Tacoma residents frustrated by street racing in parking lot

Frustration is mounting as street racers take over a parking lot in Tacoma and residents say police aren’t doing anything about it.

The racing is happening behind a Planet Fitness on North Pearl Street in Tacoma’s West End.

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Someone even put nails in the parking lot in what may have been an attempt to stop it.

A neighbor captured the racing on camera just a few hundred yards from her house.

In fact, you can see just how close she lives to this. Her house is just beyond these bushes. And this is where that racing is happening.

It is causing sleepless nights and frustrating days. This has become the soundtrack to Krista Kirkman’s life.

“I was outside in my backyard and enjoying the weather,” Kirkman said. “And all of a sudden, I hear noise and I was like, ‘What is that?’”

This is what it was.

“There were like three or four cars parked against this wall,” she said, describing what she saw when she went outside.

She got so fed up that about a week ago, she recorded what has been disturbing her days and keeping her up at night.

She even confronted them.

“Hey, what’s up, ma’am?” one of the teens asked.

“Nothing,” she told him. “I just thought that was some serious amazing driving.”

She says she wanted to get their license plates for Tacoma police to take action.

“I would like the police or the property manager to go ahead and either put in some cameras, cameras that someone is really watching,” Kirkman said. “Or, you see that, they could put a gate there.”

Or, she says, speed bumps.

“I completely understand her frustration,” said Tacoma Police Officer Wendy Haddow.

But she says this isn’t technically street racing. This is where the danger to bystanders and others is high. And this has been the department’s focus in collaboration with other agencies.

“And through that collaboration, there have been 71 arrests,” Haddow said. “Our CID has investigated 45 cases.”

That is likely cold comfort for Krista Kirkman and her neighbors.

“It’s scaring my cat,” insists Kirkman. “It’s scaring other people’s dogs.”

Officer Haddow says their top priorities are violent crimes. But all is not lost.

Haddow suggests residents to contact their police liaison. That person can work with them and with property owners to try to stop racing in private property like this.

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