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The Deadly World of Street Racing



 
 
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  #1  
Old July 17th 06, 10:28 PM posted to us.talk.headline-news,us.politics,rec.autos.driving,ca.politics,alt.law-enforcement.traffic
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Default The Deadly World of Street Racing



The deadly world of street racing

July 17, 2006

BY CAROL MARIN Staff Reporter
And DON MOSELEY NBC5 Producer
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/...s-speed17.html

In the wee hours of the morning, public streets are blocked off, crowds
gather, and bets are placed. Two cars line up, side by side, engines
roaring.

>From start to finish, they will race just a quarter mile but at speeds

close to 150 mph. One winner. One loser.

In the last three months, from Elgin to Gary, Ind., at least seven
people have been killed in what police describe as drag racing
incidents.

It is an underground sport, and, according to Chicago Police and those
involved, street races are happening across Chicago and the suburbs,
fueled in part by summer weather.

Until three years ago, 34-year-old Marko Djuric of Chicago, with his
1993 modified Toyota Supra, was considered one of the top illegal
street racers. "It's me vs. you for usually a sum of money or for pride
to settle the score," he said recently in an interview with the Chicago
Sun-Times and NBC5 News.

>From his teens to his early 30s, Djuric said he and his friends

routinely raced on the streets of Chicago, at breakneck speeds,
sometimes with the knowledge of law enforcement.

Djuric defended what he described as the "careful" way the races are
run.

"Of the thousand-plus street races I have witnessed," he said, "there
hasn't been one single incident of one getting hurt or any accident
involving any kind of injury."

"Basically, they are breaking the law," said Deputy Police Chief Mike
Shields, whose job it is to try to shut them down. "They like the risk,
the fast cars, the women; it's just [a] typical macho thing," said the
nearly 20-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department.

Shields' district covers the South Side, where he said illegal street
races are a continuing problem in Chatham and South Shore as well as
parts of the Pullman and Grand Crossing neighborhoods.

"We've had problems out here before," he said. "They are not happy
about it being broken up, and we've had some people fight with the
police."

But according to a DVD called "Scandalous Street Racing," which was
produced in Chicago and is sold via the Internet, the illegal racing
scene in Chicago involves black and white neighborhoods.

A deadly sport

In April in Gary, four bystanders were killed, including a 6-year-old
boy, when a car spun out of control and plunged into a crowd. According
to published reports, witnesses said two cars were drag racing.

In May in Elgin, police said a drag race took two lives. The
20-year-old driver of one car reportedly lost control, striking several
trees. He and his passenger, also 20, were killed.

Also in May, 17-year-old Ryan Meinken of Libertyville died while
apparently racing his brother. Authorities said Meinken appeared to be
driving in excess of 100 mph. According to Matthew Chancey, chief of
the felony review division of the Lake County state's attorney's
office, an investigation of the crash continues.

And in one case, drag racing appears to have produced a homicide.

On the night of May 31, a shooting erupted in the 8400 block of South
Chicago Avenue where, according to police, a large crowd gathered to
watch a drag race. Darryl Banks, 34, a car mechanic, was shot and
killed. Six others were injured. An investigation, according to Chicago
Police, is ongoing. No one has been arrested.

"When you have all of those people together, the potential for violence
increases," said Shields.

Who's racing?

The DVD, produced by On-Airr Productions of Chicago, captures a
late-night world of bragging and illegal betting, mostly by young men
who appear to be in their 20s and 30s. It was shot on location three
years ago in Chicago, Miami and Houston.

Two cars take part in an illegal street race somewhere on Chicago's
North Side, in this scene from the DVD "Scandalous Street Racing."

"My friends are all professionals," Djuric said two weeks ago,
describing in an interview who the racers are. "I mean, there's a guy
who is a vice president of a bank. There's a couple of police
officers."

When asked if Chicago Police officers were involved, he declined to
say, but added he has seen off-duty State Police officers at races, as
well.

"I can't mention names, but they have been out with us on more than 10
occasions watching us and helping us do it right," Djuric said.

According to Mike Guglielmucci, host of a weekly racing show on WJOL-AM
in Joliet, this kind of racing is not spontaneous but carefully
planned. Guglielmucci has been involved with legal racing for more than
two decades, and at the Sun-Times' and NBC5's request, he viewed the
DVD called "Scandalous Street Racing."

"These guys have done their homework," he said. That includes, he said,
using nitrous in their fuel for more acceleration and large gum-ball
tires for extra traction.

"Whenever you are doing this you are on the edge," said Guglielmucci.

Not cheap

Even small-time street racers, Marko Djuric said, will spend as much as
$30,000 outfitting their cars to race. Djuric, a suburban contractor,
said he spent as much as $100,000 retrofitting his car.

But Djuric said the recent rash of deaths should not be attributed to
those who, like him, have engaged in organized though admittedly
illegal street races.

"What percent of the people are engaged in street racing as I know it?"
he asked rhetorically. "I don't know, probably like 10 percent. And the
rest are just careless, reckless drivers who are engaging in speed
contests randomly on public roads."

