St. Paul police cracking down on street racing

It's a race to the finish line, and it's very illegal. Street racing has been popular for decades.  In St. Paul alone, 200 to 300 people will gather to wait and watch for the winner. But police have a warning for the street racers.

“As far away as two to three hours just to do that, for a couple seconds of racing,” Sgt. Paul Paulos, St. Paul police spokesman, said.

YouTube flashes those few seconds of fast all the time, with videos all over of street racing in St. Paul.  But with about one-hundred fatalities in the U.S. every year related to street racing, those videos look a lot more dangerous.  One of the hot spots in St. Paul is on Shepard road.

“They bank on the openness of the streets and they bank that they're gonna be safe,” Paulos said.

But really, there's nothing safe about screeching down the road at 100 miles per hour.  And for other drivers just trying to get where they need to go, it can be terrifying.

“You look left, you look right, and all of the sudden there are two cars going over 100 miles per hour… so I would ask you, would you be afraid?”

St. Paul police are trying to combat this perennial problem by increasing patrols every weekend throughout the summer and increasing awareness that they're looking for the racers. But police point out they won’t be targeting the cars, they’ll be targeting the driver behind the wheel.

“We’re going to be looking at this conduct and behavior.  If it warrants a ticket, we'll ticket. If it warrants a tow, we'll tow,” Paulos said.