Chatsworth Street Racing Fatalities Prompt Proposal to Confiscate Cars

A Los Angeles city councilman said today he is calling for the city to confiscate and destroy any vehicles used in street races or hit-and-run collisions that end in serious injury or death.

Councilman Mitch Englander said he was prompted by Thursday’s street racing crash in Chatsworth in which two spectators were fatally struck.

Illegal street racing is “getting more and more dangerous every day, and we’ve got to put a stop to it,” Englander said today.

He plans to introduce a pair of motions Tuesday calling for laws to allow the police to take into custody and destroy any vehicles used in street racing, the exhibition of speed or reckless driving that result in death or serious injury. One of the motions would do the same thing for hit-and-run crimes.

The vehicles would only be confiscated and destroyed after the drivers have been convicted of the crimes, Englander said.

The city has been known to impound vehicles used in prostitution, illegal dumping and drug crimes, but the laws “were brought into question,” after the city’s impounding of cars used in prostitution crimes was challenged, according to Englander.

“We need a new ordinance that just addresses” illegal street racing and hit-and-run crimes, he said.

• City News Service
• Photo Credit: Twitter user Holly Hannula ‏@HollyNBCLA