Last April, after 57 years, the owners of the only racetrack in South Florida shut it down so another company could turn it into warehouses. Several years before that, the area’s only drag strip, Countyline Dragway in north Miami-Dade, permanently closed.
There’s nowhere left to go if you want to go fast, and do it legally.
Street racing, stunt driving and intersection takeovers became criminal offenses last October under a new Florida law, six months after racers took their last spin around Moroso Park, officially known as the Palm Beach International Raceway, in Jupiter.
[ RELATED: Broward Sheriff’s deputies raid weekend ‘street takeovers’ and arrest seven men ]
In the months since the law went into effect, the situation on the streets has only intensified, officials say. So have law enforcement efforts to combat it. In March, agencies across South Florida launched special operations to raid meets, cite spectators, arrest drivers and impound their cars.
“This is probably the number one concern we get from residents,” said Mike Jachles, a spokesperson for the West Palm Beach Police Department.
Some blame the loss of Moroso Park, arguing that, without the track and all it offered, the drivers have no choice but the streets. Others, like Jachles, say they would continue to break the law even if an alternative existed.
“If you don’t have a track, what do you expect? What do you think is going to happen? People are going to want to get out and push their cars,” said Danny Rodriguez, a former street racer from Weston who now works for a car dealership. “Countyline drag strip, Beat the Heat, cops versus the street, that was fun. We don’t have that anymore, what are we going to do?”
The cars go so fast in a Margate parking lot that Emelyn Quinonez’s windows shake across the street. And while the young girl “sleeps like a log” in the apartment, she said her mother hears them every weekend, though they’ve started coming less often since people started calling the police.
On March 24, Broward Sheriff’s deputies followed a car scene meetup across the street on West Atlantic Boulevard in Margate, the second time that month at the hangout spot, arresting one person and seizing two cars. Two weeks before, on March 10, deputies arrested six people there and took six cars.
[ RELATED: 6 more arrested in Broward crackdown on reckless driving ]
Earlier in March, Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony declared he would no longer show any leniency towards the drivers, or “intersection takeover crews,” announcing a new offensive to “take [their] vehicles and take [them] to jail.”
About the same time, the West Palm Beach Police Department created its own task force to target racers with officers from multiple units, Jachles said, including the GHOST unit, or Gang-Habitual Offender Suppression Team.
Over the past month alone, Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies have raided four separate car scene meetups. On March 24 and 25, BSO’s Burglary Apprehension Team arrested a total of seven people and seized five vehicles in two raids, giving out over 60 citations to spectators.
All of those arrested are being charged with criminal misdemeanors under the new law.
“I’ve talked to my social media team about the type of messaging that we’re getting from the individuals that are actually violating the law and doing this,” Tony said at a news conference in March announcing the crackdown. “And some of them think there’s a negotiation to be made. They’re saying we need to build them a track or they’re going to keep it up. Well, we’re not here to negotiate.”
Street racing citations have risen sharply across South Florida over the past four years. The vast majority of those cited are between 16 and 24 years of age.
Between 2018 and 2022, officials issued 366 citations for street racing crimes in Palm Beach County, according to data from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. The number peaked in 2022 with 146 citations, over a third of all four years combined.
In the same time period in Broward, officials issued 471 citations. Of those, 126 occurred in the fourth quarter of 2022 alone, with 170 across the entire year.
Drag racers, law enforcement officials and others in the community predicted the surge in street racing when they asked the Palm Beach County to keep Moroso Park open. The track is a South Florida landmark that once hosted racers from across the country. But it was also a place where young local drivers could go instead of the streets.
“If this track is lost, it means we see an increase in drag racing,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw warned county commissioners in an April 2022 letter. “This is a problem that could escalate. As Sheriff of the county it is prudent this facility stay a raceway so these thrill seekers have a place to go besides our public streets.”
After Moroso closed, Beat the Heat, an anti-street racing program that PBSO previously held at the track, had to move out of the region entirely to the next closest track, in Immokalee.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/5FMWDVTPTVD63HPFFF67WXGFNY.png)
First responders began Beat the Heat in Jacksonville in the early 80s as “an alternative approach” to illegal street racing, according to Lt. Rey Alonso, who leads PBSO’s chapter of the program.
Most of the officers who run the program street-raced as kids, he said. Their goal was to teach drivers, particularly young drivers, to “identify street racing as a crime vs. drag racing as a sport.” The program, which has been operating in Palm Beach County since 2002, brought young drivers to Moroso, often over a hundred at a time, for the chance to try to beat officers in a race.
