CHEYENNE — The hot-rodding starts every day after 5 p.m. at the Jack C. Spiker Parking Structure downtown on 17th Street, but it’s particularly active on Friday nights.
Brian Snyder, who owns Bohemian Metals directly across from the garage and lives in an upstairs apartment above his store, has come to expect it every weekend over the years.
But this past Friday night, something unexpected happened in the midst of the usual noisy, Friday night shenanigans.
“I heard this guy pull into the garage, and it was one of the regular guys,” Snyder told Cowboy State Daily. “He’s one who likes to drive throughout the garage and throttle his motorcycle up to the point where it sounds like it’s going to blow up. So, lots of RPMs, which is followed by a backfiring pop.”
That often sets off all the car alarms in the parking garage, Snyder added.
“It’s like a game,” he said. “He does that to set off all the alarms.”
Friday afternoon, right before 5 p.m., Snyder heard one round of that usual game. Then he heard something else, something quite unusual. It was an explosive sound, much louder than usual.
He knew immediately that something terrible had happened.
He headed to the garage immediately after the sound to see what had happened.
An EMS vehicle arrived on the scene at about the same time.
The driver of the motorcycle, Snyder saw, had been unable to stop in time. He’d launched, full speed ahead, right into the south concrete wall, which is furthest from Snyder’s business.
“What I had heard was the impact of his motorcycle,” Snyder said.
Ticketed For Reckless Driving
According to a statement from the Cheyenne Police Department, the rider involved in the accident was transported by ambulance to a hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries and ticketed for careless driving, riding without a motorcycle endorsement, and failure to provide proof of insurance.
A motorcycle endorsement is put on a driver’s license to authorize operation of a motorcycle.
According to the man’s statement to police, the bike accelerated into the south wall of the garage after he pulled in the clutch and revved the engine.
“This incident serves as an important reminder of the responsibility that comes with operating any motor vehicle — especially a motorcycle,” Cheyenne Police Chief Mark Francisco said. “Reckless behavior not only puts the rider at risk but also endangers the safety of others.”
Snyder said he does feel sorry for the injured man, even as he feels it’s a cautionary tale for those who have been using the Spiker garage as a playground for their vehicles. If they get the message, which he doubts. After the accident was cleaned up, more motorists arrived for more noisy hot-rodding in the garage, seemingly unaware of the accident that had occurred earlier.
“It starts every evening after about 4:30 p.m.,” Snyder said. “And it’s summertime, too, so it also gets worse during the summer months versus winter months.”
Everyone has been cooped up, Snyder said. He gets it. Summer comes, and more people are ready to blow off steam somewhere.
But it’s a dangerous place to do so, Snyder said, and his concern is that more people are going to get hurt.
City Taking Additional Steps
Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins told Cowboy State Daily he was disappointed to hear that hot-rodding behavior continues in Spiker garage, and said the city is taking some additional steps to curb the behavior.
Those steps include the recent approval of $100,000 in overtime, which will be used, in part, for additional patrols in the Spiker garage.
“We all feel like that is not appropriate and really disappointing, especially for the gentleman who owns Bohemian Metals,” Collins said. “He lives above his building, and that noise keeps him up at night. And nothing frustrates me more than people whose behavior is like that.”
Collins said it’s his hope that people in the community who witness such behavior in the garage will take note of the license plate number and report it to police, to help catch the culprits.
“We’ve got great cameras in there now,” Collins said. “And so, we have been able to reach out to some folks based on that and have a conversation with them about the proper etiquette. It is unfortunate the effect that has on people who live in those areas and who work in those areas.”
Ward I Councilman Scott Roybal told Cowboy State Daily he’s been talking with people around the garage, and said the police chief has told him he’s looking at changes to Cheyenne’s noise ordinance.
“Every time I talk to somebody who lives right around there, we’ve had complaints about the noise,” he said. “The ‘mosquito’ cars will go up in there and they’ll start running around, and they do it in the evenings, and motorcycles, too, stuff like that.”
Other actions at the garage have aimed to improve visibility in the garage, Ward I Councilman Jeff White told Cowboy State Daily.
“We’ve spent almost a million dollars renovating the bathrooms there, putting in security cameras,” he said. “We do have a private security company that does drive through there at certain points of the day. And I know the police have increased their patrols in Spiker garage.”
White said the council has also talked about possibly putting gates on the entrance of the garage, to force people to slow down when leaving and entering. There wouldn’t necessarily be a charge for going through the gate, he added. It would just be a slow-down mechanism.
Ramping Up Traffic Enforcement Across Cheyenne
Part of the $100,000 for overtime will also be dedicated to speed limit and red-light enforcement, Ward I Councilman Pete Laybourn told Cowboy State Daily.
Laybourn is part of a committee that’s working on various traffic issues across Cheyenne, including Spiker garage.
“The parking garage has our full attention,” he said. “We will continue our efforts because it’s the heart of downtown. It’s important parking. We have parking issues we need to work on, so we’re not ignoring it, we just haven’t fully found the answers, but I think we’re going to have to have more enforcement directly in it.”
Laybourn himself is a downtown property owner and said he agrees that the noise downtown on weekends, in particular, has become particularly disturbing.
“It starts first thing in the morning and runs until midnight or 2 a.m.,” he said. “And that’s really not — there’s no good in it. This antisocial behavior didn’t used to exist, so we need to respond to it.”
The traffic issues in Cheyenne, he added, are not just restricted to the garage. An increasing segment of Cheyenne’s population have begun treating the highway as a performance arena. A place to pop wheelies and tailpipes on a Friday or Saturday night, as well as speeding around much faster than the posted limit allows.
“That really is serious, because if you drive the same streets as I am, if you’re going the speed limit, you’re getting passed,” he said.
Modified mufflers, meanwhile, are something he’s learning is a problem not just regionally, but even internationally. More and more people are modifying vehicles in questionable ways, that lead to noise and other problems.
Laybourn said Cheyenne has declared special traffic enforcement zones on Central and Warren avenues. Council members also approved a system Monday night that will analyze traffic patterns in real time, based on GPS data from cell phones, as well as other metrics.
The system won’t identify individual users in real time, but the metadata can help highlight where the most egregious violations are taking place, so officers can be placed in the best locations for making a difference in all these “antisocial” driving behaviors.
Zero Tolerance For Speeding, Wheelies
Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak told Cowboy State Daily the Sheriff’s Department will be teaming up to help Cheyenne Police Department on traffic enforcement issues. That includes additional patrols of Spiker garage.
“Our deputies are actually driving through the parking garage, like if they’re coming to the Sheriff’s office or leaving the Sheriff’s office,” Kozak said. “And then we also started a traffic unit, a traffic enforcement team.”
Laramie County has assigned three deputies to that team to work with the Police Department’s traffic unit on proactive speed and red-light enforcement.
Two motorcycles have been donated to the Sheriff’s office for those officers, Kozak added.
“It’s more effective if we work together as a team,” he said. “So that’s what we’re doing.”
Kozak added that he’s been hearing more complaints lately on Saturday nights that motorcycles are racing up and down Warren and Central and popping wheelies.
“So, both the Sheriff’s Office and the city PD are also teaming up on that,” Kozak said. “For a high visible presence and really having a zero tolerance approach on that kind of reckless driving behavior.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
