with recent years, the overwhelming majority involved lower-level offenses, and we experienced no major incidents that threatened the overall safety of the festival,\u201d the police department said.\n<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s largely rain-free festival was the highest attended festival to date, with 1,449,000 people<\/a>. Rain fell periodically during this year\u2019s festival, though it only had to shut down once because of a storm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arrests more than doubled at this year\u2019s Musikfest compared to 2025. Bethlehem police arrested 37 people, up from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,1994,1391,202,7585,11998,2121,433,182,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-269090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-township","tag-bethlehem-area","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-fountain-hill","tag-freemansburg","tag-hanover-township","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}