KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Under current city laws, the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department doesn't have a lot of power to crackdown on the stunts, including doughnuts, leaving skid marks all over town.
That may soon change.
For the last two weekends, downtown Kansas City streets have turned into scenes from "The Fast and The Furious." The impromptu stunts, known as sideshows, have shut down entire intersections.
"That behavior is reckless," Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas said during a news conference Wednesday. "That behavior is dangerous, not just for the drivers, but for passersby."
Sideshows have been an ongoing issue throughout the year, with drivers damaging streets and even basketball courts.
In September, a sideshow ended with a mass shooting that wounded six people at Swope Park.
"That many people in a small confined area, there is the instances for retaliation based on previous incidents that may have happened around the city when you're bringing in a group of different people together," KCPD Deputy Chief Karl Oakman said Wednesday during the news conference with Lucas.
The laws on the books only allow police to do so much.
"You know when they start fleeing then you put other motorists at danger and at risk so we never want to be in that situation," Oakman said.
The Mayor's office and KCPD will work with the city council to revise an ordinance that won't just go after the drivers, but will also impound the vehicles involved in the stunts.
In the meantime, there are others in the community like Desmound Logan who organizes sideshows around Kansas City in a safe environment. He calls it "Smoke Your Tires Not Your Homies."
"We have fun, turn it into a family event, like I've been doing and everybody has a great time and then you don't have [anything] to worry about now," Logan told 41 Action News.
Logan now travels around the country to raise money to build a permanent facility to host the events in Kansas City. He points out there is a simple reason why the drivers do the stunts.
"The internet is what makes it popular, so what you see now is they're doing a bunch of things for shares and likes. That's all they're doing. They're tearing up property, they're tearing up cars, just to get to shares and likes," Logan said.
Police encourage the public to continue calling 911 whenever they see a sideshow pop up.
