Second,
it's a sound.
Many in Atlanta no all too well.
Getting the driver of the
red Dodge Charger detained.
The pandemic brought a
street racing crackdown.
Tomorrow in custody,
leading to a new state law and
Atlanta City ordinance.
This summer it looked like
they were working the APD along
with Georgia State Patrol
are stepping up patrols,
making arrests and enforcing
fines as allowed by law.
Atlanta PD touted hundreds of
arrests after launching a multi
jurisdictional street racing Task Force.
How successful do you think the task
force was absolutely successful?
We get few calls now.
But what actually happened to all of
those people who were arrested? APD
did catch hundreds of
people with its task force,
but out of 338 arrests we found only
36 were for street racing and our
investigation went a step further.
Uncovering of those 36 people,
14 had their charges dropped,
eight others got a fine or probation.
The rest of the cases are ongoing.
People who are perpetrating this crime are
essentially going to get away with it,
which I imagine is very frustrating
for police. Very frustrating. Why
were these cases dismissed?
A lack of evidence. I
don't think there was enough evidence there.
That's the reason these two
attorneys got their clients street
racing charges dismissed this year.
Zachary Jada has two more
clients charged with street
racing that he's defending now.
I seem to think that will have will have
success in getting those this mess as
well. So the law got stricter.
Yeah, but is it really more effective
and less you catch somebody actually in
the act of street racing or langedrag,
or that something of that nature?
It's going to be hard for you to
prove that they were actually racing.
Donut so attorney Brian Williams says
police need to get as much information
from suspects on the scene as possible,
or else the charges just won't stick.
How many cars think it took
to get the road that black?
Oh, this is hundreds of thousands
of passes? Yeah, that's a lot,
but getting those charges to stick
is far from the only problem
Ryan took us to Purdue Southwest.
What he says is a hotspot for street racing.
But he's familiar with
because he lives nearby.
There's so much retracing that occurs
here between the hours of life one
and three PM 3:00 AM back in April,
South Fulton posted this on Facebook,
saying it arrested 84 adults
and impounded 45 cars.
It happened about 20 minutes from here,
but only eight of those people
arrested are officially
charged in the court system
and not one is charged with
street racing. On top of that, a
couple of days later, most of those
cars were given back to the owner
most. We're back with the drivers.
The very next day. In fact, according to
the impound lots and that next weekend
you heard him back here again
next weekend. Maybe too long,
probably the next night.
Police, he says, didn't
return when the races resumed,
but we have the intelligent dictates
that we need to have a full scale
deployment. Then we'll do that
Major Eddie Smith, who coordinated
the APD Street Racing Task Force.
Says Atlanta only has so many
officers to tackle the problem,
but he points to this data showing
the calls about street racing
dropped over the course of that task.
Force crackdown.
He says officers cannot control
what the courts do and the running
with police may not be enough
to deter drivers from the crime.
Are these the kind of people that you think
would go back out and street race again?
Hopefully not, but for those who had
it citation dismissed, probably so.