INDIANAPOLIS — Have you ever driven your car around in circles, skidding while you did it? A lot of people know that as “doing donuts.”
A bill in front of state lawmakers calls that “spinning,” and would make it a crime.
Senate Bill 240 has received a lot of support from law enforcement, especially IMPD who dealt with several spinning incidents last summer that were all part of street takeovers across the city.
Cars and trucks stop and block traffic all so the people driving them – and their passengers – can use the street instead to drive around in circles.
“These things are getting out of control, and IMPD frankly approached me and said, ‘We need help,’” Republican State Sen. Aaron Freeman told lawmakers on the House Courts and Criminal Code Committee Wednesday morning.
Freeman thinks a bill that he’s authored, Senate Bill 240, is the way to do that.
Under Freeman’s bill, someone caught spinning for a second time would face prison time, lose their driver’s license, and have the vehicle they were spinning with taken away, even if it belonged to somebody else.
Critics say taking a vehicle because of a second spinning offense, especially if it belongs to someone else, goes too far.
Under the current law, that doesn’t even happen if someone is caught a second time, driving under the influence in a vehicle that doesn’t belong to them, when the vehicle’s owner has no idea.
“We’ve got to keep this in perspective,” said Joel Wieneke, with the Indiana Public Defender’s Council, which opposes the bill.
“This is a crime that outlaws doing donuts in a car and the loss of a vehicle, especially if it’s a vehicle that’s been borrowed from another person, a kid who borrows a vehicle from a parent or something like that, could be very detrimental,” Wieneke said.
Also under the bill, if police try and pull someone over for spinning, the penalty for running from them in a vehicle and risking hurting or killing someone, would carry the same penalty as when someone runs from police and actually does cause injury or death.
“These are very dangerous things. They obviously create the substantial risk that we’re going to either kill somebody or seriously injure them, and we shouldn’t be doing it. Period,” Freeman said.
Critics of SB 240 also say the bill deals with spinning, which is just one part of street takeovers, not the bigger concern of street takeovers themselves.
“A kid who’s out doing donuts in the snow, gets caught by a police officer. I would hope that a police officer would use their discretion not to put somebody in jail for that and not to potentially seize their car if they’ve been caught doing that before, but the law would allow it,” Wieneke said.
Freeman said something needs to be done and believes this bill is the way to do that.
“At some point, a knucklehead action has to be dealt with, and this is crazy and very dangerous,” Freeman said.
SB 240 didn’t get a vote in committee Wednesday. That’s likely to happen Monday.