SLMPD spikes as many as 50 vehicles following street racing incidents
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - Police broke up several crowds of street racing events around the city on Sunday night, part of a crackdown on reckless driving in the city.
The incidents on Sunday night began in the Holly Hills neighborhood a little before 9 p.m., when residents say a crowd of nearly 100 vehicles blocked streets and spun tires for more than 30 minutes.
One neighbor, Chelli Faletti, said the cars were doing burnouts and donuts and driving recklessly. Faletti said some appeared to be armed, too.
“It was so loud I thought it was right outside my front door,” she said. “They had all the roads blocked off on all sides.”
Faletti and other neighbors expressed frustration that they had called police, but had not seen any officers arrive to break up the gathering. Some had reached out to Missouri State Representative, Steve Butz, who lives in the neighborhood.
Butz also posted videos of the incident to social media, criticizing what he viewed as a shortage of police officers in the city.
“You have to be serious about the problems of lawlessness, especially reckless driving,” he said.
Mitch McCoy, a spokesperson for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, said an officer did arrive in the area a few minutes after the crowd had already dispersed.
The officer, a specialist with the department’s Mobile Response Unit, had anticipated that the crowd would relocate to a shopping center at Christy Boulevard and Kingshighway, which led to police disrupting similar meetups at that location, in addition to four other gatherings around the city.
Eventually, the officers began deploying spike strips when it was safe to do so. McCoy said that between the different crowds, officers spiked as many as 50 cars within the next few hours.
“Residents are tired of the behavior. We’re tired of having to address this. The disregard for the laws on our city streets will be met with full force. You saw it last night. It’ll continue. We’ll continue to spike vehicles that engage in this dangerous behavior,” McCoy said.
One teenager was arrested after being injured in a crash sometime in the course of the night and turned themselves in, McCoy said.
Police are also asking tire shop owners to report any customers seeking repairs for spike-related tire damage.
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