Neighbours of a multi-storey car park in Huntingdon have expressed anger after drivers are said to have hurled abuse and revved their engines at a car cruiser event, despite police being present.
More than 500 people and hundreds of cars attended the ‘park and pose’ event at the Huntingdonshire District Council multi-storey car park in St Germain Street on Saturday.
The Japan versus the World-themed event was supposed to take place in Cambridge but, following the weather forecast of rain, plans were changed and an event on Facebook was posted that invited thousands of people to Huntingdon.
Jon Pearce, whose house in Hartford Road backs onto the car park, told The Hunts Post: “My wife went over to the car park and was threatened and abused so I went over to see what was going on and the noise was just unbelievable.
“The police attended but they just sat in a van and did nothing.”
According to a spokesman for Cambridgeshire police, two warnings were given out to a grey Toyota Supra and a blue Ford Sierra for driving dangerously.
A police spokesman said: “We were called at 7:34pm on Saturday (Jan 23) with reports of cars driving antisocially and dangerously at the car park, in St Germain Walk.”
A car and officers were also placed at the ramp to the third floor of the car park to stop drivers from taking over the whole building.
Conor Dignam, of Hartford Road, Huntingdon, also witnesses the event.
He said: “They were noisily gunning their engines, driving around the multi-storey and with loud bangs and music.
“I saw several cars driving the wrong way out of the car park, which would have caused a crash if someone had been driving in the right way.
“The police response was ineffectual for far too long. Two police officers in a van parked up as far away from the multi-storey car park as they could and did absolutely nothing.”
The event is believed to have started at around 7pm and finished around 11pm when the car park lights were switched off and many then moved to Riverside Road in Godmanchester.
One of the organisers, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Hunts Post: “We had decided to go to the car park because it was undercover. I have been to meet ups here before but there are normally about 100 cars or so.
“There were two drivers who ruined it for the rest and the police gave them warnings straight away. We put a post on Facebook to ask people to keep the noise down because we were near a residential area.”
Residents are now calling for action to be taken by the police and local authorities to prevent the car meets from happening again.
A spokesman for the district council said: “Huntingdonshire District Council was made aware of this happening on Monday. There was an issue with the battery on the shutter door to the car park, which meant we had to leave it open for cars to enter and leave. The battery has now been replaced and the shutter door is working correctly again.”
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