As stated by Sergeant Luke Vaughan, Canterbury Antisocial Roaduser team:
Canterbury Police, including the Antisocial Road User Team and the Strategic Traffic Unit, were out in force on Saturday night monitoring and disrupting antisocial road user activity, including several ‘skid meets’ scattered around Christchurch and the surrounding area.
The Police operation started at the “Cars and Cameras” event – a well-organised and positive get-together of car enthusiasts at Bottle Lake Forest between 5pm and 7pm.
The operation moved on to monitoring subsequent cruising of the avenues around central Christchurch and vehicle movements to rural and industrial areas for planned ‘skid meets’.
Over the course of the night, 50 infringements were issued, eight cars were green stickered, and five were impounded for sustained loss of traction from past incidents.
There was one fleeing driver incident involving a car believed to be stolen. Enquiries are ongoing to locate the driver and vehicle.
The work isn’t over though. Along with the action taken over the course of the weekend, Police gathered information that will help our ongoing enquiries. This included identifying people and vehicles of interest.
Police understand the effect antisocial road user activity has on the community, especially in areas frequented by these groups. They leave damaged roads and mess for communities and councils to clean up.
We will continue our work to disrupt this activity and identify those involved. If you choose to damage roads, distress residents, and put you, your passengers, and bystanders lives at risk by engaging in this activity, Police will work hard to identify and stop you in your tracks.
Police would like to thank members of the community who called us and provided information. This not only assisted with our response on the night – it will also be valuable in subsequent enquiries.
While Police work hard to address and reduce the prevalence of antisocial road user activity, we cannot do this alone.
