Senator Heather Somers (R-Groton) talks about the ongoing issue of street takeovers, and the bill now heading to the Senate that will provide stricter punishments for those who get involved in these takeovers.
Mike Hydeck: It was unanimous: 148 House members, Democrats and Republicans said enough is enough. This week, they all voted in favor of a stricter bill when it comes to punishments when it comes to street takeovers. That's when huge crowds of ATVs and motorcycles descend on a location, block the road, often create havoc. That can include damage, property, fights, gunfire. We've seen this all across the state. And now the Senate is going to take this up. Senator Heather Somers is here. She's experienced some of this in her district, too. Welcome back to Face the Facts. This is an overwhelming thing that can cause damage, injury, sometimes even death. Let's talk about this bill. Where would it take things? Would it talk about trying to prevent it? Or is it really about punishment afterwards?
Heather Somers: I think we all should take part in trying to prevent this from happening. I don't really understand the point of it. I've talked to many people. As you said, it's shut down streets, it causes chaos. It's loud. It's scary for people. And I don't really know what the end game is of what we're trying to do here. But this bill in particular, it adds some enforcement powers to the local municipalities by allowing them to invoke fines up to $2,000 at some point for organizing these events, people that are involved in them. You know, an innocent bystander who just happens to be there, who sees this happening, is not going to be somebody who is caught up in this, so to speak. But there are people that know this is going to happen. They're there, they're egging it on. Those people should also be held accountable. One of our issues is many of times, these are people that are underage and in the State of Connecticut, you know, unfortunately, this year we have, our fatalities are up 33 percent on our highways. It's more dangerous because of what we've done with our police by not supporting them with the Police Accountability Bill. I definitely feel that this fits into that, that mantra of you know, police can't stop us. You can't chase me, I'm a juvenile. And we've really tied the hands of our police officers to deal with these situations. And now we're seeing the repercussions.
Mike Hydeck: Now you, as we were sitting down and we started talking about this, talk about the instance that happened in your district. You said a young woman ended up dying from one of these.
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Heather Somers: We did. We had that. It was dirt bikes that took over. They didn't actually take down the street or shut it down. But they were involved in a chase. And she was on the back of a of a dirt bike, and it collided with a car. And unfortunately, the people that were involved, they took off, they left her there and she was a young, beautiful woman with her life, you know, ahead of her and she passed away.
Mike Hydeck: That is so sad. So law enforcement, from a standpoint we know, and we've done stories here on Face the Facts and on NBC Connecticut, we need more police on the streets. So to try to deal with these massive takeovers does staffing our police departments have to be a part of the equation from a big picture standpoint, do you think?
Heather Somers: Definitely. We are down police officers. It's really tough to be a police officer, number one. It's extra tough here in the State of Connecticut because we have handcuffed our police's ability to police. You know, when everybody else in your town has qualified immunity, and you don't, and you're the one out actually having to make the hard calls, having to pull people over for things that are probably unpleasant, but yet you do not have qualified immunity, qualified immunity, not immunity. That sends a chilling message to those who are interested in law enforcement.
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Mike Hydeck: It would make it difficult to hire. So one of the other things that we talked about, aside from the physical takeover, a lot of these things are planned on social media. So it seems as if you need to have a police officer monitoring that as well. Can the bill address that? Or is that something that needs to continue to be discussed to try to solve this?
Heather Somers: You know, I think that actually is going on right now. I can speak to that personally in the other part of my district over the past couple of years. There's a place called Beach Pond, beautiful place. Patchaug State Forest. Towns that don't have police departments. But on social media, you'll see let's meet up and we're going to have this big party, there's going to be drinking, there's going to be this. A lot of them are underage and when it gets on social media, when our econ officers show up or our part time officers show up, there's 600 people there, you know, with bonfires. So how does one person have the ability to control that kind of crowd? And we just saw this in a beach this week. West Haven where, you know, I love a good beach party, as do many of us, but we cannot have really a mob of 2,000 people on a beach, taking over the beach and then having this end with a culmination of gunshots being fired at a gas station down the road. It just can't happen. So we have to empower our local municipalities to have more enforcement powers. We have to have people that are monitoring social media. I know that our police officers actually are doing that as we speak in different areas. But I think the general public has to be aware and parents, you know, parents need to be accountable for their children's actions. And these, a lot of these folks are in that you know, teens, late teens, early 20s.
Mike Hydeck: Old enough to get out of the house but hard to track.
Heather Somers: Exactly. So you know, I think we all have to take a real look at, you know, what are we doing as a society that is creating this? What's the endgame? What's the point, as we said. I know, I was young at one point, too. I love, I still love beach parties, but they have to be done in a way that's fair, that's not disruptive, not mob, and legal. And, you know, the only thing I think you should bring to the beach is maybe a can opener. That's about it.
Mike Hydeck: So where does this go from here? We saw the overwhelming support in the House. How do you feel about its chances in the Senate as well?
Heather Somers: I think this is a fabulous chance to this is something that the Republicans have been pushing for a long time, trying to make reforms to what we unfortunately saw with the Police Accountability Bill and the implications on what has happened, the results. You know, we implied that this was going to happen. It has happened. Now we're going back and I'm really happy to see such full and unanimous support in the House. That sends a good message for the Senate. And I'm hoping we'll have the same result in the Senate.
Mike Hydeck: It would be nice if it was unanimous as well.
Heather Somers: It would be great.
Mike Hydeck: Senator Somers, good to see you again. Thanks for coming in.
Heather Somers: Thanks for having me.
