Casey Phillips
Staff Writer
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Normally, seeing Chattanooga police officer Joe Warren’s blue lights flashing in the rearview mirror is a bad thing.
But if you’re beating him to the finish line at the drag strip, it’s a beautiful sight.
Representing the department’s Beat the Heat Police Racing Team, Mr. Warren and his law-enforcement teammates, David Cowan and Marty Dunn, go to Brainerd Optimist Drag Strip in Ringgold, Ga., every week to encourage locals to satisfy their need for speed in a safe environment.
“Our goal is to reduce the street-racing fatalities in the country through education, and one of our mottos is ‘Racing for Education,’ ” Mr. Warren said. “We’re not publicity seekers -- our goal is to make one-on-one contact with kids in our community.”
Mr. Warren said he was introduced to the national Beat the Heat organization while doing research following a slew of racing-related deaths in 2001.
He decided to found a local chapter after his research led him to the conclusion that movies and video games emphasized the flash but neglected the consequences of street racing.
“In the video games, you hit somebody (and) you’ll bounce around and you keep driving,” he said. “In the movies, you’ll see horrendous wrecks, like the main character T-boning a tractor trailer and walking away with a hurt arm.
“I’m trained in working in crash reconstruction -- I learn a lot about physics as it relates to the human body’s ability to survive a crash -- and I started seeing that these kids are getting a one-sided message growing up about driving that nothing bad will happen to them.”
After receiving approval from the department, Mr. Warren created a program that encourages kids to only drive fast in controlled environments, not in ways that endanger the public.
Taking a 1996 Ford Mustang that was being retired from service as an undercover car for the department’s Narcotics Division, Mr. Warren set about turning it into a race car.
A second car will soon join the Chattanooga team. For the last several months, Mr. Cowan and Mr. Dunn, a Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy, have been retrofitting Cowan’s 1978 Pontiac Firebird to compete alongside Mr. Warren.
With more than $30,000 in upgrades between them, little about either vehicle is stock. Money for the upgrades were provided by corporate sponsors and the officers themselves.
Sitting on perilously skinny front tires and fat, tread-less rear tires, each car sport a black-and-white paint scheme with a bar of bright blue LEDs on the roof. Beneath the hood, the engines and transmissions have been completely rebuilt.
Anything that doesn’t add power or lower the weight has been removed, leaving the interiors bare, without such amenities as air conditioning and stereos. Each has been reinforced with a protective roll cage and a racing harness.
Although Beat the Heat is sanctioned by the Chattanooga Police Department, the racing is done off the clock. Having to pay out-of-pocket for thousands of dollars of upgrades, repairs and travel limits the amount of department participation, Mr. Cowan said.
“There aren’t too many people in our department who want to take the time and effort to build a drag racer,” he said. “It’s all well and good if somebody comes up to you and says, ‘Here’s a $30,000 race car,’ but we don’t have that.”
The officers say racing is an equalizer that allows officers to communicate with the target audience on grounds where the only uniform is a fire suit and helmet.
When the lights change from yellow to green, a badge won’t get the tires spinning any quicker, Mr. Warren said.
“Even though we’re police officers, we’re pretty dad gum good drag racers, too,” he said, laughing. “If I were to go out in my regular uniform and a regular patrol car, there aren’t many kids who would want to come up and talk to me.
"(This way) they get to know us as people and not just as somebody with a badge and gun who’s going to write them a ticket and put them in jail.”
The car may be the hook, but the meat of the program’s outreach takes place off the track. Every year, Beat the Heat’s officers give presentations on driver safety throughout the area.
This year, Beat the Heat officers have spoken at six schools, 30 community events and participated in 17 regional races, reaching an estimated 164,000 people.
The school appearances provide potential racers insights from both the dragway and crash scenes, Mr. Warren said.
“I focus my education on the point that the street is not where you play,” he said. “We do a shotgun approach to driving safety, but the core of our message is the street racing.
“We also talk about the danger of alcohol and drugs, drinking and driving and basic driving safety tips.”
Copyright 2007 The Chattanooga Times Free Press