NEW YORK — It’s a cat and mouse game — but the mice drive too fast and recklessly and are not always held accountable, even when cops nab them.
“You can’t catch me. You’re stupid,” driver Oscar Malik, 28, allegedly taunted out-of-earshot cops in a police cruiser who spotted him as he roared on the Long Island Expressway in March 2021 at a speed police believe hit 117 mph.
They did catch him, but off the road. Police traced and arrested Malik with help from the Instagram feed that recorded his high-speed drive — which officers downloaded before he deleted his account.
Malik got the last laugh in August, when the charges against him were dismissed and his case was sealed because Queens prosecutors didn’t hand over evidence to his defense lawyer in accord with the state’s discovery reform law, said law enforcement sources. The Queens DA’s office did not comment on the matter.
“This is very disheartening,” said Inspector Sylvester Ge, head of the NYPD’s Highway Division. “And it’s an injustice.”
It was another blow to the NYPD’s unceasing race against organized reckless driving, which takes several forms — ranging from highway drag races to impromptu gatherings where drivers spin donuts at intersections, parking lots or traffic plazas.
There’s no data on how many people die from such driving, though it’s clear speeding — an element of drag racing — is a factor in numerous roadway deaths. Speeding factored in 31 of of 159 New York City traffic deaths in 2022 for which data is available — a rate of 21%.
A notorious death case involving drag racing occurred Nov. 20, 2020, when Daniel Crawford, 53, died on his way at Queens Hospital Center, where he worked as a phlebotomist. Crawford’s car was T-boned by one of two drivers drag racing each other.
Both drivers believed involved in the race that killed Crawford were indicted in February. Alamin Ahmed and Mir Fahmid, both 24, face murder and manslaughter charges. Prosecutors said the duo, out celebrating Fahmid’s birthday, were seen on video getting gas at a service station at Main Street and Union Turnpike, then drag racing down the turnpike. Their cases are pending.
Drag races and other gatherings are often organized on the internet. “Some of it is posted on social media — they talk about it beforehand, what they plan to do, which helps us,” Ge said. “And they post videos afterwards. So, some of it is organized, with rules, like no brakes allowed.
“Or it’s two drivers who see each other on the highway — one starts going and the other one decides, ‘Let’s have a race,’” Ge added. “They really have no regard for public safety.”
There’s often money at stake. Races and driving stunts are the subject of heavy gambling, say cops. Numerous videos on different online platforms, including YouTube, draw thousands of views — and the people who post them earn money by soliciting donations.
Cops’ difficulty dealing with organized reckless driving was apparent one night in April, when a large number of cars gathered in Brooklyn at the Gateway Mall parking lot in East New York.
Drivers revved their engines until they backfired — the noise a vehicular mating call to other drivers.
Many of the cars had illegal drop-down license plate covers. And everyone seemed very much at ease — the lot was scarred with tire marks and litters from previous nocturnal gatherings advertised in advance on Instagram.
This time, however, police showed up and gave the gathered drivers a warning.
The drivers took heed.
But they weren’t done.
They jumped on the Belt Parkway and reconvened 15 minutes later in Queens, running red light after red light until they arrived at their predetermined spot, a Springfield Gardens intersection where about 100 spectators watched, some just feet away as 20 or so drivers used steering and brakes to spin their cars in circles — maneuvers called donuts.
Passengers hung out of the windows in two different cars as some of the braver onlookers recorded the action inside the donut circles.
Police broke up that party fairly quickly and appeared to try to break one car window and arrest the driver — who taunted them by driving in circles around them before speeding off.
Later, the group gathered on Rockaway Boulevard, drag raced and posted more videos on social media.
“I just heard the noise and said, ‘Let me come outside,’” said one man who watched the races.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz wrote in the New York Daily News recently that many reckless driving cases involve people driving without a license, which are on pace to top the 2,738 such cases from last year. But the penalties, she said, are not severe enough, even in cases where the driver badly hurts or kills someone.
Cases where an unlicensed driver is arrested but no one is hurt are treated as low-level offenses. “There is a strong need for tougher penalties for those who choose to use our city streets as raceways,” Katz said in a statement to the Daily News.
Malik was arrested in Queens last month on that very charge, pleaded guilty and paid a $75 fine, at which point the case was dismissed and sealed, according to a law enforcement source.
Still pending is a case for which he was charged in 2021 with with nine counts of possession of a forged instrument, after he allegedly sold an NYPD undercover officer bogus city Department of Transportation parking permits and fake COVID-19 vaccination cards. His lawyer said Malik’s innocence will be proven.
Malik himself said he is anything but a bad driver.
“That’s not me,” he said of the Instagram video from the LIE. “You’ve got the wrong person.”
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(Daily News staff writer Kerry Burke contributed to this story.)
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