Police don't see much of a distinction and are out, they said, to stop
it all.

"We have the resources to combat it," said Shields, but a lot hinges,
he admitted, on good intelligence to find and stop events before they
get started.

'We put them in jail'

In California, authorities have instituted what are considered the
toughest laws in the nation to crack down not only on street racers but
on spectators.

In 2001, police in San Diego began the Drag-Net program.

"We don't give anybody a ticket, we put them in jail," said Sgt. Greg
Sloan of the San Diego Police Department.

San Diego police set out to create "a sense of paranoia" for street
racers and spectators.

"They want the audience," he said in a telephone interview. "So we
created a spectator ordinance which says if you are there for the
purpose of observing, you are guilty of a misdemeanor."

According to Sloan, more enforcement and tougher laws cracked down on
events where thousands showed up to watch a series of two-man races.
These days, he said, 10 cars constitute a big crowd.

"If you are convicted twice of street racing," Sloan said, "you forfeit
the car."

In Los Angeles, the law is even tougher. Authorities, said Sloan,
"smash the car" at a junkyard on the first offense.

Change of heart

Djuric said he stopped racing on Chicago streets three years ago and
now races only on sanctioned tracks.

"There's too much risk involved now," he said. "I was successful
because I never had an incident or ever witnessed one, but the risk was
still there," Djuric said. "Knowing what I know now, I realize I could
have done without all that."


Copyright © The Sun-Times Company

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  #2  
Old July 17th 06, 11:33 PM posted to us.talk.headline-news,us.politics,rec.autos.driving,ca.politics,alt.law-enforcement.traffic
Arif Khokar[_1_]
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Default The Deadly World of Street Racing

> http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/...s-speed17.html

> Even small-time street racers, Marko Djuric said, will spend as much as
> $30,000 outfitting their cars to race. Djuric, a suburban contractor,
> said he spent as much as $100,000 retrofitting his car.


Why don't they just race at the local track?

  #3  
Old July 18th 06, 01:09 AM posted to us.talk.headline-news,us.politics,rec.autos.driving,ca.politics,alt.law-enforcement.traffic
Ad absurdum per aspera
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Default The Deadly World of Street Racing

> "What percent of the people are engaged in street racing as I know it?"
> he asked rhetorically. "I don't know, probably like 10 percent."


....of the population? No wonder car insurance costs so much. The
idea that so much as ONE percent of people engage in serious
underground street racing, as opposed to the occasional display of
attention-seeking behavior or impromptu penis derby that happens to
take place on the public street, doesn't even have the ring of truth to
me.

Methinks that either the quote's badly out of context (e.g., perhaps he
means that 10 percent of street racers take it as seriously as he
does), or else it's spin doctoring to try and make the activity seem
much more mainstream than it really is. Or maybe he just exhibited
the quite common reflex to throw out "10%" as an all-occasion canonical
number.

--Joe

  #4  
Old July 18th 06, 02:11 AM posted to us.talk.headline-news,us.politics,rec.autos.driving,ca.politics,alt.law-enforcement.traffic
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Default The Deadly World of Street Racing

On 17 Jul 2006 17:09:30 -0700, "Ad absurdum per aspera"
> was understood to have stated the following:

>Methinks that either the quote's badly out of context (e.g., perhaps he
>means that 10 percent of street racers take it as seriously as he
>does),


Re-read it; that's EXACTLY what he means.


---

"Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?" ~ Senator Ted Kennedy, 1973

--

El Pollo Loco (Laura Bush Murdered Her Boyfriend) demonstrates it's complete gullibility, stupidity, and state of delusion when it falls for an April Fool's joke, hook, line, and sinker:

> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.p...6999983?hl=en&


Ragnar wrote:
> Gods, you're dumb. Its a rather obvious April Fool's joke. And you're
> the Fool.


This is no joke.
  #5  
Old July 18th 06, 02:37 AM posted to us.talk.headline-news,us.politics,rec.autos.driving,ca.politics,alt.law-enforcement.traffic
Brent P[_1_]
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Default The Deadly World of Street Racing

In article >, Dave Head wrote:

> 2) The race track is usually 25 - 50 - 100 miles away 'cuz race tracks are
> noisy, so must be located in the boonies


And then people build homes near the race track and complain about the
noise and get the race track shut down.

> 4) Race tracks are of limited length and configuration - drags are 1/4 mile,
> big road courses are full of turns that slow the cars down, and they're not
> going to get permission to go out onto the ones that don't have many turns,
> like Talledega and Daytona. You _rent_ those tracks with BIIIG bucks...


Considering how much the article says they are spending, a membership in
the race-track country club out by Joilet IL would be in the budget


  #6  
Old July 18th 06, 03:29 AM posted to us.talk.headline-news,us.politics,rec.autos.driving,ca.politics,alt.law-enforcement.traffic
SheBlewHimDidYouBlowHim
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Default The Deadly World of Street Racing

if they'd shoot the scumbag pigs, they could drag race in peace


 




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