Police vow to get tough on boy racer invasion
Nearly 200 traffic fines were given to Christchurch boy racers who are also being threatened with arrest after police were bombarded with hoax calls during a secret event.
The event, called the Aves Invasion, kept residents all over the city awake until sunrise.
Canterbury police metro commander Superintendent Lane Todd said 177 infringement notices were handed out during the event, and more charges were likely.
The event was held on Friday and Saturday night but Todd said the second night of the meet-up was much worse.
Police managed to quash the event on Friday night, and proceeded to block off the four avenues bordering central Christchurch in the evening on Saturday.
But that only pushed the racers out into the suburbs, where the revving, racing and police sirens continued for hours.
‘‘It is very clear from the behaviour over the weekend of some of the boy racers that they have decided to flaunt the law,’’ Todd said.
‘‘We will not tolerate any behaviour of this nature in the future and . . . enforcement action will be taken.’’
Todd said the police’s relationship with boy racers had improved in the last six months but this weekend’s events had made it go backwards.
‘‘We had made contact with them in relation to what our expectations are . . . clearly that behaviour hasn’t gone through from the weekend, and that’s why we’re extremely disappointed
‘‘We want to have a good conversation with them . . . how would they feel if it was their grandmother in their house and having this behaviour outside their house at 3am?’’
Although no-one was killed or seriously injured, Todd said they could have been.
‘‘Some of the footage that we’ve seen, there’s extreme danger, people doing burnouts in a group that are just standing and people are pushing the cars while they’re doing burnouts.
‘‘We’ve seen it overseas where people get killed and seriously injured. That’s the sort of thing we really want these people to take on board – how are they going to feel if they kill or injure one of their mates?
‘‘We’ve had a total of five people killed in Christchurch city over recent weeks.’’
Twenty police officers were working specifically to deal with the event, Todd said.
Police said it wasted police time and that some calls for help had turned out to be hoaxes.
Todd said police were ‘‘working to establish what has occurred, and will be looking to prosecute anyone who makes a false complaint to police’’.
He warned that boy racers could have their cars impounded if they broke the law.