St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer says she has a message for anyone driving recklessly on city streets. “We’re coming for them,” she says.
Spencer said while campaigning for mayor that people who use their cars like weapons ought to have them treated as such. She tells SLM that her administration is looking into other tools to give the police and other city agencies to better clamp down on reckless driving. “We’ve got some things in the works,” she says.
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The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has already been cracking down on reckless drivers, particularly those using unregistered ATVs and dirt bikes to flout traffic laws, as well as motorists participating in so-called “slide shows,” where drivers do illegal stunt driving at organized events.
Last Friday, police conducted an operation aimed specifically at ATVs and dirt bikes being driven wildly on the streets of Soulard and downtown. Spokesman Mitch McCoy says officers saw the riders blow through multiple stop signs. They ended up seizing four dirt bikes and an ATV.
McCoy says city police have been focused for a while on “interrupting” slide show gatherings. Officers even knock on the door of people organizing them and let the organizers know that if anything happens, “it’s on them.”
McCoy says the department has recently gone public with its efforts, posting photos of seized dirt bikes and ATVs, like the ones taken off the streets Friday. Going forward, they are trying to push a new public awareness campaign aimed at dissuading people from riding the unregistered vehicles in the city: “Use it and lose it.”
Spencer, for her part, calls the out-of-control dirt bike and ATV riding inappropriate, saying it creates an air of lawlessness in the city. “It just sets the tone for illegal activity,” she says.
“The city streets are not a race track, and they shouldn’t be treated that way,” she tells SLM. “I’m excited to work with our police department to start clamping down on their extraordinarily dangerous behavior. It’s running people off the road. It’s very dangerous. It’s intimidating for cyclists, pedestrians and even drivers of other vehicles.”
Spencer wouldn’t elaborate on what ways her administration might bolster the police’s power to combat reckless driving, but her record as alderwoman may offer some clues.
In the most recent legislative session, Spencer sponsored a bill prohibiting “street takeovers,” which would have banned drivers doing burnouts, donuts, stunts, wheelies, and controlled skids, also known as drifting. People caught committing the reckless acts would face a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. The police could also impound their car.
Also last year, Spencer introduced a bill that would direct the city Streets Department to put a boot on the cars of people ticketed for reckless driving. The driver would have to pay $500 for the boot to be removed.
“And yes, this is going to be a pain in the butt to get a boot off of your car, whether you own it, or your mom owns it, or your neighbor or whatever,” Spencer told St. Louis Public Radio at the time of the bill’s introduction last year. “But we really shouldn’t be reckless about lending out our vehicles.”
Both the boot bill and the street takeover bill stalled in committee prior to Spencer’s election as mayor.
