Los Angeles street takeover by cars has cleared the way for a large group to loot the store

The usually separate phenomena of a car takeover and flash mob shoplifting converged this week in Los Angeles, causing authorities to sound the alarm.

A sideshow — the name given to when a group of cars takes over a street, blocking traffic to make way for circular burnouts known as donuts — enabled a crowd of people to start a 7-Eleven Monday, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

The takeover and the mass theft were captured on security video released by the Los Angeles Police Department on Thursday. Traffic detectives ask for help in tracking down suspected looters.

Flash mob at a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles, on August 15, 2022.
Flash mob at a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles, on August 15, 2022.LAPD South Traffic via YouTube

“Video surveillance from the store showed the looters spreading through the store and taking all the snacks, drinks, cigarettes, raffle tickets and other merchandise,” the LAPD said in a statement.

Looters also vandalized the store and threw merchandise at employees.

The LAPD has been warning the public of both sideshows and “smash-and-grab” shoplifting since last year, when groups of people stormed into a series of retailers and grabbed goods.

“Flashmobs have gone from fun spontaneous events to opportunistic criminal events,” the LAPD said this week.

Combining large groups of people and fast cars can be deadly.

Rally racing withdrew from larger spectator events in the late 1980s after a number of high-profile deaths of spectators on dirt roads. And last year there were three spectators in Houston killed when a Camaro traveling at high speed hit them on a sidewalk, officials said.

Last month, a 21-year-old man was fatally shot in a street takeover in South Los Angeles on July 3. Los Angeles Times reported.

In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, a change.org petition urged the City of Los Angeles and regional authorities to take action against sideshows that have become “ubiquitous.”

The events create “dangerous traffic conditions for all citizens and hinder traffic from taking over intersections,” it said.

Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that would allow courts to suspend driver’s licenses for takeover participants. A proposal to extend the law to include events on private property that have passed the legislature this year.

Police also used material violations and 30-day vehicle seizures to tackle the rallies.

Lili Trujillo Puckett founded the non-profit organization Street racing kills after her 16-year-old daughter Valentina died in a vehicle that was racing nearly a decade ago.

She favors a crackdown, but also pushes for a legal alternative: racetracks that host similar events.

She said she doesn’t know of a Southern California location that hosts formal donut-making events, which are most similar to drifting in the world of organized, sanctioned motorsports.

“The city needs to invest in tracks,” Puckett said. “We have to give them [participants] a place to go.”

So far, the government’s response to street takeovers in California has been to try and eliminate them.

The LAPD has tried to fight takeovers and other “illegal activities” on the city’s new Sixth Street Bridge by stepping up traffic enforcement since the end of July.

In March, Long Beach Police tracked down a vehicle who they said was involved in a street takeover event involving an estimated 50 cars. The Nissan 350Z was impounded in Simi Valley, a town 65 miles north.

One night in May, the LAPD cracked down on street takeovers in the city and county as part of a multi-jurisdiction task force that made 23 arrests for crimes, seized 14 vehicles and made 30 traffic stops, the LAPD said.

In 2018, the California Highway Patrol created a task force to focus on the street takeovers, which it says were often showcases for powerful vehicles that could easily injure spectators.

The CHP’s Oakland office has its own “sideshow detail,” which works in conjunction with the city’s police.

in San Jose, a spectator was seriously injured on July 31, 2021, during one of the many flash mob car events that took place in the city that evening, police said. Officers issued 17 equipment certificates.

Just days earlier, a resident on the 32nd floor of a high-rise building in downtown San Diego captured video of an emerging takeover and sideshow at one of the city’s busiest intersections.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Anne Christensen said NBC San Diego. “I thought someone was going to be killed down there.”

Acquisitions and sidelines flourished on the West Coast and Las Vegas and have spread to the highways of Southern California.

According to police, the participants in Monday’s takeover then blocked the lanes of the 110 highway, which leads to the center NBC Los Angeles.

Erick Mendoza and Andrew Blankstein contributed.