KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It's a sight downtown Kansas City, Missouri, residents are fed up with – drivers shutting down intersections to perform illegal car stunts.
The so-called "sideshows" popped up throughout the city Tuesday night, including at Truman Road and The Paseo, where cameras at All Seasons Car Wash caught the action.
"I don't know how somebody didn't get hurt because there was nobody directing the traffic, or there's nobody doing anything," Gene Krahenbuhl, a manager at All Seasons Car Wash, said. "It was a free for all."
The event went on for about 15 minutes at this location – near the MLB Urban Youth Academy where college athletes were playing ball – before police arrived.
"All we saw was the display of power, burning of rubber tires, smoke," Darwin Pennye, executive director at the Kansas City MLB Urban Youth Academy, said, "but the games that never never stopped, and nobody at any time felt threatened."
At one point in the night, KCPD said, there were approximately 150 cars blocking the area of East 17th Street and Manchester Trafficway. Officers boxed the drivers in and deployed stops sticks. About 50 to 60 left the area, blowing out their tires while trying to get away.
Eventually, officers issued 67 tickets and towed 18 vehicles, including one that a teenager borrowed from her dad that got stuck in the mud during the chaos.
Police said this is one kind of enforcement sideshow participants will be met with.
"We have tried all kinds of options," Capt. Dave Jackson, a KCPD spokesperson, said. "So far, we're still in the process of working with some of our partners to, to maybe put some ordinances in place that that give us a little bit more teeth."
Pennye, however, had another suggestion for drivers.
"If you want to go that fast, then go through the proper process and get licensed to go out to Kansas Motor Speedway. And you can go as fast right?" Pennye said.
