AURORA, Colo. — Zeyad Alrubaye was one of at least 600 cars at a complete standstill Sunday night on I-225 between Colfax Avenue and Alameda Avenue because of street racers.
"I see the smoke, it starts to go up — heavy smoke," Alrubaye said, describing reports of fireworks being shot by street racers.
Sites like that have become all too familiar to the Aurora Police Department.
"It’s very concerning. We are angry. Our community is angry, and we want to find the ones responsible for this," Aurora Police Department Officer Matthew Longshore said.
On Monday, Aurora Mayor Michael Coffman tweeted criticism of his police department. Writing in part, "It takes a lot of social media chatter to pull off an event like this so I absolutely don't understand how our Police Department didn't know that this was going to happen."
Officer Longshore said some of the posts are designed for the purpose of throwing police off their scent.
"A lot of these events that take place, they utilize social media. The post doesn’t remain up for very long. It’s required of the members to look at it, screenshot it and send it around that way because they don’t wanna leave these things publicized on social media," Longshore said.
"I think what we saw last night actually makes this even more important to get moving on a quicker time frame," Aurora City Councilmember Francois Bergan said.
Bergan has already been working on legislation for stricter penalties.
"We’re looking at a proposal of an ordinance that would possibly seize the vehicle because going after the driver has not been effective," Bergan said.
Bergan said it could take about three months before it could go into effect.