By Lonnie Hudkins

Orchard Park police arrested 22 people — many of them Canadians — on charges ranging from disorderly conduct and trespass to minor drug offenses before, during and after The Who concert in Rich Stadium Sunday.

Police said some of the crowd were abusive to residents of the stadium area as the concertgoers partied and milled around before and after the show that attracted more than 80,000 persons.

“Some of them acted like animals,” commented one sheriff’s deputy during a gigantic traffic jam that lasted three hours after the concert ended at 7:30 p.m.

“We made a lot of arrests,” the deputy added, “but I don’t know how many or the specific charges.”

Although there were 125 deputies, 35 police officers from Orchard Park and Hamburg and 450 private security guards on hand to control the crowd inside the stadium, it was pandemonium once the fans started rushing for their cars.

“There were just too many people trying to get their cars in too small a space,” a deputy said, “and the result was a three-hour traffic jam.”

The deputy said Thruway traffic was backed up from the Peace Bridge to Hamburg more than two hours after the concert ended and that rainfall added to the problem.

“There were some fender-bender accidents,” the deputy said, “but we don’t think any of them resulted in any serious injuries.”

Earlier in the night, Sheriff Kenneth Braun commented about how orderly the crowd was and how good the behavior was among the fans — most of them young — during the concert.

Medical personnel in the stadium reported they had to treat only a few for drinking too much and a few who suffered bumps and bruises in falls.

Chief Robert Henning of Orchard Park reported that some of the fans began milling around the stadium Saturday night.

Most observers, however, described the crowd as well-behaved and said only a very small number were unruly. A deputy police commissioner from New York City who came to see how the crowd was handled here reportedly said he was amazed on how well deputies handled the situation with a limited number of people.

The British rock performers, whose fans paid $15 a ticket plus a $1 service fee on each ticket to attend, will appear in New York in October.

Orchard Park police said they believed all of the persons arrested by them were from areas outside of Erie County.

The concert ended on the body rocker called “Twist and Shout” and then the crowd dashed for the cars and the traffic jam.