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14 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday July 7, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Street races range from random to well organized Continued from page 9 Tahir Khan, a popular Toronto cab driver, who was killed when an alleged street racer collided with his cab, and David Virgoe, who died when his transport truck was driven off Hwy. 400 by alleged street racers. To stop this trend of death and carnage, police have their work cut out for them as organized street racers can be notoriously difficult to catch. "A lot of the guys out there, who seriously street race, will get things like scanners, so they can "A lot of these guys out there, who seriously street race, will get things like scanners, so the can scan agency bans. They'll get cell phones. They'll take pictures and follow us around to try to figure out where we're deploying on any given night." Rob Grabar Ministry of Transportation scan the agency bans. They'll get cell phones. They'll take pictures and follow us around to try to figure out where we're deploying on any given night," said Ministry of Transportation Traffic Investigator Rob Grabar. "So, their intelligence is just as sophisticated as ours and certainly catches up every time we try to change something." Peel Regional Officer Ken Sluman noted that while most serious street racers prefer places like industrial areas, where there are few cars to hold up their "We'll use any technology we can and we will do whatever we can to protect the public from these people and even to protect them from themselves." Peel Regional Officer Ken Sluman races, some will chose multi-lane highways. "They will even try to shut down and hold back other traffic, so they won't get involved in their race if they can," he said. "They put several vehicles in a row coming onto an on ramp. They block all the lanes and they slow it right down. The lead cars then get far enough ahead; they come to a complete stop and then off they go on their race." With such a wily adversary to deal with, police are using every weapon in their vast arsenal to fight back. "We'll be using laser technology. We'll be using radar. We'll be using our radios, which are a lot faster than any cars, and on occasion when we're together with the entire race group, we'll be using helicopters to track these people," said Sluman. "We'll use any technology we can and we will do whatever we can to protect the public from these people and even to protect them from themselves." While street racing can be exceedingly specialized and sophisticated, it can also be low tech and random, taking place with no planning whatsoever. "Quite often it's just two people pulling up at a stop light; they look at each other and decide to go," said Sluman. "It's not an organized thing. They're not modified cars, but these are very dangerous activities and we've got to do everything we can to stop them." Organized or not, the penalty for convicted street racers remains the same with the maximum fine now sitting at $10,000. With 18 police agencies across Ontario involved in Project E.R.A.S.E,. Sluman is hoping the combined effort will have more of an impact on speed racing than in past projects where individual police agencies would tackle the problem alone. "When we started to realize that racing activities were happening in Peel, a few years ago, we started trying to deal with it ourselves, alone, at night and all we did was move the problem," said Sluman. "That's why we have to make sure we have enough of our friends over in Toronto, in York, in Durham, in Halton, so we can all work together and not just move the problem but eliminate and reduce it as much as we can." With another enforcement blitz taking place last night, police are keeping up the pressure on street racers, however MacDonald admits it will take more than a few hundred tickets to rectify this problem. "It's going to be a long term project and the education is going to take years to get across, and if it takes a number of years to continue the project than that's what is going to happen," he said. In the meantime the hunt for street racers continues. "They know we're out there looking for them, and we want to show them that we are going to be out there, and we could be out there at any time," said Sluman. "It could be tonight, tomorrow night, it could be six weeks from now. We'll be out there when they're out there."