City puts brakes on street racing

By Theresa Goffredo

Herald Writer

EVERETT — About a dozen young street racers and performance car enthusiasts took their passion for speed to City Hall on Wednesday, imploring Everett City Council members to find solutions instead of targeting youngsters who like to show off their spiffy wheels.

But citing public safety, the council voted in favor of making it a criminal act for anyone caught participating, promoting or encouraging illegal street racing. The council passed the ordinance 6-1, with Bob Overstreet voting against it.

The new ordinance will become law in 15 days, or on Feb. 7, at which time any spectator caught at an illegal street race could be charged with unlawful race attendance, a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail.

Before casting his vote, Ron Gipson admitted being an adrenaline junkie who raced as a kid and who also got into accidents, got his "butt beat" by his dad, and had his insurance rates climb.

But now as an adult and council member, Gipson told the youngsters that his job is to uphold the law and protect the public.

"We’re not here to prevent you from gathering or finding solutions," Gipson said.

As far as 19-year-old Shallane Carter is concerned, the city’s action won’t stop her group from working toward finding a place for kids to legally race their cars.

Carter belongs to the newly formed Everett Safe Racing Project. The group is working to gain nonprofit status, and on Wednesday presented the council with its draft mission statement: "Implement a successful street racing program. Provide a safe racing environment and help prevent illegal street racing. To promote safety and above all save lives."

Currently, no place exists locally where people can legally race their souped-up Hondas and other cars. But the group believes it can find an abandoned airstrip or possibly use the Boeing Co. parking lot for racing.

"We feel bad that they passed the ordinance, because we feel sorry for those young people who will be harassed, because no matter what the police say, we will be harassed," Carter said.

Carter and others who testified called the city’s ordinance just another tool for harassment and feared the ordinance would encourage profiling by police. The car aficionados also claimed the ordinance violated their right to free assembly.

"Why don’t you create a task force instead and postpone the vote on the ordinance," suggested Andy Johnson, manager of a performance car shop. "Take time to interact with your community."

Chris Harwood admitted he was a street racer whose 1990 Mazda RX-7 tops out at 160 mph. But he said his goal of coming to the council meeting was to find a place to meet other car devotees and race legally.

"It’s all about passion for our cars," Harwood said.

Ron Reimer warned the council before the vote that they could "forever be a goat or a saint in the eyes of the community."

But council members insisted they were looking for other tools to protect the public from a growing and potentially deadly problem.

Everett police and prosecutors were motivated to put the brakes on the street racing after police reported that crowds of up to 150 youths were gathering on city streets at night to race.

Before the ordinance was approved, the police could only charge the racing drivers with a gross misdemeanor, but not nondrivers. Now, the ordinance changes the existing traffic code allowing police to go after race supporters and spectators.

"This is to add some strength to stop an illegal activity that puts people at risk," council member Doug Campbell told the audience. "You’ve got all the time in the world to bring us any kind of ideas on how you can do this in a legal way."

You can call Herald Writer Theresa Goffredo at 425-339-3097

or send e-mail to goffredo@heraldnet.com.

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