Police have criticised the organisers of last weekend's Yemaya music festival near Heathcote after more than 30 people were charged with drug and other offences.
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Sixteen people were charged with drug possession offences and 17 were issued with penalty notices for drug trafficking and behavioural issues.
Leading senior constable Dan O'Bree of Heathcote police said the security hired by event organisers was unable to handle the crowd of up to 3000 people and had to call on police to eject six men who had refused to leave.
Three motorists tested for drugs returned positive results.
"While this number of offenders doesn't seem like a lot out of 3000, there were limited resources, we had to stop doing our (other) duties because we had to go out there," senior constable O'Bree said.
Festival organiser Eugene Apter dismissed police concerns.
"We obviously had a few little issues but what we experienced for the scale of it was basically negligible for that sort of sized event," he said.
Senior constable O'Bree said there were also a number of noise complaints which police were powerless to address. "We just had to tell the residents that there was probably not much we could really do anyway," he said. "It was no good two police going in to turn the music down at an event with 3000 people, we just didn't have the resources to do it."
Mr Apter said the noise levels remained within EPA regulations during the event.