“This GREATLY reduced the amount of street racing in our area,” Alonso said. “Racers knew the cost of the crime and knew that for only $20 they could legally race all night at the track.”
Since Moroso closed, the program has partnered with the Immokalee Regional Raceway in Collier County for future events.
“With the closing of PBIR, street racing has increased throughout south Florida,” Alonso wrote in an email. “Our agency has created a street racing task force to combat this problem through enforcement. No longer do we have the option of education and getting them to the track unless they are willing to travel over a hundred miles to the nearest open legal raceway.”
As of March, Moroso Park remained closed. But its fate is not quite sealed. The land is currently zoned for industrial property. At a January meeting, Palm Beach County commissioners were supposed to approve a change to the zoning so that the track could become a warehouse.
Instead, after two hours of public comments, commissioners voted 4-2 to deny the request from the owners, Moroso Investment Partners. Had the request gone through, law would have forbidden the area from ever having a racetrack, even under different ownership.
“The race track is closed and will remain closed,” Seth Bain, a lawyer for the company, said earlier at the meeting. “It will never be a viable use of this property again.”
Supporters of the track who showed up at the meeting felt differently. Many pointed to the recent rise in street racing as evidence that the park should stay open.
“Coincidence some might say? I think not,” said Trevis Lewis, whose tow company, Tows Are Us, has assisted PBSO in some of the latest impoundments. He referenced a street-racing event in Lakeland where police arrested 53 people in 2021.
Lakeland’s major racetrack, the USA International Speedway, was demolished in 2012. A warehouse now sits there instead.
After the March 10 arrests in Broward County, some people criticized Sheriff Tony on social media for targeting the “park and chill” people, or those in the car scene who meet up, but not to do takeovers.
Deputies had observed the drivers “operating their motor vehicle in a reckless manner, spinning out their vehicle tires as they accelerated at a high rate of speed through the parking lot while also revving their engines creating loud exhaust noise,” according to the probable cause affidavit.
When the drivers went to a nearby gas station to take pictures, deputies arrested them. They later “admitted guilt to their participation and actions.”
“Arresting people and impounding cars for doing nothing but taking pics at a gas station,” one person commented on the Sheriff’s Office Instagram post announcing the arrests.
“It’s crazy how he’s still trying to put us in jail instead of giving us a legal pit,” another commenter wrote. “This sheriff don’t know what he’s doing we are just gonna keep going until he gives us what we’ve been asking for years. He could have helped end this a long time ago but instead he wants to put some kids in jail.”
Jachles, the West Palm Beach police spokesperson, chose not to speculate on the merits of a track. The street racers want to “disrupt normalcy” in order to get attention, he said. The police crackdown in West Palm Beach “sends a message of no tolerance.”
The stunts at street takeovers can be extremely dangerous, leading to accidents where people get killed. A 17-year old is now accused of shooting an elderly couple who was stopped at an intersection takeover in Lehigh Acres a few weeks ago, according to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. At some of the recent raids, BSO deputies recovered firearms.
But the “takeover people” don’t represent everyone in the car scene; some say they are ruining the scene for everyone else, drawing unwanted attention from the police.
Breaking News Alerts
As it happens
Get updates on developing stories as they happen with our free breaking news email alerts.
On Instagram, the scene has shifted towards younger people who chase “clout” by pulling risky stunts for likes and views, said Chris, a former street racer who declined to give his last name, fearing retaliation from law enforcement. He now produces stunt-driving footage for music videos.
“These new pages came in and wanted to be #1, basically saying they’re the best, they would throw it everyday, doing the most riskiest things to get attention and it worked, but at the cost of everyone getting arrested, injured, the scene getting hot,” Chris wrote in an Instagram message. “… many don’t even know how to do an oil change but think they’re car enthusiasts by going in circles in a intersection.”
Even though he’s not a takeover person, Rodriguez wondered whether a track could help get them off the street as well.
“There’s people in the community that are into that,” he said. “But that’s just making noise. If you give somebody enough land to do a big car show, they’re chilling, you know. They could waste their tires legally, break their cars legally.”
The culture of street racing has existed in many forms across generations. Ultimately, track or no track, it will continue, said Rodriguez, who grew up racing his dad through the streets of South Florida. He now has two kids of his own, and they already love cars.
“You can’t get the street out of the boy,” he said. “You can get him off the street, but you can’t get it out of him.”
Staff writer Shira Moolten can be reached at smoolten@SunSentinel.com