December 7, 2024

Street takeovers are a national problem

PERF members,

Across the country, often on a Friday or Saturday night, cities face a menacing problem: street takeovers in which dozens or hundreds of cars meet up in one location to do donuts, race, and drive recklessly. Sometimes called “car meetups” or “sideshows,” these incidents increased in many cities when streets emptied out at the beginning of the pandemic and have continued through today. Many of those involved may be bored young people looking for something to do, but these events have led to many injuries to participants, bystanders, and police officers, as well as some murders. Police chiefs and sheriffs have had to allocate significant resources to address this problem, as well as sought out creative solutions to prevent these meetups from occurring and respond quickly when they do happen.

This week I spoke to five chiefs who serve on PERF’s board to discuss the scope of the problem in their jurisdictions and what they’re doing to respond to and prevent these incidents. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Chief Johnny Jennings said that he wished his city council could have listened in on the meeting, because they think it’s only an issue in their city. But, as we heard from these chiefs, it’s a national problem.

Sacramento Chief Kathy Lester

We really saw a surge of these during the pandemic. We had an informal name for it – “Sideshow Saturdays” – because it seemed like it would always pop up on Saturday night. People will put stuff out on social media, usually a flyer with a time, and they’ll DM (direct message) the location of the sideshow.

They’re pretty sophisticated. I think there’s a misunderstanding that these are just kids out cruising or reckless driving. There’s almost a hierarchy to being a participant. 

We’ve seen these groups of hundreds of people doing really dangerous stuff. And it’s super dangerous for the cops. These happen in the middle of the night, and I have 30 to 40 cops on the graveyard shift. Even that many cops couldn’t handle a sideshow of 400 people, because we’ll get surrounded. 

Source: Sacramento Police Department on X

We’ve had citizens involved when they inadvertently drive into these things. And we had two homicides related to a sideshow in September.

The California legislature came out with some new laws that, quite frankly, don’t have the teeth we need them to have. California does not really support the use of technology, like cameras, to get a little bit closer. Our own city council did just pass a resolution that adds some additional administrative penalties and allows us to use drones to get a little bit closer. We also have intel folks farming social media. But a lot of those social media posts have dwindled down over the last year, so that’s been harder to track. 

We’ve been proactive, recognizing that it’s likely to happen in the middle of the night and putting some dedicated people on it. We make sure we have air support and some other assets. We have also partnered with local jurisdictions, because no one jurisdiction in our region has enough people to address the issue. When we stood up larger game plans, we’ve worked with the Highway Patrol, and we’re in constant contact back and forth between jurisdictions.

Metropolitan Nashville Chief John Drake

What we call “street racer events” really started picking up around the pandemic in 2020. We have literally hundreds of individuals who pick a parking lot in a park or other location. You would think they’d mainly be kids, but a lot of them are adults, and a lot of them have weapons. We have shots fired.

Sometimes these vehicles are stolen. We had a situation about a month ago where an officer was following a stolen car, and the car started doing donuts around the officer. Eventually he rammed the police car, and we were able to charge him.

We put resources into what we call our “Street Race Initiative.” We take our traffic officers to take enforcement against aggressive drivers. We put aviation up and identify the organizer. We charge the organizer of the event and put it out in the media. 

We’ve had people point lasers at our aviation units, which could potentially be catastrophic.

We were seizing vehicles, and that was really successful, but we found that some of these cars were stolen or belonged to other people – somebody was driving grandma’s car or mama’s car – so the ability to keep those cars became problematic.

Most of these happen on weekends. We sometimes know when and where. We send a bunch of cars, but we’ll provide them an avenue of escape. We try to arrest the main organizers and make as many traffic stops as we can as they disperse. But if you have 400 or 500 cars and 30 or 40 officers, that’s an officer safety issue. So we try to be strategic in dealing with that. We also work with the district attorney, who has assigned a prosecutor to the Street Race Initiative.

So we’ve had some success in reducing it, but it’s still a problem.

