Healey: Mass. has ‘zero tolerance’ for street takeovers

Gov. Maura Healey announced a $14 million safety grant following several so-called street takeovers this month.

Healey’s press conference on Thursday was in response to violent car meetups that occurred in several cities on Oct. 4, which allegedly saw a crowd use fireworks to ignite a police cruiser in the South End.

“We have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior,” Healey said. “It poses a real significant threat to public safety and certainly harms quality of life in our neighborhoods and communities.”

“These illegal car meetups, street takeovers have negatively impacted our residents, our businesses and our city as a whole, damaging personal and real property, … creating serious risk of personal injury to onlookers, pedestrians, passengers, and even injuring one of my officers,” Brockton Police Chief Brenda Perez said.

“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 want to protect those communities, and they have succeeded in gaining our attention,” said Fall River Police Chief Kelly Furtado.

In response to these meetups, State Police worked with local departments to prevent other meetups that were advertised online. On Oct. 11, law enforcement across the state issued 232 civil citations, 74 warnings, and 20 criminal summons, arrested seven people, towed 15 vehicles, seized two vehicles under the Controlled Substances Act, and recovered one stolen car as part of the prevention work, Healey said.

During Saturday’s efforts, some of the involved motorists fled the scene and State Police are continuing to work to identify the suspects, Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble said.

To continue these prevention efforts, Healey issued a $14 million safety grant.. The grant includes $6.2 million from the Municipal Road Safety Grant Program for 210 local police departments, $7.1 million from the State Agency Traffic Safety Grant Program for nine state agencies, and $613,900 from the State Traffic Safety Information System Improvements Program to strengthen crash data collection and reporting, according to a press release.

“Every resident of our state deserves to live in a community with a high quality of life and where public safety is assured, and the men and women working across police departments are out there every day trying to do just that,” she said.

Healey said her office will continue to work with law enforcement to monitor online channels and prevent further dangerous meet ups. She urged the public to report any advertisements of such meetups to the authorities.

“The two operations the governor highlighted today illustrate the power of collaboration, the power of working together to meet the evolving needs of the Commonwealth, to make our community safer beyond any one mission,” Noble said.

Although street takeovers are new to the state, State Police and its partners have been tracking similar events across the country for several years, Noble said.

The street takeovers seem to be an escalation of the increase of road races seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, Healey added.

The takeovers in Massachusetts caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who said Tuesday he would prevent the 2026 World Cup games from taking place in Foxborough if he feels it is unsafe.

In addition to Massachusetts being one of the safest states in the nation, “I think that Robert Kraft and the team have safety well in hand,” Healey said when asked about Trump’s comments about the World Cup.

“That’s just more political theater,” Healey continued. “Another day, another Donald Trump comment.”

While public safety is a priority for Healey, she is also “dealing with and trying to mitigate against some of the serious, serious harm by the Trump administration and the reconciliation bill that has cut, effectively, [$3.7 billion] from our budget over the next couple of years,” she said.