New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Police explore new approaches to prevent street takeovers in CT
MILFORD – Police are trying a variety of tactics to prevent events like the recent moving street takeover that ran from West Haven to Milford on Route 1 from happening again and to find those involved when they do.
Often times, police pursuits aren’t an option because they can make the situation more dangerous, so departments are instead using other methods to apprehend those involved and stop the events from happening, officials said. This can include facial recognition and GPS tracking.
“They’re doing it to show off,” said Orange Police Assistant Chief Max Martins, the department’s spokesperson. “‘Look at me, look at what I can do.’ That’s where it gets a little dangerous. God forbid that they hurt themselves or somebody else.”
Orange Police have already made one arrest in connection with the July 8 incident where police said about 300 motorists on ATVs, motorcycles and other vehicles traveled on Boston Post Road before getting on Interstate-95 by the Athenian III Diner in Milford 45 minutes later.
A West Haven police officer saw the caravan on Route 1 in that town and radioed it in, but the officer was alone and therefore could do little more than watch the riders as they sped away, police said.
The takeovers are akin to illegal drag racing that has sprung up in large cities, such as New Haven, in that both were influenced by the Fast and Furious movie series. From the first film in 2001 to its most recent sequel this year, “Fast X,” the action films popularized the idea of illegal racing, said Ken Gray, a former special agent with the FBI who’s now a senior lecturer at the University of New Haven’s College of Criminal Justice.
“When you see people on YouTube or television doing these kind stunts, people tend to mimic that,” Gray said, adding people wanting to get out during the pandemic also contributed to the takeovers’ popularity.
Some of the tools police use to combat drag racing might be applicable to street takeovers, Gray said.
New Haven police are experimenting with StarChase, a GPS tracking device that can be mounted to and launched into offending vehicles from the grille of a police cruiser, preventing officers from having to engage in high-speed pursuits. But that’s rather expensive and probably not needed in small towns and cities, Martins said.
License plate readers are another option, Gray said, but they have limited utility in situations where vehicles not carrying license plates, such as ATVs and dirt bikes, are involved.
China has developed street cameras and facial recognition software for use in their law enforcement purposes, but what’s fine in a communist country is likely overkill in a democracy, where personal privacy is more important, Gray said.
“They have a lot of cameras all over the place, and they are using them for all types of activity, including seeing what people are doing in their cars as they’re driving down the road,” Gray said. “As a person who finds that objectionable, I hope we never get there.”
Gray, who has tracked the phenomenon since it began in California several years ago, said police are likely justified in not engaging in pursuits with the ATVs, motorized dirt bikes and other un-street-legal vehicles that are part of these groups.
Police are usually right to try to just photograph or record takeover participants, like has happened with the July 8 one. Police who chase takeover participants risk unintentionally setting off chains of events — deaths in crash wrecks, damage to property, felony crime happening if suspects resist arrest — that are far worse than the motor vehicle violations occurring with the takeovers, Gray said.
“There’s a risk to the public when police are doing a pursuit, especially with something like
this as opposed to some violent crime where it might be more useful to do that pursuit than it would for a crime like this,” Gray said. “This is not a serious enough crime to warrant doing a pursuit. But over and above that, this is something that needs to be stopped.”
The use of the photographs is paying off, Martins said.
“We have gotten some information back from the public giving us a couple of names of who these people might be,” Martins said. “Now we are trying to identify them.”
The impromptu nature of the moving street takeovers doesn’t make it easy for police. Most of these caravans are organized very quickly thanks to social media, including Instagram and TikTok, and the recordings of the takeovers online in turn inspire others to organize more of
them, Gray and Martins said.
“We have seen some of these on social media where people are popping wheelies,” Martins said. “They are not showing off their vehicles (as in a car show). It’s more that what they can do with them.”
The irony of moving street takeovers is that there’s nothing illegal in most cases about large groups of motorists organizing themselves to go from here to there, Martins said.
Motorcyclists doing rides as parts of clubs or funeral processions happen all the time. All it takes is a permit from police departments, who can provide escorts that clear the way, or knowledge of motor-vehicle laws that permit, for example, no more than two motorcyclists riding abreast per lane, Martins said.
But takeovers flout the law
and when other motorists see the large massed groups of vehicles, they sometimes flood police with 911 calls, Martins said.
“One of the biggest complaints is the amount of noise,” he said.
The motorists “find it intimidating and unnerving,” Martins said.
“They think, ‘What if I hit one? Are they going to act out at me? Are they going to turn on me?’ ” he said. “It has happened like that in the past and no one wants to see that happen.”
Gray echoed the potential danger.
“It’s dangerous to people who happen upon it that might not realize it’s going on, and it’s dangerous to the people who are actually doing the crazy stunt driving while they’ve taken over an area of the street,” he said. “And so, it is something that police need to stop whenever it occurs.”