Santosuosso raises drag racing on Belt Parkway and asks NYPD for help

Yeah, and it just makes the cracking down on the ghost plates just an even more critical piece of this, I think, which we already spoke about.

I do want to turn the remainder of my time to the NYPD on a separate matter, which is the issue of drag racing, street racing.

I represent Southern Brooklyn.

It is a hotbed of drag racing and street racing, and particularly along the Belt Parkway, notably at the M.

End of August, there were three teenagers who were killed in an extremely high-speed crash.

One of the vehicles was registering over 100 miles per hour at the time of the crash.

This may sound shocking to someone who does not live next to the Belt Parkway as I do, but what was even more shocking and distressing is that the night after three teenagers were killed in an act of street racing on the Belt Parkway, I could still hear

the high speed taking place, the street racing taking place on the Belt Parkway the following night.

And so my office and Senator Gennardis wrote a letter to the highway unit, I believe it's Highway Unit 2, asking what kind of enforcement was going to be going on, because this is a constant problem.

And I am begging for help.

And just if I could have 20 more seconds, Chair.

Inspector Scholdus responded with a letter detailing some enforcement efforts, and it's one of those scenarios where I don't mean to question

that work is being done, but I might be questioning that this work is not in fact solving the problem, because if I can hear it every single day from my window, something's wrong.

And so I'm both begging for help and also asking...

For some kind of change in what we are doing because it's clearly not working.

And thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good morning, Deputy Chief Thomas Alps.

I'm the Executive Officer of Patrol Services Bureau.

What you're talking about, car meets, street takeovers, is a high priority for NYPD.

understand that it's a danger to public safety and traffic safety overall.

And, you know, sorry, I think we have to administer your oath.

So let's give us a second.

Please raise your right hand.

Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to council member questions?

I do.

You may begin when you're ready.

So we understand that it can result in serious physical injury, death, in some cases property damage, and causes violent altercations.

And it's definitely a public nuisance.

So we understand the priority and the sensitivity behind that.

This, the strategy in regards to street takeovers mainly falls under my office, and then I chair a weekly meeting with executives across the borough.

We discuss deployment strategy and the latest intelligence.

So we gather information from sources of information as well as open sources.

And then we look to identify critical locations of where these incidents are happening.

In response to that, we've installed LPR cameras at these locations as well as covert cameras.

This will allow us to immediately identify that these groups are forming and we can respond quickly even before a 911 call comes in.

The LPR cameras are for...

Intelligence gathering, and prosecution on the back end to help us identify these individuals who are engaged in this illegal behavior.

So, you know, we also coordinate with our adjacent law enforcement agencies in Nassau County and Westchester County.

That's seamless because they're having similar problems that transcend and come into the city.

We have multiple bureaus that are attacking this issue to include Patrol Services Bureau, our community response teams, the intelligence bureaus heavily involved in it.

As well as we have tow trucks, we have drone teams, we have aviation, and we have our highway districts.

So it's a multi-bureau approach within NYPD addressing this.

What are the results?

You look at January 1st, 2026 to April 18th, 2026, NYPD responded to 271 documented street takeovers or car meetups.

Sorry, was that citywide?

Citywide.

271 in what period of time?

From January 1st to October 18th of this year.

So 271 total write-outs.

That's an 11% increase from last year.

We made 170 arrests.

We issued 1,572 summonses, and we seized 291 vehicles.

That's 161% increase in arrests, 246% increase in summonses, 104% increase in vehicle seizures, while again I said

that the number of car meetups and street takeovers have increased by about 11%.

So this is a high priority for us.

We do have dedicated teams.

that will go across borough boundaries and precinct boundaries, and we move throughout.

We can surge anywhere between 60 and 50 cars at a moment notice to take these over.

They're very dangerous to the police department.

We've had many instances, not a couple, many instances where these individuals ram our cars and physically assault our officers and ram our officers.

We had shots fired incidents.

So we understand the danger of it.

And the police commissioner has sent a directive.

This will be to us, and we are doing that.

Okay.