Photo: Pete Forsyth / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
On Saturday, April 8, 2023, a Memphis, Tennessee, man driving his family home from the Memphis Zoo let his GPS route him down Airways Boulevard. At Carnes Avenue he drove into tire smoke: cars spinning donuts across the intersection, with passengers sitting up in the open windows holding guns. His wife recorded it. The man, who gave only his first name, Austin, described the scene to Action News 5 three days later.
“They were sitting in the window, guns up in the air and everything like that. Definitely a different situation than just donuts,” he told the station. He said he thought he saw three Dodge Chargers with about three men in each. FOX13 Memphis, which placed the scene in Orange Mound, described two muscle cars and reported on April 10 that the Facebook post had passed 800,000 views. Action News 5 said the clip ran 18 seconds.
A year later, Tennessee lawmakers answered scenes like that one by turning drag racing into a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. I read the statute that felony rests on. Its definition of drag racing dates to 1959, and it describes a speed contest. Cars spinning in circles at an intersection while passengers raise guns is a different act, and the charging figures Memphis police have reported show the drag racing statute is rarely the one officers use.
Memphis police statement, no arrest on record
When Action News 5 asked the Memphis Police Department about the video that week, the department sent a statement instead of an interview. It said reckless driving and drag racing incidents “will not be tolerated on Memphis streets and highways,” and asked the public for help: “Incidents like these happen in seconds, so we need the public’s help getting a description and vehicle tag numbers if they can be obtained safely.” The station reported that Memphis police had already responded to nearly 900 reckless driving calls in 2023 by then.
Neither station reported an arrest tied to the video, and I found no MPD release announcing one. I found no public record identifying anyone in it.
Tennessee’s drag racing definition was written in 1959 for speed contests
The definition sits in Tennessee Code § 55-10-501. A car is drag racing when it is used to find its top speed, to find its top speed over a set distance or time, to compare speeds with other cars, to try to outrun another car or beat it to a destination, or to accept a challenge about a car’s performance. Every one of those prongs requires a speed test or a race. A donut has neither a measured speed nor a finish line.
House Bill 2814, which became Public Chapter 1000 of 2024, raised the penalty in § 55-10-502 from a Class A misdemeanor to a Class E felony. The House passed it 86-11 and the Senate 25-4. Gov. Bill Lee signed it May 21, 2024, and it took effect July 1, 2024. Under Tennessee’s sentencing statute, a Class E felony carries one to six years and a fine of up to $3,000.
The bill changed the punishment and left the definition alone. The history note on § 55-10-501 still lists only the 1959 act. Rep. John Gillespie of Memphis, the House sponsor, said in a statement quoted by WREG that the bill was meant as “a deterrent for people looking to recklessly take over our streets.” The statute that does the deterring still asks whether anyone was racing.
California wrote the word into its law. Vehicle Code § 23109 defines a sideshow as “an event in which two or more persons block or impede traffic on a highway or in an offstreet parking facility for the purpose of performing motor vehicle stunts, motor vehicle speed contests, motor vehicle exhibitions of speed, or reckless driving, for spectators,” and adds, “A sideshow is also known as a street takeover.” There, blocking traffic to put on a show for a crowd is the thing being punished. Tennessee has no equivalent definition.
The gap matters because the drag racing law carries consequences that reach the car and the license. A first drag racing conviction brings a one-year license revocation under § 55-10-503, and a second within 10 years brings a permanent one. Section 55-10-502(c) makes the car used, or used to flee, subject to seizure and forfeiture. The statute’s definition of a participant also reaches passengers and anyone who arranges or sets a race in motion. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy’s office told WREG in July 2024 that it would prosecute drag racing as a felony and move to forfeit cars used in it.
Memphis police charge reckless driving 39 times as often
At a City Council committee meeting in April 2024, MPD officials reported that nine juveniles and 108 adults had been charged with reckless driving so far that year, against one juvenile and two adults charged with drag racing, Action News 5 reported. That is 117 reckless driving charges to three for drag racing, or 39 to 1 by Backfire News’s math. The figures came before the felony took effect, but they show where Memphis cases land when the driving is wild and nobody is clocking a race.
Reckless driving under § 55-10-205 means driving “in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property.” It is a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $500 fine, plus a $50 assessment the court must impose. The statute says nothing about revoking a license or taking the car.
So Memphis police built their own leverage. In April 2024, C.J. Davis, then MPD’s chief, told the council committee the department was working on a 20-day hold on cars belonging to people arrested for street racing or reckless driving, with owners paying fees to get them back and auto theft victims exempt. Over that Memorial Day weekend, officers seized 10 cars, Action News 5 reported. “That level of vehicle havoc in our community is a nuisance. We are stiffening our approach on taking a vehicle from a person that commits these types of acts,” Davis said.
When the facts look like a race, the felony comes out. In October 2025, a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper arrested two off-duty Memphis officers after reporting that their Corvettes sped past him on Winchester Road near Hickory Hill Road and braked when the drivers noticed the patrol car, according to Action News 5. Both were charged with drag racing and relieved of duty. One of them, Albert Green, told the station they were not racing. The charges are accusations, and I found no court disposition. Two Corvettes side by side on an open road is the situation the 1959 language was written for.
Where the guns fit in Tennessee law
Having a handgun in the car is not, by itself, the offense. The defense in § 39-17-1307(g) lets adults 21 and older, or 18 and older with qualifying military service, carry a handgun they lawfully possess in a place where they are lawfully present.
Guns held up out of the windows of cars sliding through an intersection is the kind of conduct prosecutors weigh under the reckless endangerment statute, § 39-13-103, which applies to anyone who “recklessly engages in conduct that places or may place another person in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.” It is a Class A misdemeanor, and a Class E felony when committed with a deadly weapon. That is the same class as felony drag racing, and it does not require proof that anyone was racing. Firing a gun from a motor vehicle is a Class C felony. Neither station reported shots fired in the April 2023 video.
The guns also change how police respond. In February 2024, after a takeover filled Winchester Road at Swinnea Road under an airport runway overpass, council member Jerri Green asked why there were no arrests. “A lot of these individuals have weapons and when they come, there’s so many of them,” Davis answered, according to WREG. “What we’re also thinking about is officer safety, when they’re sort of outnumbered.” MPD said it received two calls about that event and the crowd had cleared before officers arrived. The same mix of crowds and cars has turned up elsewhere: Backfire News has covered a Charger hitting pedestrians at a takeover and a Milwaukee man police called a takeover organizer, accused of building his Hellcat 300 from stolen Mopars.
What changes for drivers in Memphis, and what doesn’t
The drag racing part of Tennessee’s code has three sections. None of them mentions spectators, and none covers a driver who parks across an intersection so someone else can spin. Lawmakers return to Nashville in January, and until they write a takeover definition, the law Austin’s family drove into is the law Memphis drivers have now: reckless driving and a police car hold for the drivers, reckless endangerment if guns come out, and the felony only when a prosecutor can show a contest of speed.
For anyone tempted to ride along, the participant definition in § 55-10-501 covers passengers in a drag race, so a seat in the car can carry the same felony as the wheel when the facts fit. For anyone who rolls up on one the way Austin did, MPD’s request is to call dispatch and to get descriptions and tag numbers only if it can be done safely.
Should Tennessee write “street takeover” into its felony law the way California did, or is a reckless driving misdemeanor and a police hold on the car enough for donuts in an intersection?
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