The U.S. Attorney's Office agreed to reduce fines and drop criminal liability charges filed Monday against more than 50 people attending the annual Rainbow Family gathering in the Santa Fe National Forest near Cuba, N.M., according to one of the pro bono attorneys representing the defendants.

Since June 14, Forest Service law-enforcement officers reported 320 incidents at the Rainbow gathering, including seven arrests and 120 notices of violation for offenses ranging from drug possession to not wearing seat belts, according to Forest Service spokesman Lawrence Lujan. The rest were warnings.

Some of the people arrested were local residents from nearby communities, however, and not Rainbow gatherers, according to Albuquerque attorney John McCall, who represented some of the defendants.

"We had some local ranchers who were driving their trucks, chasing down their cows, an open (alcohol) container between their knees and not wearing their seat belts," McCall said.

McCall said some of the people cited for marijuana possession had medical marijuana cards. Others were cited for leaving their dogs off-leash, riding in the back of pickups and leaving a fire unattended.

Garrick Beck, a Santa Fe business owner and public-information volunteer for the Rainbows, said the citations were an excuse for the officers to search Rainbow family vehicles and "harass them." The Rainbow family has no official spokesperson or leader. Instead, it manages its gatherings through volunteers.

Beck said it was unfair to require the Rainbow gatherers to drive 240 miles round-trip for the hearing when they could have simply paid the fines by mail.

An estimated 1,500 people were already camped in the Parque Venado east of Cuba by Monday afternoon, with more arriving daily. Between 10,000 and 12,000 people are expected for the main Rainbow Family gathering July 1-7.

Beck said the tickets were handed out by a "rogue" group of Forest Service law-enforcement officers. According to some gatherers, he said, "this comes as a slap in the face after several months of successful cooperation between (Rainbow) volunteers and Forest Service resource officials to assure a safe and legal event."

But Lujan said Beck's take on what happened doesn't match what he's seen and heard from the campers at the gathering. Lujan noted an interagency "incident command team" is enforcing federal rules and regulations at the gathering with cooperation from Rainbow security volunteers. "They're policing themselves," Lujan said.

McCall was among several attorneys who offered to represent, free of charge, members of the Rainbow Family and other people cited near the gathering. He has attended Rainbow gatherings several times in the last 20 years and wrote his master's thesis in anthropology about the Rainbow Family and alternative communities in Northern New Mexico. "The vast majority are wonderful, kind people, kind of like hoboes of the 1930s," McCall said.

But the gatherers who roam the nation's roads can have problems when they are busted for an infraction. "One of the issues is that every year they have a gathering, they have almost no legal representation. A lot of them live on the road. They don't qualify for a federal public defender," McCall said.

He said a fresh batch of cases from the Rainbow gathering will be heard in federal Magistrate Court next Monday.

Beck was among the original group of people at the first Rainbow gathering in 1972. Thousands of people come together on public lands each year during the event to pray for world peace and harmony, according to Beck and unofficial Web sites about the Rainbow Family. The gatherings attract a variety of people from various backgrounds and ages. "Some people at the camps are street families and some are people who have made millions of dollars," Beck said.

The lack of structure and official representatives has put the group crosswise with the Forest Service in the past, such as who would negotiate a special-use permit for the gatherings on their behalf.

Beck said from his perspective, his fellow Rainbows are trying to prove a volunteer community can work. "That is the idealistic question," Beck said. "Can a group of people come together, feed their children and manage their hygiene without having any kind of hierarchy? The Rainbow Family thinks it can."

When something needs to be done at the camps, like chopping firewood or building a water system, someone asks for volunteers. "No one does it because they have to, and no one is getting paid," Beck said. "At camps, you will see teens chopping wood, cleaning dishes, helping older folks carry packs without being asked. Why? Because we're teaching them community values, and America needs that."

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.