'We know where you are' - police's cat and mouse car cruisers crackdown

BBC News

22-04-2025

"Oh I'm spinning... bro I'm going sideways!"The voice of an excited BMW driver racing another car, which belches black exhaust smoke as its engine revs loudly.His dashcam footage gives a stark driver's-eye view of why car cruising has caused several accidents on the busy Daleside Road in Nottingham.He jumps a red traffic light. Then as the blue lights of a police car appear behind him, he tells his friend: "Look, they pulled me bro!"
The 22-year-old, from Birmingham, was one of the first drivers arrested after Nottinghamshire Police's Operation Wheelspin began in September.His car was seized because he had already been issued with a Section 59 warning for anti-social driving.After officers seized the dashcam recording, he admitted driving without due care and attention, and driving a vehicle without a front registration plate.He has been banned from driving for 12 months and ordered to pay £130 in costs.
Car cruising is nothing new, but Sgt Jim Carrington agrees that officers are now playing a game of cat and mouse, as drivers use closed social media groups to move between several locations on a single night."They are a lot more organised. They work regionally and nationally," he said."We can follow them. They will try and avoid us. What we are trying to do is send a message that Nottinghamshire is not a playground for these individuals."Sgt Carrington says the cruisers are putting both their lives and the lives of the public at risk."They're using the public highway as a race track, and if that goes wrong obviously that can create all kinds of carnage," he said.
The BBC joined Operation Wheelspin as officers tracked cars converging around Nottingham and Mansfield on a Saturday night.Its database now has the number plates of more than 1,400 vehicles seen at car cruising events.PC Logan Grieh is in plain clothes so he can watch what is happening without raising suspicion and tell his uniformed colleagues which cars to intercept.A laptop in PC Grieh's unmarked police car shows a map of locations, where those cars have been picked up on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) traffic cameras.
A message over the police radio says cars are heading towards a retail park near Colwick, where drivers perform dangerous stunts.Recent CCTV showed spectators watching cars "drifting" and skidding in circles - one with a man hanging out of the passenger window as he filmed.As we arrive, a line of cars speed away. Then a silver BMW performs a "donut".Two marked police cars overtake us on blue lights, as they are called in to intercept on the A612.
PC Grieh says the stunts are very dangerous because the drivers could lose control at any point."It's not guaranteed that they will complete a full donut," he says. "They can easily go into spectators that are quite close, and seriously injure them."A message comes in that the BMW has lost control on a cul-de-sac, a few miles away in Burton Joyce.The driver has already been issued with a Section 59 warning, so his car is seized.One of the rear tyres is almost worn away and there are two spare wheels behind the driver's seat.
The driver is charged with driving while disqualified, failing to stop and driving without due care and attention.He could face a further charge of drug-driving, depending on the result of a toxicology test.But the police hope most drivers will be deterred by their Section 59 notices.Those warnings have been issued to 74 people so far and only 10 have been caught reoffending.As the night wears on, some of Operation Wheelspin's targets pass ANPR cameras around Castle Donington in Leicestershire, while others appear to be meeting at Worksop and Rotherham.Then the database shows vehicles heading towards another favourite car cruising spot, a short stretch of dual carriageway between two roundabouts, just off junction 27 of the M1 in Nottinghamshire.PC Grieh watches several known number plates pass him there. It looks as though the drivers are being scared away by a marked police car dealing with a separate incident.The database shows many of them heading into Ilkeston instead, so the officers alert Derbyshire Police.
By midnight, it all looks quiet, so their sergeant calls it a night. But then another message comes in. Cars are racing again at Daleside Road - the dual carriageway in Nottingham where that dashcam footage was filmed last September.PC Grieh calls in the number plate of a car that speeds away in front of him and two marked police vehicles intercept it at the next roundabout.The driver is given a Section 59 notice, and warned the car will be seized if he is caught again.And he won't just be in trouble with the police, because the car belongs to his mum.