Six arrests in raid on ‘races’

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33386, 19 November 1973, Page 1

Six arrests in raid on ‘races’

Six young men were arrested last evening when the police stopped unofficial car racing in Carlyle Street, Sydenham.

The race meetings, which attracted about 30 cars each Sunday between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., involved skidding on oil patches and “dragging” between two cars at speeds up to 60 m.p.h.

Several attempts have been made by the police and the Department of Transport to stop the races. A microwave patrol car was parked at the southern end of Carlyle Street last week. The police move, prompted by some of the drivers throwing eggs at a police car the previous week, was planned for 8 p.m. yesterday. Eighteen plain-clothes police observers, hidden along the street and in a goods shed nearby, took the numbers of the cars as they hurtled past, and radioed them to uniformed policemen, who apprehended the drivers at the end of the street. Traffic patrol cars were used to block roads branching off Carlyle Street, to prevent escape. Four of the arrested men were charged with driving in a dangerous manner, and one will face an additional charge of failing to stop when signalled by an officer. The other two were charged with disorderly behaviour. including the use of offensive language. All were bailed.

Sergeant I. M. Gardiner, one of the officers who planned the operation, said last evening that the police had been aware of the races in Carlyle Street for several months. “We decided to watch them, take their numbers as they went past, and when we had enough information against the drivers, we would pounce.” One of the police observers added: “When we did pounce, it was like a -cat among the pigeons.” A spokesman for the drivers, about 30 of whom stayed in Carlyle Street until late last evening, said the police action would not pre-

vent them from racing next Sunday. “There is nowhere else where we can go,” he said. "All we want is a place where we can have some fun. "Carlyle Street is flat and wide, is deserted on Sunday evenings, and is an industrial area—there is no-one who is going to be offended by the noise.” The spokesman said he had seen only two accidents from the racing in the last year, neither of them involving serious injury. “We do not drive dangerously—we have some concern for our own skins. If we see another car pulling in to Carlyle Street, we slow down and keep an eye on him until he has gone.

“We can’t drive around Cathedral Square any more, and we have no intention of giving up Carlyle Street,” he said.