After reports of some risky behavior, Powell Police Chief Roy Eckerdt is urging participants in the weekly “Dragging Main” event to make sure they follow traffic laws.

Dragging Main has been revived as a Powell tradition amid the pandemic, with a growing number of drivers and spectators gathering at 7 p.m. Saturday for trips up Coulter Avenue, down Bent Street and back.

Chief Eckerdt said he’s supported the community event since it started in late March.

“Humans are social creatures, and we need to have interaction with other people — and this is a safe way to do that,” he said.

However, as the event has grown, Eckerdt said he’s been seeing some unsafe behavior.

“We’re at a point now where we have people standing in the back of pickups; we have kids that are car-seat age in the back of pickups rather than in a car seat or a seat belt; we have cars leaving rubber down Bent Street because they’re spinning tires,” Eckerdt said Tuesday. “And it’s moving from a good community atmosphere to one that’s becoming a safety concern.”

While the event may feel a bit like a parade — featuring antique cars, decorations and crowds along the street — it is not a parade and it’s not a controlled environment, Eckerdt said. He noted that participants still need to obey traffic laws.

“There’s this great community stuff going on, and we don’t want to interfere with that,” Eckerdt said. “But that doesn’t mean we can allow somebody to get killed in the process because we’re not doing our job.”

The chief called on members of the public to police themselves during the event; at the request of the department, a member of the Facebook group that organizes the Dragging Main event relayed the request for participants to keep everyone properly seated in their vehicles on Monday.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Eckerdt said of the gathering, “so let’s preserve it and not make us regulate it.”

— By CJ Baker