At City Council, police say investigation into raucous car meetups far from over

The Philadelphia Police Department's investigation into the citywide car meet ups, that saw hundreds of people driving erratically and operating vehicles illegally through the city's streets in late September, is far from over.

Before City Council on Tuesday, Philadelphia Police officials -- during a joint meeting of council's public safety and streets and services committees -- told members of council that they have made strides in identifying those responsible for, what Philadelphia Police Department Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said was called online, "Project X."

“We have become better at identifying people that are involved in them and confiscating vehicles” said Vanore.

So far, Vanore said -- along with charging some people who were involved in or helped organize the event that happened on during the overnight hours of Saturday, Sept. 21 into Sunday, Sept. 22 -- police have identified more than 40 vehicles involved.

And now, they are locating and seizing these vehicles.

“We are incrementally, throughout the area, not just Philadelphia, collecting those vehicles,” promised Vanore.

Using social media, video and other means, Vanore said that investigators are taking time to identify individuals who were involved.

He pointed to the arrest of 18-year-old Albert Woynar of Pittsburgh specifically, noting that video helped them make that arrest.

In fact, he said, when officers arrested Woynar, Vanore claims, officials also recovered equipment that is believed to have caused some of the fires seen in roadways during the September event as well as the clothes he allegedly wore during that evening, like a mask that looked like the sun.

Going forward, Vanore said they plan to continue to investigate this incident as they have similar events in the past by tracking down participants and targeting organizers.

“This all started somewhere,” noted Vanore.

Also, at recent events, police have noticed professional film teams with those who are participating in the car meets.

He said due to this, police are working to see if they might be able to charge those involved with racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations -- or RICO -- violations if they are making a profit from videos of this illegal activity.

Philadelphia Police Department Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy said that the police also have plans to make a push to help find and identify those who participated in the massive car meetups.

This, he said would include putting together a "rouges gallery" of those involved and an "advertising campaign of some sort" to get the images of those still sought in front of the public.

"We have good, clear shots of people's faces," Healy said.

What went wrong?

In talking about steps to prosecute those who were involved in the past events, Healy also discussed what went wrong in law enforcement's ability to stop the event from escalating and growing into what it eventually became.

And, he said that, prior to the event, police had information about planned car meetups, but they didn't anticipate the scale of the events and how organized they would be in their efforts to make it difficult for police to control the meetups.

“They intentionally did what they did," Healy said. "They went throughout the city, on a very strategic and methodical process, to take our resources and spread them as thin as they could to do as much damage as they could. We know that.”

Yet, the police officials said that law enforcement has been successful in the past in preventing car meetups from getting out of hand -- or from even occurring -- by working in a more proactive way.

They noted the public doesn't always hear about times when police investigators stopped planned events by contacting organizers before scheduled events occur, leading them to be cancelled.

But, beyond car meetups, Deputy Police Commissioner Michael Cram said that they have also cracked down on illegal ATVs and bikes in the city to cut down on another issue that has been a problem for the community.

He said that police have made hundreds of stops of drivers on these types of vehicles and have seized more than 380 ATVs and dirt bikes this year.

Also, Cram noted, 42 drivers have been charged with fleeing or eluding police on illegal vehicles, which he believes has had a reverberating effect to cut down on travelling groups of illegal atv and dirt bike riders that were a regular occurrence on city streets.

“We’re very confident that, because we’ve started charging people for this, that is a reason why you don’t really see the big ride outs that you’ve seen in the past," said Cram. "Because, they know we are going to take their bikes and eventually we are going to catch them and we are going to arrest them.”

Tuesday's hearing was intended as an informational event to help City Council determine how the city can have an impact on car meetups to prevent future issues.

Some ideas discussed were more traffic calming features on roadways where they occur -- police officials noted that, often, drivers avoid areas with traffic calming devices as vehicles involved in car meetups are often lowered and can be damaged by them -- or increasing fines for those involved in car meetups.

Any information gathered on Tuesday could be used to help members of City Council to draft future legislation.