If you’re hauling yourself to work this Monday morning while a grocery store two towns over is boarding up shattered windows, take a second to be angry. Not mildly annoyed. Angry. Because for the second, third, tenth weekend in a row, street takeover crews turned public roads into their personal playground from Friday night through Sunday morning, August 28-30, and once again the aftermath landed on everyone except the people who caused it.
Start in South Los Angeles, where a takeover crowd shut down an intersection overnight into Sunday, and while officers were tied up managing that circus, another crew used the chaos as cover to rip through a Superior Grocers store near Manchester Avenue and Crocker Street. NBC Los Angeles, CBS News, and the New York Post all covered it. Shelves stripped in front of terrified employees. The tally of people held accountable for looting an entire supermarket: one. One arrest, for a coordinated smash-and-grab that needed a street takeover as a distraction to even happen. Nearby, at another South LA takeover that same weekend, someone was filmed getting thrown out of a moving car mid-stunt. Not a fender bender. A person airborne in the middle of a public street, because a crowd decided a residential intersection was their personal stunt arena.
Head east to Connecticut and the story barely improves. A takeover rolled through several New Haven County towns Friday night, forcing a police pursuit through North Haven. The result, after an entire night of multiple towns dealing with reckless riders: one 29-year-old man arrested, two motorcycles seized. That’s it. An operation that spanned multiple jurisdictions produced a grand total of one person in handcuffs…