GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Several streets in Grand Rapids saw crowds of people and cars blocking traffic and watching other cars spin around in circles and racing this weekend. The Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) said these "car meet ups" are illegal and dangerous.
“They will be held accountable and we're not going to tolerate it,” GRPD Chief Eric Winstrom said.
The most recent car meet up blocked Stocking Street near the 196 Freeway this past weekend. A video posted to a Facebook page shows fire trucks having trouble getting past cars and people while responding to an emergency call.
“Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, all of these vehicles that are being blocked, as well as people just trying to get home or just trying to get to and from work,” Winstrom said. "Not only is it dangerous as we saw over the weekend, but it's also very disrespectful to people who are just trying to go about their daily lives.”
Car meet ups are usually organized in advance and happen late at night, most recently as late as 1 a.m. Just last year, a woman was shot and killed at a car meet up. Grand Rapids police said they are taking more aggressive approaches to crack down on the illegal activity.
“What we plan to do is as it warms up, we’ll take more enforcement action and that takes more police officers so it's a good thing we're definitely in a better position this year with our recruiting and retention efforts that we have more officers on the street, so we're going to be able to make more of an impact on these illegal car meet ups,” Winstrom said.
A man who recorded video of one of the meet ups over the weekend was trying to get to work but couldn’t get past bystanders who were recording and watching cars spin their tires.
At one of the car meet ups last year where cars were doing burnouts and people were shooting guns in the air, a woman was shot in the face when a bullet hit her car but she was not seriously injured.
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