BATON ROUGE - Street racers, people who promote them and businesses that knowingly allow them will now face harsher penalties.

This comes after the East Baton Rouge Metro Council passed an ordinance that enhances a 2022 effort aimed at cracking down on street racing and stunt driving.

EBR District 3 Metro Councilman Rowdy Gaudet spearheaded the effort; he and police agreed that one way to curb the activity is to punish organizers and people who promote street racing on social media.

"To assist law enforcement, we associate it with anyone who promotes an event or provides access or knowledge of the location of these events, and we made them essentially an organizer of these events. An organizer in the ordinance carries a penalty associated with it," Gaudet said.

Gaudet says that in conversations he had with law enforcement on how to address the problem, the significance of social media was brought up.

"The main thing is trying to understand when and where it's going to happen because it happens through social media and it moves in a second," Baton Rouge Police Deputy Chief Neal Noel told the Council.

Additionally, council members are targeting private properties that allow illegal drag racing.

"There are instances where a large parking lot, private property owner will be aware of and knowingly allow these types of drag racing and stunt driving activities to occur on their property," Gaudet said.

The same criteria will now apply to business owners as well.

"We can pull their certificate of occupancy for operating whatever business is on that property," Gaudet said.

The funding from those penalties now goes back to the police.

"If someone is found to violate the drag racing ordinance, they can be penalized up to $1,000. Those penalties, per the ordinance tonight, will now go into a special fund for law enforcement so that they can continue with the technological resources needed to help curb this activity," Gaudet said.

However, some council members question whether the money should go there.

"We need to fund the DA's office, and some of these people might need the public defender to do this, so that would just be one recommendation to look into as far as where these. If we're going to dedicate the funds to a particular thing, I would like to see it go to the back-end services," EBR District 4 Metro Councilman Aaron Moak said.

However, the proposal passed without opposition and goes into effect immediately.

Penalties can also include the racing vehicle being impounded for 14 days. Gaudet says if the state changes the number of days an impoundment can last, the parish will align with the new amount.