Would I, if I were a judge, have given them anything more than a warning or short probabtion?
I
probably would have simply dismissed the charges.
What I have been getting at is although the punishment was extreme, it was within the limits of the law. What most people are asking is WHY?
I said before that it must go deeper. I googled this "rainbow family gathering" and it appears the area is tired of their gatherings....
http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/mbr/news/2006/rainbow.shtml
They have been meeting there for years, but their organization has no real leadership, so it is usually disorganized and probably attracts many folks who just want to go and party for a weekend.
My guess is everytime this event happens,there are problems with the crowd it brings. These folks are probably tired of it and the 2 guys who were arrested paid the price. If I had an event like that in my area, and it brought freeloading drug abusing degenerates to my property I'd want "examples" made too.
Now if these folks are truly peaceful and law abiding that's another story. My guess is my hunch is dead-on and the locals are sick of these people.
I am sure that if you look at the number of additional police needed you will see that this event hasn't had a history of being incident free.