The city of Portland is looking to crack down on street racing, beefing up penalties for those who shut down intersections and roadways and speed around city streets.
On Wednesday, Portland City Council will consider an ordinance to create two new misdemeanor crimes with which to charge street racers: “unlawful street takeover” and “unlawful staging of street takeover events.” Potential penalties include towed cars, a fine of up to $500, and jail time. If it’s a first offense, the driver could instead take part in a diversion program approved by the district attorney.
Like many U.S. cities, Portland has seen a rise in speed racing during the pandemic with commuters off the roads. Weekend events in areas of North Portland have drawn hundreds of spectators to blocked off intersections.
They have also frustrated local businesses, who say the reckless driving endangers their employees. As Willamette Week reported in April, a group of businesses under the name North Portland Coalition for Safe Streets have repeatedly implored the city to crack down on the events.
Sam Adams, senior advisor to the mayor, said the ordinance is an attempt to give law enforcement a new set of tools to stop street racing. Under Oregon law, speed racing is a traffic violation and comes with a fine of $435. Both ‘Reckless Driving’ and ‘Recklessly Endangering Another a Person’ are misdemeanor crimes, and they come with a penalty of up to one-year jail time and a fine of $6,250, according to the city’s website.
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Adams said the mayor’s administration felt the existing charges were insufficient to provide a deterrent to the risky events in which one wrong turn could have deadly consequences for both drivers and their audience. Video from an event on Northeast Columbia Boulevard this summer shows a car spinning wildly around a crowd huddled in the middle of the intersection.
“When you watch the video and they’re spinning around in a circle with the front end of the car - the wrong flick of the wrist or the elbow and they’re plowing into ... sometimes hundreds of spectators,” said Adams.
The ordinance cites four street takeover events stretching from May 2019 to November 2020 in which drivers blocked traffic and sped through intersections. Police say a motorcyclist killed in Portland this April may have been street racing at the time.
But whether law enforcement will use these news tools is an open question. Police have repeatedly said they’re stretched too thin to respond to all the crimes occurring in the city at a given moment.
Police did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether police had responded to the four street racing events detailed in the ordinance.
The ordinance defines “unlawful street takeover event” as an unpermitted activity that involves people “comparing the maneuverability or power of one or more motor vehicles.” The ordinance defines an “Unlawful Staging of a Street Takeover Event” as a person knowingly using a motor vehicle or other obstacle to create a barrier to impede a public place to create a location for “an unlawful street takeover event.”
The council is set to vote on the ordinance Wednesday at 2 p.m.
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