Spokane City Council considers camera-powered street racing penalties

Spokane can be a quiet town at night – aside from the occasional, roaring interjection of a race barreling down a street or across a downtown bridge, and the revving engines echoing across the river canyon.

City officials have struggled for years to control illegal street racing, but a proposed ordinance scheduled for a vote next Monday would impose additional fines and penalties, even if the driver is unknown.

In many cases, criminal charges related to driving can only be pursued if the driver can be identified, limiting the ability for law enforcement to make arrests without resorting to high speed chases or aerial pursuit.

Sometimes that’s sufficient. On Saturday night, 19-year-old Paul Kamarov was arrested after weaving between other vehicles on Interstate 90 at speeds as high as 120 mph, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Sheriff’s personnel were in the right place at the right time for that arrest – a deputy was parked alongside the freeway near Evergreen Road to specifically keep a lookout for illegal racing, and the helicopter that tracked Kamarov to the Liberty Park Library was already in the air when the incident was called in to dispatch. He was booked into jail on eluding police and reckless driving charges.

Often, by the very nature of the crime, racers are gone by the time law enforcement are notified.

If approved by the City Council, the new excessive speeding and street racing law would create an additional infraction, rather than a criminal offense. That limits the penalties to tickets – escalating from $500 for the first offense to $1,500 for the third, past which point state law does allow a gross misdemeanor charge – but allows city police to issue infractions based on video evidence, even if the driver can’t be identified. If the driver is unknown, the registered owner of the vehicle could be cited under the proposed law instead, unless the car was stolen.

“I’ve had an interest in trying to curb this conduct for a long time,” said Councilman Paul Dillon, the lead sponsor for the proposed law.

There are already laws for speeding and reckless driving, but none specifically for street racing, Dillon said.

Specifically, fines could be issued for “street racing,” which includes racing against another vehicle or against a set time, or an “exhibition of speed,” which includes intentionally trying to draw the attention of other people with squealing tires, rapid acceleration, rapid swerving or weaving, drifting, producing smoke from tire burnout, or leaving visible tire acceleration marks on the roadway.

Creating excessive sound or emitting black smoke – also known as “rolling coal” – could also be an infraction if it’s for “an exhibition or contest of driving prowess.”

Spokane Councilman Michael Cathcart, cosponsor for the anti-racing law, expressed interest in creating a sanctioned street race in Spokane where city officials could close off a roadway. If feasible, he argued a legal race would create a positive community event for area motorsports enthusiasts while also providing a release valve for the people who would otherwise race illegally.

It wouldn’t be the first time a local government in Spokane tried something along that vein.

In 2008, the Spokane County Commission bought a failing raceway on the West Plains, in part, to provide an outlet for youth who would otherwise race on city streets. The county sold the raceway in 2021 to the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, which renamed it Qlispé Raceway Park. Several street racing events are scheduled there this summer.

In 1987 and 1988, 1.6 miles of downtown Spokane’s public streets were closed for the Budweiser Grand Prix, which promoters argued would bring an estimated $5 million in business to the city. After two years, the event folded $500,000 in debt. Residents complained about being shut out from downtown by concrete barriers and 7 miles of fencing.

“It was a fiasco,” former city Councilman Joel Crosby told The Spokesman-Review in 1999.