Society · Crime Problem · Los Angeles County · June 1, 2026

Share

Street Takeovers Are Dropping Across LA County. Deputies Say the Deadly Trend Isn’t Going Away.

The illegal street takeovers that for years have seized Los Angeles County intersections after dark — crowds of hundreds, cars spinning donuts inside walls of tire smoke, the occasional gunshot — are happening less often. ABC7 reported on June 1, 2026 that the LA County Sheriff’s Compton Station logged 113 takeovers in the past six months, a 58% drop from the well-over-200 it answered in the same stretch a year earlier. Countywide, the Sheriff’s Department says takeovers are down 56%.

We will say plainly what the numbers say: the trend is down, and that is real. Deputies credit two things — sustained patrols and a low-tech piece of concrete. Raised bumpers are being installed in the middle of intersections across Compton and other parts of the county to physically stop cars from carving donuts.

But the deputies who police these events are not declaring victory. Takeovers still draw crowds of up to 500 vehicles, still spill into vandalism, assaults, and shootings, and have already killed. The honest version of this story holds both facts: the curve is bending downward, and the events that remain are as dangerous as ever.

• 58%drop in takeovers at the Compton Station over six months — 113 vs. 200-plus a year earlier — LASD via ABC7 · June 1, 2026
• 56%countywide decline in street takeovers, per the LA County Sheriff’s Department — LA County CEO via ABC7 · June 1, 2026
• 500vehicles drawn to a single event, a deputy told ABC7 he has personally witnessed — Deputy David Murray, LASD · ABC7 · June 1, 2026
• 678takeovers the LAPD Street Racing Task Force responded to in 2025 — 292 arrests, 483 cars impounded — LAPD · 2026
• 15years old — the age of a boy shot and killed at a South LA takeover in July 2024 — CBS LA · FOX 11 LA · July 2024

Compton takeovers fell 58% in six months. Countywide, the Sheriff puts the decline at 56%.

The headline figure comes from the agency that has to clean up after these events. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, deputies at the Compton Station logged 113 street takeovers over the past six months — a 58% drop from the same period a year earlier, when they responded to well over 200. Across all areas the department serves, takeovers are down 56%, a figure ABC7 attributed to the LA County Chief Executive Office.

Deputies credit two things. The first is sustained enforcement — more patrols, timed to the late-night and weekend windows when takeovers spin up. The second is cheaper and more permanent: raised bumpers, low concrete domes installed in the middle of intersections throughout Compton and other parts of the county, engineered to make it physically impossible for a car to carve a clean donut. Where the asphalt won’t cooperate, the crowds don’t gather.

That progress is worth stating without hedging. After years of escalation, the curve is bending the right way, and the agencies doing the work deserve the credit the data gives them. This is not a story about numbers being faked or a problem being exaggerated. It is a story about a real decline — and what is left after it.

“We have a lot of work to do.” The events that remain still draw 500 cars and gunfire.

The deputies who run the operations are careful not to oversell the decline. Captain Victor Puebla, who commands the Sheriff’s Compton Station, framed it bluntly to ABC7: although the department has made progress, takeovers “still rem[ain] a significant public safety issue, and we have a lot of work to do.”

On an overnight ride-along in Compton, Deputy David Murray of the department’s special operations unit told ABC7 that he has personally seen events draw upwards of 500 vehicles. The danger, he said, is not abstract: drivers “can lose control, hit people, hit businesses.” Takeovers routinely fold in vandalism, assaults, and shootings, and many of the cars doing the spinning are stolen. “I think it’s extremely important,” Murray said of the enforcement push. “We have to stay vigilant.”

“Although we've made progress with these street takeover events, it still remains a significant public safety issue, and we have a lot of work to do.”

Capt. Victor Puebla, Commander, LASD Compton Station · ABC7 · June 1, 2026

The City of Los Angeles, policed separately by the LAPD, shows the same pattern at larger scale. In 2025 the LAPD Street Racing Task Force responded to 678 takeovers, making 292 arrests — including 24 felony cases — impounding 483 vehicles, recovering 103 stolen cars, and seizing 18 firearms. Through the early months of 2026, the LAPD had already answered more than 90 takeovers, with 79 arrests, 114 vehicles impounded, four stolen cars recovered, and four guns seized. Those are the numbers of a problem shrinking, not vanishing.

