How can police turn a blind eye to these speed demons?

I live on the sea road in Limassol, just at the beginning of Potamos Yermasoyia, only a few hundred metres from the police station.

Everyone in Limassol seems to know that this particular length of road from Debenhams to the police station is the official (in everything but name) drag strip where every night from around 8pm until at least 2am, young Cypriot males race eardrum-blasting cars and motorcycles at speeds exceeding 150kph.

Everyone knows, that is, except the police. Or, as I suspect, the police do know but don’t have the energy, fortitude or courage to do anything about it.

As a result of this orang-utan behaviour, none of us (thousands) who live along the sea road, unless we have cork-lined walls and triple-glazed balcony windows, are able to enjoy our right to peace and relative quiet.

Once this nightly belligerent and horrifically loud racing begins, it is no longer possible to have a normal conversation anywhere within your own flat or house. Even watching a television program is difficult without extra speakers attached.

Just when you become involved in the story, you are blasted out of your seat, your heart suddenly racing at high rpms, by the detonation of an illegal exhaust system – a malicious twist of the handgrip accelerator or the flattening of the gas pedal by some young, often underage, criminal with no regard for the rest of humanity.

This activity is illegal in several ways: The speeds are at two to three times the posted limit; racing is being conducted in a competitive fashion without regard for the safety of other drivers; the exhaust systems are illegally modified to create the most noise possible; no one is wearing a helmet (or in many cases, shoes).

I have lived in the US, England, Mexico, France, Greece, Canada and Kuwait and I have never witnessed such a blatant disregard for the law and the rights of peaceful law-abiding residents. Nor have I ever witnessed such a pitiful show of neglect, laziness and irresponsibility by a local police force.

How can anyone entertain the thought that Cyprus is a civilised country when the police turn a blind eye to this kind of criminal behaviour? This behaviour endangers not only other drivers along the road but the hearts and minds of thousands of residents who cannot relax or enjoy the hard-won comforts of their own homes.

I have seen numerous letters and articles written about this situation over the four years I have lived here. But I have never seen any action on the part of the police. They seem content with sitting within their vehicles around blind bends in the highway and pointing a radar gun at citizens commuting to work at perhaps ten to twenty kilometres above the limit.

Of course there is corruption in every country’s police force. Is it possible these criminals racing loudly up and down the sea road are in fact off-duty policemen, or the sons or relatives of such? How else to explain the fact that such criminal activity continues unstopped and unpunished year after year?

Matthew Stowell,
Limassol

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.