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Originally Posted by jonathan
You're a little off on the timeline. The motorcycle cop who died in Delta a year or two earlier chasing racers away from a meetup off River Rd. I want to say late 2000 or maybe early 2001. Meetings went from frowned upon to squads of police with dogs and VI stations combing everyone like lice.
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The Delta cop wasn't enough to cause the police crackdown. It was the popularity of F&TF that led to everyone and their dog to think they were street racers.
In 98' we were left alone. The police didn't want to arrest anyone, all they wanted to do was to push the racers out to another municipality. We weren't causing issues, and we didn't crash. Those were the days when serious racers were the ones staying up all hours of the night to race and network with like minded folks.
In 99' I was transferred to Montreal and didn't return until late 2000. The race scene in Quebec was pretty crazy. Guys with turbo hondas and high compression toyotas, VW, Audi, and lots of domestics.
But things were still kicking in the street race scene upon my return to BC. I pulled my swapped civic out of storage and went right back to it.
Fast forward to June 2001 and the release of The Fast and the Furious. I remember opening night at the theatre in Guildford. It was nuts! I've never seen so many modified imports and domestics outside of a car show. Leaving the theatre I'm surprised that no one was killed that night. People lost their shit when that movie came out.
From the New York Times in 2001.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/u...et-racing.html
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Donald Ickes was killed just moments after finishing some Christmas shopping for his grandchildren last Dec. 14 at a model-train store. Pulling his car onto the road that afternoon, Mr. Ickes, 65, was blindsided by a G.M.C. Yukon sport utility vehicle whose driver was street racing at more than 75 miles an hour, witnesses told the police.
Krystal Pomante, 11, died on Dec. 30, hours after another impromptu street race resulted in a crash. Krystal, a fifth grader, was in the back seat of a Ford Mustang. With her were her brother, A. J., 9; her sister, Jenni, 17; and Jenni's boyfriend, who, the police said, accepted a challenge to race from a passing car here and soon lost control.
Trisha Ann Thornton, 19, died on Jan. 18, also here, in a car her boyfriend crashed into a street-light pole while racing, the police said. The same night, Tami Anglin, 18, and Tara Mackmer, 19, died in a car that went out of control after a race, the police said.
Alarmed by a spate of deaths attributed to street racing, the authorities in the Portland area have begun a crackdown, joining a national movement to curb an activity that most often seems to combine young men, automobiles and a dare -- and can lead to deadly crashes.
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A GMC Yukon is not a race car.
Two chicks lost control and died in a street race.
Idiots racing in a Mustang full of kids.....
This wasn't us. This wasn't our race scene. This was when the public decided that they wanted to be Dom fucking Toretto, mimicking what they saw in the movie while lacking the skills to do such things.
When the BC legislature joined the international movement against street racing it was directly due to Jimmy Ng.
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Constable Ng, 32, was killed on Sept. 15, 2002, when a Honda Civic driven by Yau Chung Chan ran a red light and T-boned the patrol car in the middle of an intersection.
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They mention his name numerous times upon the reading of bill C-338, which added street racing to the criminal code. Thanks to Chuck Cadman for this quote
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Numerous serious injuries and deaths have been caused by these irresponsible drivers. RCMP Constable Jimmy Ng was killed when his patrol car was T-boned by an alleged street racer. Why is the government refusing to make our streets safer for our citizens and the police who patrol them?
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https://openparliament.ca/bills/37-3.../?singlepage=1
C-338 became law in 2003. Just over a year and a half after TF&TF was released, and a year before I retired from street racing.