The first weekend of a crackdown on illegal street takeovers or car meetups resulted in seven arrests, 20 criminal summons, 232 civil citations, 74 warnings, 15 vehicles towed, two vehicles seized and one stolen car recovered, Gov. Maura Healey announced Thursday.
At a press conference with State Police Superintendent Col. Geoffrey Noble, the governor said the state will “double down” on its efforts to address the growing wave of coordinated drag racing and mass car rallies that erupted across Massachusetts and made headlines earlier this month. She also announced that the state will provide $14 million in traffic safety grants to 210 local police departments and 10 state agencies.
Last week, Healey pledged “zero tolerance” for “illegal street takeovers” and said she had “specifically asked Colonel Noble to work operationally” to assist local police responses.
“Hopefully, you know, today will send a message to others out there, like, we were serious. We said zero tolerance for this stuff, we meant it,” Healey said. “So we shut it down last weekend. We’re going to continue to shut it down.”
Noble, who took the reins of the State Police a year ago, said his agency and its partners has been “tracking street takeovers as an issue for for quite some time.” He explained the challenges he sees to an effective police response to such events.
“We don’t want to respond to a street takeover at 2 a.m. with 200 cars, and now we have 200 motorists fleeing at high rates of speed, which just creates additional issues. So the real challenge for law enforcement is to come at this with a real holistic approach,” Noble said. “And the goal here is prevention. I want to be clear: Our goal is to prevent chaos, is to prevent public safety issues. We will apprehend those who violate the law, but our primary mission is to prevent these from occurring before they happen.”
Fall River Police Chief Kelly Furtado, whose city dealt with a street takeover on Oct. 5 that blocked routes to area hospitals, said street takeovers are very different from “car enthusiasts who gather on a Saturday morning in a parking lot to share their passion for automobiles.”
“These are organized groups whose purpose is to cause chaos and disruption, to create public disturbance and to draw attention from both the communities they harass and the police sworn to protect those communities. And they have succeeded in gaining our attention,” the chief said.
Word of violence at street takeovers in Massachusetts made its way this week to the White House, where President Donald Trump was asked about the prospect of moving 2026 World Cup games scheduled to be played next summer in Foxborough to another location over concerns about the unrest.
“Somebody said, 'Would we think about taking the World Cup away from Boston if they don’t straighten it out?’ And the answer is yes, we have a right to do that with FIFA,” Trump said.
The president added: “We could take them away. I love the people of Boston. I know the games are sold out. But your mayor is not good. There are worse than her. At least she’s intelligent. Some are extremely low IQ. Those bother me more. She’s intelligent but she’s radical left. And they’re taking over parts of Boston. That’s a pretty big statement, right? We could get them back in about two seconds. All she has to do is call us. We’ll go in and take them back. But she’s afraid to because she thinks it’s bad politically. She could take them back too. The Boston Police are great. I mean I know them. They love me. She’ll never tell them to go after Trump because they love me and I love them.”
House Speaker Ronald Mariano responded to Trump’s comments on Wednesday, pointing out that the president was talking about crime in Boston.
“The World Cup is going to be played in Foxborough, so he should check his geography,” the Quincy Democrat said. Boston is about 28 miles north of Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.
Asked about Trump’s comments, Healey said Thursday that she “did read about that.”
“I was a little curious, because the games are, of course, in Foxborough, and I think that Robert Kraft and the team have safety well in hand. I’m quite confident of that,” the governor said. “I’ll also say that, you know, Massachusetts, we remain among the safest states in the country because of the incredible work done by law enforcement at the local and state level, and we’re just going to continue to do that.”
Healey invoked Kraft, the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium owner who is known to be friendly with Trump, twice during responses to questions about the president’s comments.
“I think it doesn’t make any sense. And as I say, I think the Krafts and everybody who’s been working hard on this -- and in other cities around the United States -- has this under control,” she said. “But that’s another day, another Donald Trump comment.”
Boston Democrat Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, a close ally of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, responded to the president’s threat in a scrum with reporters Wednesday.
“As the mayor has duly noted on a number of occasions over the last year, we are one of the safest major cities in America,” Michlewitz said. “The numbers show it. I think the reality shows it. Do we have challenges on different basises [sic] here? Yeah, I mean, once in a while we do have some issues, but overall we are a very safe city. You know, you can get any video to show anything at any point in time. And point it out and make it out to be something that it’s not. And I think obviously the President must have saw a video or two and made that determination. But we are a safe city. We’ve been a safe city. But does one have to do with soccer games being played in Foxborough, I don’t know.”
[Michael P. Norton contributed to this report.]
