AUSTIN, Texas — The Austin Police Department held a press conference on Tuesday, giving a rundown of the series of “street takeovers” that happened around the city on Saturday night, Feb. 18. Social media was flooded with videos of racing cars, performing dangerous stunts. More footage showed people on fire and police cars being vandalized, in which one officer sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

APD reported that two people were arrested within that same night.

Since that night, officers have conducted operations related to the original incident.

Tactical teams with APD set out to disrupt car club activity. They arrested four people, who are now set to face weapon and assault charges. According to police, the suspects stacked up eight felony charges in total and one misdemeanor. Officers confiscated four firearms, along with quantities of marijuana and methamphetamine.

APD said additional charges are to come from this investigation against other people involved. In all, police have arrested six people in relation to the “street takeovers” case. While the Texas Department of Public Safety has made one arrest. 

In order to deter this kind of criminal activity from stirring up again, APD performed Tactical Operation Readiness drills. Members of patrol, patrol support, the special response team, and the metro-tactical teams were a part of these drills.

“These drills will ensure a coordinated and controlled but effective response to similar activities in the future,” APD said in a press conference.

Although APD admitted having received a call from San Antonio police on Friday around 10 p.m., issuing a tip that a “street takeover” may take place the next day, they said they had little-to-no information to go on. So, APD had no knowledge of who’d be involved, where it’d be, nor any other verifiable information to adequately respond to the tip until the takeover happened. Even when passing the tip down through different channels of the agency, it led to a dead-end.

In addressing the delay in responding to 9-1-1 calls, APD stated:

“On a normal Saturday night, we have 16 call takers answering 9-1-1 calls. This past Saturday night, we had 12. At 10 p.m. that regular number of call takers drop to 12, and we had seven on duty starting at 10 p.m. As you can see, we had a fewer number of call takers than normal and a highly elevated number of 9-1-1 calls coming in. From 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday night, we had 390 calls come into the 9-1-1 call center. From 9 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., alone, we had 266 calls. As a point of reference for the same time period, one week earlier Saturday night, we had 65 calls.”

There’s already a known shortage in 911 call takers and this event only stressed the agency more given their dire situation. They’re actively recruiting more people to assume those roles, but the lengthy hiring process and training has to be considered as well, for they can’t just send anyone out on the floor to work the call center.

Watch the full press conference below:

This investigation is ongoing. More information will follow as it becomes available.