Police in Philadelphia made several arrests, issued citations and are still investigating after hundreds gathered for car meetups in the city on Sunday night, officials said.
According to Philadelphia Police Inspect D.F. Pace, police monitoring social media learned that a car meetup was taking place at about 10:45 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, along the 10,000 block of Sandmeyer Lane, near the intersection with Red Lion Road, in Northeast Philadelphia.
He said officials actually found spectators livestreaming the meet up online and converged on the area.
Here, Pace said, officers stopped "a number of them and issued citations where appropriate, took people into custody where appropriate and impounded vehicles where appropriate."
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Also, he said, when some vehicles fled, officials used police aviation units to track down these drivers, as well.
"We are committed to relentlessly going after anyone who wants to operate a vehicle in a way that's going to endanger the community," Pace said. "And this is an example of what we will do when we get information that there are these sorts of car meets going on out there."
Also, that same evening, Pace said officers responded to the intersection of Kensington and Lehigh avenues where there was another illegal car meetup.
In this incident, Pace said, police found "about 200 spectators" gathered.
Here, pace said that there were "some individuals" taken into police custody and citations were also issued to those involved.
When he spoke to NBC10, Pace said he was unsure how many people were arrested or taken into custody, but he said police officials are reviewing footage taken from social media on Sunday to determine if more arrests or charges might be coming following these meetups.
"We may be issuing some additional citations taking some additional cars into custody or possibly even pressing charges against other individuals that may have participated in these different different car meets throughout the city this evening," Pace said.
Along with future arrests possible in these meetups, police officials said they are still looking for one of the organizers after a series of chaotic car meetups back in September.
Just last week, police officials announced a tenth arrest tied to those illegal car meetups.
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