[Perceval]

When I was young, I would go down to Front Street in Philly on weekend nights. It's an industrial area so the street is real wide to allow for 18-wheelers to turn in and out of the warehouses and factories. This made it ideal for drag racing and showing off souped-up cars. It would get really crowded with folks showing off their cars and participating in the races.

One weekend after my buddy and I went down there, I saw on the news that the police intervened finally to stop the drag racing. It was a very big operation to quickly and simultaneously pull enough cops cars out to block both ends of Front Street entirely to corral all of the racers and spectators in. Helicopters were also deployed in case someone wanted to try to speed through the city to escape. In the end, all the cars they managed to corral got impounded. I don't know what the long term effect was on the drag racers.

I imagine that if you're going to do it right – and not just set up a bunch of reckless high speed chases through neighborhoods/cities – it actually has to be a fairly large operation, pulling in a lot of resources for a substantial amount of time. And I don't know if it ultimately stops drag racing or just pauses it for a while, nor do I know what the opportunity cost is of pulling all the resources away from other policing tasks.

While I'm generally for impounding drag racers and ATV swarms, I do think there are tradeoffs and risks that the police department leadership has to take into account.