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Debbie Dujanovic reportingDozens of police officers from across the valley participated in an overnight sting targeting illegal street racers. The massive police sting comes just 24-hours after our investigation, and the undercover video of street racers tearing down public roads.
Eyewitness News had camera crews in the air, and on the ground all night to cover this story. Chopper 5 captured more than a dozen busts during the street racing sting that went through the night.
Our two crews on the ground, ran from stop to stop. Kids were pulled over at gas stations on the west side of Salt Lake. They were stopped in their tracks on public streets and in parking lots.
One driver the police stopped was drunk, with twice the legal limit of achohol in his system.
When the cops popped the hood of a car they pulled over, they discovered evidence of stolen parts.
"These are the VIN numbers, they're the id on the car, and they've been removed. If you look at this door, the VIM numbers also been removed, and they put screws in there after they scraped it off."
The major sweep came just 24-hours after an Eyewitness News Investigation exposed how hundreds of racers are taking over public streets for their own thrills.
We set up a hidden camera and uncovered how racers jump from city-to-city to avoid police crackdowns.
We called several police departments to find a solution: Could they work together on one night, to give racers no where to run?
The results: swift.
The valley wide law enforcement effort a success. By three in the morning, several cars were towed to the impound lot, with nearly 75 tickets issued.
But cops had a tough night catching racers in the act. Our photographer, who captured hundreds of racers for our investigation, hit all the usual hotspots and didn't see any cars going head to head.
We do know this, our investigation is all the rage on the street racers website, thousands of hits, hundreds of comments.
And last night -- their engines silent.
