Sideshow shuts down Southwest Blvd., causes issues for locals in Westside KCMO

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - A sideshow on Southwest Boulevard brought together hundreds of people for two hours of dangerous activities that upset local businesses.

KCTV5 obtained video from the sideshow, which had people standing in the middle of the street while cars did donuts and other drifting maneuvers around them on the major thoroughfare on the Westside of Kansas City.

Teresa Grado owns one of the businesses on Southwest Boulevard. They were trying to close down the business after a successful First Friday, when she had to turn her attention to ids trying to climb on top of her roof for a better view of the action.

“It’s not safe – a kid was ran over, knocked his whole shoe off, hopped right up,” Grado said. “Did his parents know that he was ran over that night? I’m worried about the kids, and the kids only because everybody else is grown enough to make their own decisions.”

Also during a sideshow a car caught fire, and Grado said instead of running for cover, most of the kids were using their phones to capture video of it.

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“I went to get my fire extinguisher out of my business thinking that I could help, but clearly it was just out of control at that point,” Grado said. “That’s what scares me is that these people don’t know, clearly they don’t understand how that works – this car can blow up at any minute. How many lives could it take?”

The beginning of the sideshow took shape at 9pm, Kansas City Police were contacted by business owners a little after 10 pm and then police broke up the scene around 11pm.

KCPD has has a couple successful operations to combat the sideshows in Kansas City. On May 25 they towed nine vehicles, made several arrests and cited others for street racing and spectating.

“There is actually a city ordinance against that, and our officers have cited people for that, it’s called spectating,” KCPD Cpt. Jake Becchina said. “We have formulated a coordinated effort with more than 20 plus police officers, sergeants and detectives from our traffic division to combat these types of activities… it is something that we are focused on.”

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