Drivers spin doughnuts in illegal 'sideshows.' One shut down a north Fresno intersection

If you’re driving late at night around Fresno, be on the lookout for illegal craziness.

Fresno police said street racing and so-called sideshows are starting to pop up around town. Drivers will take over intersections, spinning doughnuts and figure-eights with their cars.

And that can be regardless of bystander traffic.

A few incidents posted this week on social media confirmed sideshows are occurring even in north Fresno.

One video posted on Instagram shows a Chevy Camaro doing doughnuts for nearly a minute at the intersection of Palm and Alluvial avenues — with other cars around.

Another video shows what appears to be a Cadillac sports car doing doughnuts and figure-eights at the Palm-Alluvial intersection, this time with several spectators on hand. Being a spectator at a sideshow also is illegal, according to Fresno police.

Both incidents are believed to have occurred on the evening of Easter Sunday.

“Straight shut it down,” a poster wrote in one of the videos' captions. He used the hashtag #SundayFunday.

Lt. Richard Tucker, who oversees the traffic division for Fresno PD, said his unit was not aware of the incidents that took place at Palm and Alluvial.

But his unit made several arrests and prevented or broke up other activity around town, particularly along more common sideshow locations on Blackstone Avenue and along Kings Canyon Avenue.

Sideshows — generally defined as informal demonstrations of vehicle stunts — first emerged on the streets of East Oakland in the mid-1980s, according to Wikipedia. Their popularity increased in the '90s with songs such as rapper Richie Rich's "Sideshow":

Down Bancroft, to the light

Let me warm it up, I hit a doughnut tight

Chevy on my side, windows straight tinted

He got hype when he saw me spinnin'

Sideshows and reckless driving were most popular in Fresno around 2004-06, Tucker said, perhaps coinciding with the "Fast and Furious" movies.

In recent years, illegal driving activity has started to pick up, Tucker said.

“It’s common knowledge to us that Easter and this time of year kind of starts the season of reckless driving because of the weather getting better," he said. “We deployed all traffic officers in anticipation of this.

“We made a significant amount of arrests and citations. But some of them know how to pick a new location and organize en masse when other locations get broken up.”

Tucker believes reckless driving increased Easter Sunday because groups from other cities came to Fresno for the holiday weekend.

Working with California Highway Patrol and the Fresno County Sheriff's Office, Fresno police wrote 193 tickets, arrested 41 people for misdemeanor violations and impounded 42 vehicles, with 11 of those impounded for 30 days just from Sunday, Tucker said. They also made two DUI arrests.

In addition, Tucker said CHP impounded a couple of vehicles and issued 28 citations.

“They might post video of them driving reckless,” Tucker said of the violators. “But what they don’t always post is when they’re getting cited or their car getting impounded.”

Tucker said cruising down streets and showing off cars are fine.

“That’s obviously rich in history,” Tucker said. “There’s a tradition to that and we respect that.”

But the street racing and reckless driving that's sometimes an offshoot of cruising won’t be tolerated.

“When you start putting people at risk, we kind of have a zero tolerance for that,” Tucker said. “The moral of the story is, if they’re going to come to Fresno, the chief of police has vowed to have a welcoming committee for them.

“And if you think you’re going to use our roadways for that kind of activity, that’s not going to happen.”

This story was originally published April 5, 2018 at 11:20 PM with the headline "Drivers spin doughnuts in illegal 'sideshows.' One shut down a north Fresno intersection."