A masked man at a 2023 street takeover in Nashville blocks an officer’s vehicle. Source: Nashville.gov  

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Chief Johnny Jennings

At one point in 2020 and 2021, it was happening constantly. We did an operation that lasted several months and, at the end of it, confiscated about 60 cars and made several arrests. We worked with the district attorney’s office, and it worked really well. Even though we had to give some cars back after the adjudication of their charges, we still kept those cars for months, and it was a hardship for them. Some of them were kids who had their parents’ cars, and that was tough, but your kid shouldn’t be out racing your vehicle.

One of the laws passed last year in North Carolina gave us the ability to go back and charge the organizer. It’s very difficult to catch people and charge them then, but we’ve had people who have gone in undercover and used surveillance cameras to identify those involved, then we’ll go back later and do roundups. It’s been successful to the point where we’ve seen people make social media posts saying, “Don’t do it in Charlotte because they’ll take your stuff.”

Source: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department on X

The last one we had was a couple weekends ago. It was totally spontaneous, and it was an issue, but we haven’t seen them nearly as much as we used to.

Philadelphia Commissioner Kevin Bethel

We had a pretty significant event in our Center City, and one of my officers was caught in the swarm. That day we made a commitment that it was never going to happen to my cops again.

We run a detail every Friday and Saturday night, and sometimes Sunday, with a package of about 40 officers who are prepared to respond to a car meetup. We also do ATV details. I have about 40 motorbikes I use for that, and that’s been going very well for us.

We put a shooting investigation group – some of our most seasoned investigators – and stick them on these cases. They started to uncover something we hadn’t recognized, which is that organizers were flying drones overhead and making money by putting the footage online.

Image taken of a September 21, 2024, street takeover in Philadelphia. Source: Philadelphia Police Criminal Intelligence Unit

We used the technology we normally use for shootings or homicides to identify every phone and every car we could. Even if officers couldn’t stop everyone, they were filming them. 

We worked with the state police to put every car into our system, so it flagged every time a cop or trooper stopped one in Pennsylvania. And it went as far as Baltimore and all the way up into New York. We found organizers. And we did press conferences to say we locked them up.

I think the aggressive response is the win for us, because I can’t win during the incident. We have introduced some spike strips, but they cannot be used unless officers can box them into a position where they will not lose control and cause harm or injury to someone else.

And the community pushes back, because they think we should chase them. So I’m always convincing them that I’m going to continue to deal with this, but I’m not going to endanger other lives because I’m chasing a souped-up vehicle. So it’s been a balancing act, and publicity helps me. When we push it out to the media, they eat it up. You push it out on a Friday, and they run it all weekend. That shows people that we’re doing something.

St. Louis Metropolitan Chief Robert Tracy

The state of Missouri has “Valentine’s Law,” which makes it a Class D felony to flee a police officer in these situations or during a traffic stop, and that goes up if there’s an injury. It’s named for a St. Louis County officer who was killed when a fleeing car rammed into the side of his vehicle.

When I first got to St. Louis, we already had a cruising detail in place, but it was only on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and only for the summer. But they do them year-round here, so we adjusted that and adjusted to Wednesday through Sunday nights. We put additional details on it over time – specialized units, of course, and aviation to help us out.

We also used our intel unit to track these individuals with open-source information and charge them. We use spike strips, we impound vehicles, and we take these charges seriously.

We’re out looking for this, and we’re very aware of the spots where they like to go. They stage in parks or up north, then they always want to be downtown. They want to get a shot under the Arch from a distance. That’s a hit on social media. When we see them stage up, we immediately respond with these cruising details. 

We have to coordinate with the other municipalities, the county, and the state, because when we take these actions, it’s pushed out to other areas. So we’re communicating and making sure the other jurisdictions are not surprised.

At a time when many police departments and sheriffs’ offices are facing significant staffing shortages, it’s unfortunate that they need to devote so many resources to this problem. Thanks to these five chiefs for taking the time to discuss this issue, and I hope some of their suggestions will help you address this issue in your communities. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Best,

Chuck