Burnouts and bottles: Residents irate after 200 hoons tear up their streets

Thursday, 30 September 2021

Cornish St, in an industrial area in Korokoro, is also a common spot for car enthusiasts.(First published in October 2021)

Residents fed up with boy racers say something is going to give following the latest incident in which police were pelted with bottles.

Evan Still is a resident of Seaview Marina in Lower Hutt, where he says dangerous and anti-social behaviour by large groups of illegal street racers at a neighbouring industrial zone has people concerned.

“All it takes is a person coming back from town and getting collected. They’re out when people are trying to sleep. The burnouts are damaging the roading, and they’re leaving bits of car parts and rubber all over the road,” he said.

“If the powers that be continue to ignore this and do nothing, then they cannot blame us if we … take matters into our own hands.”

Tyre marks left after boy racers in more than 200 cars caused havoc at Lower Hutt's Seaview industrial zones.

Seaview Marina resident Evan Still says it’s a matter of time before locals take matters into their own hands to deal with boy racers who are turning up to the nearby industrial area in their hundreds.

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Debris and damage to the roads are a common by-product of boy racer gatherings which are happening most weekends.

On the weekend of September 18 and 19, police responded to a gathering of than 200 vehicles at the Seaview and Gracefield industrial area. A police spokeswoman said participants came from all over the lower North Island.

“Approximately 20 staff were deployed, and the large crowd pelted police with full cans and bottles. Several offending vehicles were stopped, and a vehicle was impounded, and a suspended driver was summonsed to court.”

The marina operations manager Tony Kelly said concerns about the racing activity had been brought by some of the marina’s residents and police had been engaged in the past.

Mike Henderson, chairman of the Seaview Business Association, said the body was looking at installing a “high-tech camera system” to provide 24-hour monitoring of the area to act as a deterrent, and provide evidence if necessary.

The police said illegal street racing had been a problem in the industrial area for years. They were working with the Hutt City Council to develop environmental solutions to stop racers using the area.

The spokeswoman said police were taking “active measures to address the disruptive behaviour”, but did not elaborate on what those measures were.

Paul Stowers lives near the Cornish St industrial zone in Korokoro on the other side of the valley, and said the problem with street racers was rife in his neighbourhood, too.

“People are quite intimidated by this group. There can be up to 100 cars, and this is happening every week.”

Stowers and Still said frequent meetings and discussions between residents and the Hutt City Council had consistently come to nothing.

“There have been various proposals, but none have been actioned – there have been some pretty lame excuses,” Stowers said.

The council’s head of transport Jon Kingsbury said residents’ concerns were understood, and racers illegally exiting onto State Highway 2 off Cornish St had been identified was a significant risk to other road users.

The council was examining options with the police, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and the public to curb boy racer activity across the city, and specifically on Cornish St, and Seaview and Gracefield.

Enforcement sat with the police, he said.