A small Florida police department decided “enough is enough” in the epidemic of street takeovers sweeping the U.S. and used internet intelligence and preparation to prevent an unsanctioned event at a local ocean pier.
The St. Augustine area police department used electronic monitoring to identify the planned “teen takeover” and were ready before it descended into chaos.
The beach community is located about 60 miles south of Jacksonville on the Atlantic coast.
“We’re a beach town, so we’ve always had spring break crowds that show up – but nothing that’s been organized like this with the sole intent of just causing disruption,” St. Augustine Beach Police Chief Daniel Carswell told Fox News Digital.
The takeover was scheduled for mid-afternoon Thursday, according to a flyer obtained by the department.
“Pull up. Turn Up. Take over,” it read.
The department stamped a “cancelled” across the flyer and pumped it out on social media. The preparation was the result of a group effort with local agencies, the chief said.
“We work together great, especially with the [St. John’s County] Sheriff’s Office,” Carswell said. “They have what’s called a Real-Time Intelligence Center – or ARTIC – and that’s their job.”
Prior to the planned takeover, ARTIC flagged the planned event, which allowed authorities enough time to take measures to stop it.
St. Augustine Beach Police Department officers then took to social media, seeking to go viral themselves. They spread the word the takeover had been canceled.
Essentially, the “cancelled” flyer was what intelligence agencies call a “psyop,” a psychological operation to influence behavior of a person or a population.
The chief also said the department also put out the official words there would be “zero tolerance” if anybody arrived at the pier expecting to cause trouble.
As a backup measure, officers deployed to to the pier in the event attendees still showed up, which came with some risk.
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“We’re a small police department, we’re 25 police officers,” Carswell said. “So it is a complete drain on our resources, especially when it’s unplanned – that’s the danger of it.”
Carswell added that the unpredictability of each unplanned event creates a dangerous situation for responding officers and the community.
“We don’t know how many people could show up,” Carswell said. “It could be tens, it could be hundreds – we don’t know. And that is overwhelming to our resources. To have to call in people on their days off or pull resources from other agencies to come down here to the beach in preparation for this [event].”
There have been dozens of stories nationwide about takeovers, often called “meet ups” or “sideshows,” resulting in mayhem, dangerous car stunts and burglary of area small businesses.
However, as a result of the St. Augustine Beach effort, the takeover didn’t materialize and no charges were filed as a result of the few who did show up.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.