A car drifting event took over a Beverly intersection Saturday night, damaging front lawns and a country club.
About 11 p.m., cars broke off from a larger caravan and traveled to 103rd Street and California Avenue, where they blocked off the street and “drove in circles at dangerous, high rates of speed,” according to a statement from 19th Ward Ald. Matt O’Shea.
Ken Jones, a longtime Beverly resident, said he was sound asleep on his sofa when he was “awakened by roaring engines and all kinds of crazy noise.”
“I pulled myself up to go look, and sure enough there were these cars zooming around in circles in the intersection of 103rd and California with many, many, many people standing there watching them, cheering them on as they sped in crazy circles,” Jones told the Sun-Times. “It was totally horrible. Not the kind of thing you want to see in your neighborhood.”
Chicago and Evergreen Park police arrived on the scene within minutes.
“They couldn’t possibly have come any faster than they did,” Jones said.
As the drivers dispersed, vehicles damaged several residential front yards and the Ridge Country Club, according to O’Shea.
One vehicle also struck an unoccupied Evergreen Park police vehicle, O’Shea said.
Evergreen Park police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to O’Shea, Chicago police arrested two teenagers and impounded several cars. Chicago police told the Sun-Times no arrests were made.
The larger car caravan was organized on social media, but the Beverly intersection was not a predetermined location, O’Shea said.
Jones, who has lived near the intersection for 30 years, said he’d never seen anything like it in Beverly.
“It was a total shock,” he said.
In July 2022, the City Council passed an ordinance aimed at addressing “street takeovers.” The ordinance, which empowered Chicago police to impound vehicles involved in these events, was a response to highly publicized meets in the West Loop and other areas of the city, some of which led to clashes with officers and another that resulted in a deadly shootout in Brighton Park.
It is unclear whether the ordinance has deterred drivers, as one McKinley Park resident reported dozens of drifting events on her corner in the last year. That resident said she saw officers taking down license plate numbers, yet she continued to see the same vehicles and drivers return each weekend.
