Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved an agenda line item to create a task force to combat street takeovers, sideshows, street racing etc.
Los Angeles Police and other surrounding police officers have tried everything up their sleeves to combat street racing, sideshows, and other illegal car related activities and have come up short time and time again. But now, as per ABC 7 News and their latest report on the latest going’s on in City Council earlier yesterday (Nov. 20, 2018) they’re trying something brand new, working together. It sounds corny on face value but police departments will pool their resources in a concerted effort to get street racing, sideshows, and unruly car shows down to tolerable numbers. Illegal car activities will always be a thing. It’s Southern California. But, in more words or less, LA City Council has declared war against anything resembling illegal car activities.
LA City Council is made up of a diverse group of individuals representing their respective areas and it seems hard to imagine that any governing body can agree on one thing, but combating illegal street racing seems to be something they all agree on.
This task force will do more of what they’ve been doing but will now have more resources than ever and will, for the first time, use computer analysis to study patterns to move resources to where they need to be BEFORE something happens.
First, more. More than likely fines will increase above the $1,000 limit, jail time might increase over three months, and vehicles impounded for more than 30 days is all on the table. Community organizers brought into this task force want to see results and hard numbers and pumping up fines, arrests lengths and imprisonment sentences is an easy way to do that.
Next, departments will get smarter. If you’ve watched the Wire or any police show in the past thirty years, you’ve heard of Compstat brought up more than once. Street racing crimes are now being inputted into Compstat. That means police are tracking specifics with street racing crimes with the aim to reduce those numbers. If LAPD tracks 100 street racing activities in a month, the next month they aim to see that number decrease significantly with relentless follow-ups, crackdowns in hotspots, and zero tolerance arrests for anyone showing up. Now that it’s in Compstat, police have an incentive to get those numbers down any way they see ethically right.
In ABC 7’s report LA City Council hinted that they are using license plate readers at shows they are called to and are tracking repeat offenders and spectators, saying they are using “as much technology as possible.”
LA City Council wants to see results, police want to see results, and the community wants to see results so expect Los Angeles Police to, for the lack of a better term, rip you a new one if they even sniff a hint of illegal street racing on your car or in your area.
I’ll be keen to see how effective their task force ends up being.
Source: ABC 7
[…] I blogged about how some SoCal police departments are using Compstat to gather data to fight sideshows and perhaps those policing techniques are trickling down across departments. […]