Were most of those arrested in July Fourth ‘takeovers’ from outside Raleigh?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Chief Boyce said many involved were not from Raleigh.
- Police arrested 34 people related to the takeovers, including five minors.
- Of 24 publicly found adult records, a majority were from Raleigh or nearby Wake County.
The Raleigh Police Department said around half — and Chief Rico Boyce later said most — of the people who showed up at two “teen takeovers” the night of July Fourth were from outside the city.
Six shootings left nine people injured by gunfire and a 10th person cut by flying glass, police said, after thousands of young people swarmed Brier Creek’s fireworks show and later Glenwood South, where Boyce estimates around 8,000 young people were on the street. Many of those people were underage and not allowed in bars and had nowhere to go, which created problems, he said.
He personally detained one minor with a gun — police seized 11 in total — and described the scene as something he had never seen before.
Last weekend’s events, Boyce said, were driven by social media encouraging teenagers to show up en masse, but police routinely respond to disturbances in the night-life district.
“Surprisingly a large number of folks that we deal with specifically on Glenwood South are not from Raleigh,” Boyce told the City Council on Tuesday. “And we track that data to prove that they’re coming from outside of the city.”
Where did those arrested come from?
The Police Department and Boyce have estimated that 3,000 people gathered at Brier Creek on Saturday night and as many as 8,000 people, including some who had been at Brier Creek, gathered at Glenwood South early Sunday morning. An initial police news release said about half of those involved were from outside Raleigh.
Police have not fully explained how they estimated the size of the crowds or determined where those in the crowds were from.
They had announced the arrests of 34 people, five of them minors, as of Wednesday evening. So The News & Observer looked at where they were from.
The N&O located publicly available arrest records for 24 adults who were arrested on or around Glenwood South that night.
It’s unclear who the remaining five adults arrested were or if their arrest records are publicly available. The N&O has asked the Police Department for the names of every adult arrested in relation to the takeovers.
Arrest records for the five minors are not publicly available.
Of the 24 people with records available Wednesday, a majority were either from Raleigh or other Wake County towns. Eight were from Raleigh, four from Knightdale, and one each from Garner and Wendell.
Six were from Johnston County, with the remaining four from Harnett, Nash, Wayne and Edgecombe counties.
Of those, many were charged with offenses like assaulting a government official — likely police officers — or assaulting others. Most of those charged were between 18 and 24 years old.
