Kansas City has seen an increasing number of dangerous sideshows and street races.
It’s also dealing with a spike in thefts of high-performance cars. Turns out, the two issues are connected.
“Those high-performance V8 supercharged drivetrains are what the street racing gangs want to put in their vehicles,” said Missouri State Highway Patrol investigator Cpl. Nate Bradley.
Right now, thieves are mostly interested in Stellantis products like Jeeps, Dodges and Chryslers, according to Bradley.
Badley says these gangs will buy, for example, a cheap six-cylinder Dodge Charger with a blown motor or transmission. They strip that car and install the high-performance engine and drivetrain “to make a high-performance street racing car,” he said.
This crime takes an enormous amount of skill.
“I have spoken with several engineers in Dearborn, Michigan, and they were befuddled,” Bradley said. “They weren't sure exactly how these guys were able to get everything to communicate as efficiently and as effective as they have.”
Kansas City police highlighted the problem at a recent Board of Police Commissioners meeting.
“We’ve had significant arrests in regards to the DCJ investigations, that’s our Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep investigations,” said KCPD property crimes Major Martin Cobbinah. “We have some of those individuals that were apprehended and arrested and charged.”
KCPD did not provide any additional information on those arrests. (Kias and Hyundais are still the most stolen vehicles, accounting for 50% of the almost 4,700 auto thefts in the city in the first seven months of the year.)
Still, stolen Stellantis products account for millions of dollars.
“Since 2021, we've had 768. That's roughly $40 million,” Bradley told KCUR.
These thefts are a national problem. “We have seen an uptick in performance model Stellantis products over the last few years,” said Nicolas Zeitlinger, spokesman National Insurance Crime Bureau. Zeitlinger said NICB does not have information on what happens to these cars after they are stolen.
In fact, in the first six months of this year, the Dodge Charger was the sixth most stolen vehicle in the country for models 2019 and newer, according to NICB data. The Chevrolet Camaro was in 10th place.
Bradley said thieves are starting to switch over to General Motors products. “We started to see some thefts of high-performance GM products such as Camaros and Corvettes.”
Stellantis products are targets because they’re relatively easy to steal. All that’s needed is a device available on Amazon for $535. A thief plugs it into a port, reprograms the key fob and in seconds, the car is gone.
In 2021, Dodge announced new theft protection measures after what it termed “an inordinate number of articles” about stolen cars like the Scat Pack, Hellcat and Charger that “has created a great deal of anxiety” among Dodge owners.
Sideshows continue to be a problem across the city
Kansas City’s illegal street racing problem isn’t new. Every week, new sideshow videos are posted on social media from what the creators call “street takeovers.” Souped-up cars turn donuts in the intersection while the tires smoke and dozens of people look on.
Bradley says those videos make stealing these high-performance cars and turning them into street racers profitable. People all over see those sideshow videos from Kansas City, and they want the same kind of car. Bradley calls it an “underground networking marketplace” for street racing.
The city is taking some action.
On September 8th, 42 officers from KCPD participated in what the department called a “Street Racer/Sideshow Operation,” according to an email obtained by KCUR from the head of the Traffic Division circulated to other commanders, Mayor Quinton Lucas and some city council members.
The operation targeted five sideshows that Saturday night stretching from NE Kimball Drive in the industrial Northland to 109th and Raytown Road near Longview Lake.
KCPD sent out photos of the operation and touted that police recovered one stolen automobile, seized four guns and made two arrests.
In a follow-up email to City Manager Brian Platt, also obtained by KCUR, Lucas was skeptical. “I appreciate the operation, but 42 officers (or department members) to yield two arrests ultimately seems like quite a lot,” he wrote. Lucas did not respond to a request for additional comment.
KCPD also said it had 60 successful stop stick deployments during the September operation. That is something Platt would like to see more of. In an email to some City Council and other officials on safety issues, Platt suggested “more aggressive deployment of stop sticks during sideshows and burnouts.”
Since the September crackdown, there have been no similar sideshow operations by the traffic unit, according to KCPD. However, KCPD spokesperson Officer Alayna Gonzalez told KCUR the division stations handle “a lot of the day-to-day calls involving street racing.”
In September, the City Council also toughened the penalties for sideshows and street racing. The new ordinance boosted the maximum fine from $500 to $1,000, and on the third offense, violators could spend six months in jail. The new law also allows police to impound a car that they have probable cause to believe was involved in a street race or sideshow.
Two years ago, the city installed what it called “pucks” in several intersections. They look like small black discs embedded in the road at intersections and are intended to disrupt cars from sliding or skidding on the pavement.
