Police working to lay charges after hundreds gather at a Hamilton event

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Published September 20, 2020 at 9:39 pm

Hamilton police are aiming to press charges and identify the organizers of a recent event that attracted hundreds of people in Ancaster.

Hamilton police are aiming to press charges and identify the organizers of a recent event that attracted hundreds of people in Ancaster.

On Saturday evening, September 19, police say they received information that a “Mega Meet 2.0” was planned at an Ancaster cinema parking lot.

“This group has been creating traffic chaos throughout the GTA with anywhere from 50 to 300 street racing-style cars attending,” said police. “Participants often take over city streets in order to engage in drifting and street racing.”

Police say members of this group have previously been involved in obstructing police by using vehicles to block intersections and highway ramps, as well as swarming responding officers on foot and blocking cruisers with vehicles.

At approximately 6:00 p.m., officers responded to the movie theatre parking lot on Golf Links Road and found a large group already assembled. Over the next hour, the group reportedly grew to fill the parking lot as well as several adjacent lots.

Police say officers worked to maintain public safety while waiting for backup from Project ERASE, a multi-jurisdictional effort across police services to target street racing and high-risk driving behaviours.

Around 9:30 p.m., enough officers were on scene to be able to safely move the participants out of the lots, and the parking lots were cleared of all vehicles without incident.

Police say tickets weren’t issued during the event due to safety concerns.

“At the time of the event, the goal was to disperse the crowd quickly and safely to mitigate the risk of street racing and reduce the spread of COVID-19. Given the size of the crowd, the overall risk to public safety outweighed the ability to ticket specific individuals,” police said.

Investigators from Division 3 CID have been assigned to follow-up, identify the organizers of this event, and lay applicable charges.

“Organizers and participants are reminded that this behaviour is unacceptable and Public Health direction must be followed.”

This incident happened on the same day the province announced that it was rolling back the limits for how many people are able to attend private social gatherings (10 indoors and 25 outdoors) across all of Ontario in response to the rising number of new daily COVID-19 cases.

Premier Doug Ford issued a statement on Sunday, decrying what he described as “reckless behaviour” at the Ancaster event.

With files from The Canadian Press

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