More than one month after the presumed street racing accident that killed 3-year-old Anna Garcia in Tucson, cracking down on racing is getting more difficult for police.
Crime tips and social media leads have declined after surging around the time of that April 10 crash, according to Lieutenant Rudy Dominguez with the Tucson Police Department.
“We’re not finding as much stuff on social media,” he said in a May 18 interview.
Since January, the department’s Threat Mitigation Unit — typically responsible for emergency management, analyzing threats to large events and intelligence-gathering — has led an anti-street racing effort focused on social media. Officers combed social media sites for clues about upcoming street racing events, uncovering organized racing networks with clearly defined roles stretching to Casa Grande, Phoenix and California.
That approach led to a successful street racing bust on South Kolb Road on April 18, which saw 23 trespassing arrests, multiple vehicle seizures, 2 arrests for contributing to the delinquency of a minor and 3 arrests for participation in a criminal syndicate, according to TPD Chief Monica Prieto.
But since then, organizers have retreated into private communications networks.
“Historically, we educate people that are committing crime. They find out what we’re doing, like, you know, DNA, fingerprints. Now people wear gloves. So, they know that we look at certain things,” Dominguez said.
Crime tips, some with detailed information about planned races, have declined, too. From when he took charge of the Threat Mitigation Unit in January until mid-February, Dominguez estimated, the unit received a handful of street racing tips “every couple weeks.” From late March to early April, that increased to five or six a week, he said, before declining again to normal levels.
Dominguez said tips are the most important source of street racing information for his unit.
Still, he said TPD’s current approach — whose design he credited to TPD Detective Tristan Pittenridge — is more effective than the one he saw as a patrol officer in the past.
“To be honest, we didn’t have an impact. We just chased them around. We would get lucky and we’re like ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a group of 40 or 50 cars over here, let’s go see what they’re doing.’ It was really hit or miss,” he said.
Since the Threat Mitigation Unit adopted their “proactive” approach, according to Dominguez, the amount of street races in Tucson has declined.
On May 5, the Tucson City Council discussed impounding cars caught racing for longer and floated the idea of asking voters to allow bringing back red-light cameras. Those policies have not shown up on council agendas since then.
A petition started by Garcia’s relative asking for stronger state penalties for street racing had over 23,000 signatures on Thursday morning, but has gained relatively few signatures in the past month.
