ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — The mayor of Louisville and a top Kentucky lawmaker want to turn cars used in street racing events into pancakes to deter the activity.
"The fact that it would be crushed, would prohibit it from the beginning," Rep. Jason Nemes said, R-Middletown.
Mayor Craig Greenberg went public with this idea at a press conference on Sept. 17, about two weeks after a video made the rounds on social media of dozens of people shutting down an intersection at the entrance to Iroquois Park. A 24-year-old was arrested for jumping on a Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) police car as it reversed away from the scene.
"Not everyone's out here trying to do takeovers. There is good that comes out of this community," Nicole said, who organized a car meet-up for people in Hardin and Grayson County last weekend.
Nicole didn't want to give her last name, because she admits she does race on desolate back roads. She knows this is illegal, but she says it's much safer than doing a street takeover. She said they always use spotters at the start and end of the racing area, and they get permission from property owners when possible.
"We're not out here in the middle of the street, with people standing in the center and possibly running over people and damaging our cars; that's not a risk we wanna take," she said.
She reached out to WHAS11 because she wanted to say this idea of crushing cars is too extreme, and she thinks it could lead to people fleeing from police more.
"It feels very extreme. You know, you can always impound someone's car and take it away from them. You can take their license, but that car's still there," Nicole said. "I don't see people pulling over for that. And whenever you make the threat of we can possibly crush your car...it becomes very personal for people like us."
Nemes said courts would get some discretion under the law he's envisioning.
"It'll be a statewide law; and then the county attorney or the commonwealth attorney in the particular jurisdiction will determine if it's appropriate in particular cases," Nemes said. He also said a car won't be crushed until someone has been through the judicial process and been convicted of street racing.
Kentucky's current street racing law, KRS 189.505, says anyone partaking in "vehicle racing, drag racing" or any other competition on public roads can be charged between $60 and $200, and jailed up to 30 days.
Louisville has a street racing ordinance that allows for increased penalties; people can be fined up to $2,000 on a second offense, and have their car impounded for up to six months in the metro.
Nemes said they will need to re-write the current street racing law to allow for car crushing. He said people have brought up to him, why not just sell the cars for charity?
"That might make more financial sense," Nemes said. "But most people who do this really love their car. They put money into it, they put a lot of love on it. And so, they don't want to lose it. They don't want it to be crushed."
Lawmakers will look at other jurisdictions where this has worked in the past. One place is Ontario, CA, just east of Los Angeles County. Police did crush cars there in the early 2010s.
A spokesperson for the department said they were seeing lots of stabbings and shootings originating from street racing events, but they would only crush cars that had stolen vehicle parts in them.
"We would then encounter the same vehicle, and the removed stolen engine was replaced with another stolen engine. This allowed us to present a case in court about a theft cycle created by us removing the stolen part and returning the vehicle. In an attempt to avoid a theft cycle, we requested to take possession of the entire vehicle," Shahrouz Sadeghian with Ontario Police said.
Sadeghian said while the crushing was related to car part thefts, the media reported it as being connected to street racing.
"This is what made us known for crushing street racing vehicles. Our street racing problem substantially decreased for many years after these details," he said. Ontario Police has not done this for several years now.
Kentucky's possible car crushing bill will not see any action until the start of the 2025 legislative session in January.
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