The overwhelming majority of tickets and arrests made for reckless driving and drag racing in Shelby County are dismissed in the court system one way or the other.

That’s what Memphis City Council members heard Tuesday, Jan. 18, from Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich, who presented statistics from the past three years.

Those numbers show, according to Weirich, the gap between making arrests and/or writing tickets and proving a case in court.

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In 2021, 23 drag racing charges were “nolle prossed,” meaning prosecutors decided to dismiss charges, out of a total of 33 cases disposed of in various ways. That same year, 636 reckless driving cases were nolle prossed out of 780 cases disposed of during the year.

Nolle pross was by far the leading category for the disposition of both charges.

A total of 115 reckless driving cases ended with convictions last year and four convictions for drag racing.

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Also last year, police made 790 arrests for reckless driving and 72 for drag racing.

The number of arrests doesn’t match the numbers of cases dismissed because it could take months and years between an arrest and when a case moves to its final outcome in the court system.

And the charges of reckless driving and drag racing usually come with other charges, including driving under the influence. Those charges may have been dismissed in exchange for a guilty plea on another charge.

“There are a whole host of reasons that we as prosecutors dismiss cases,” Weirich told the council. “The number one reason is we can’t prove our case. … Just because an arrest is made and someone is charged with a crime doesn’t automatically transfer into a situation of us being able to proceed.”

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Council member Worth Morgan linked the difficulty in making a reckless driving case to the city’s police pursuit policy, which bars officers from chasing a driver they identify as driving recklessly since it is a misdemeanor.

Police brass told council members two weeks ago that while they don’t pursue reckless drivers they see on patrol, police officers do gather information toward charging them with felony evasion once they are caught.

Weirich said making a case later relies on locating witnesses who say a specific person was behind the wheel at the time.

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Morgan called the numbers on charges dismissed “more depressing than I intended.”

“I think that’s a terrible reality that we’ve been talking around with the police department,” he said. “People are not being held accountable for fleeing from police.”

“I promise you as we are discovering these policies and the holes and gaps in them, the individuals we are pursuing know it like the back of their hands,” Morgan said. “The secret is out, and I think we are slow to the realization that our policies and procedures are not enough.”

“The numbers themselves do not tell the whole picture,” Weirich said.

She didn’t suggest changes to the pursuit policy. Instead, Weirich suggested state laws could be changed to make reckless driving a higher misdemeanor or a felony and allowing police to seize cars used in drag racing when police make an arrest instead of upon conviction on a drag racing charge.