A 15-year-old was shot dead at a takeover. This is the consequence the statistics are counting.

Behind every count is a reason these events are policed at all. On the night of Friday, July 19, 2024, two 15-year-old boys were watching a street takeover near West 54th Street and Western Avenue in South Los Angeles when two people robbed them. After one of the teens threw a brick at the robbers’ vehicle, the suspects opened fire, shooting both boys. One of them died of his injuries the next day. Then-LAPD officials called it a “heinous and senseless crime.”

The deaths and injuries did not stop there. In a single recent weekend, the LAPD reported at least five people shot during street takeovers across the city. In Rosemead, a takeover shooting left four people wounded, two of them teenagers. KTLA footage from August 2025 showed a driver doing donuts in reverse in the Compton area plowing into a crowd of onlookers. These are not freak outliers; they are the recurring texture of an event built around losing control of a car in the middle of a crowd.

That is the case for taking the remaining takeovers seriously even as the totals fall. A 56% decline is a real public-safety win. It is also entirely compatible with a teenager bleeding out at an intersection. Both are true, and the second is why the first matters.

Keep Reading

Science · Archaeology

Scientists Found 5,300-Year-Old Viable Yeast in a Mummy's Gut — and Baked Sourdough With It

Read →

The takeovers surged under a DA who ran on leniency. Voters replaced him; the decline followed.

The takeover epidemic peaked during the tenure of George Gascón (D), the Los Angeles County district attorney elected in 2020 on an explicitly decarceral platform — blanket policies against cash bail, against many sentencing enhancements, and against charging certain juveniles as adults. Critics, including line prosecutors in his own office, argued those policies removed the deterrent that low-level, high-volume crimes like street takeovers depend on. The events that overran county intersections in 2022, 2023, and 2024 unfolded against that backdrop.

In November 2024, voters ended that experiment. Former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman— who had run for state attorney general as a Republican in 2022 but re-registered as “no party preference” and campaigned as a centrist independent — defeated Gascón by roughly 20 points, taking about 61% of the vote. He was sworn in as the county’s 44th district attorney on December 3, 2024, vowing a return to enforcement. The countywide takeover decline the Sheriff is now reporting tracks the period after that handover.

We are careful here about cause and effect. The decline also coincides with new state laws, intersection hardening, and intensified patrols — no single lever explains it, and we do not claim one does. But the political geography is part of the fact set: the surge happened under a DA who ran on leniency, and the reversal followed voters replacing him with one who ran on enforcement.

New laws let police impound the spectators’ cars too. Concrete domes do the rest.

California has spent the past few years building a legal toolkit aimed squarely at takeovers. The foundation is AB 3(Assemblyman Vince Fong, R), signed in 2021 and effective January 1, 2022, which codified a statutory definition of a “sideshow” and raised penalties for street racing and takeover conduct — up to 90 days in county jail, fines up to $500, and driver’s-license suspensions of 90 days to six months. The enhanced penalties became enforceable July 1, 2025.

On September 23, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom (D)signed a bipartisan package expanding the toolkit further: AB 1978 and AB 2186 broadened vehicle-impound authority — including the power to seize the cars of mere spectators and of those racing on private lots — while AB 2807 and AB 3085 tightened statewide definitions of sideshows and takeovers and the rules for removing and impounding vehicles. “Sideshows are reckless, criminal activities that endanger our communities,” Newsom said at the signing. “We have seen too many people killed or hurt at these events.”

The most visibly effective tool, though, may be the least sophisticated: the raised concrete bumpers now seated in the center of targeted intersections. They cost little, require no overtime, and never go off shift. Combined with impound authority that now reaches the crowd as well as the driver, they are a large part of why the deputies say the math has changed.

Keep Reading

Science · Archaeology

Scientists Found 5,300-Year-Old Viable Yeast in a Mummy's Gut — and Baked Sourdough With It

Read →

The officials who own LA County public safety. Named, titled, and current.

Public-safety accountability in Los Angeles runs through specific offices. The countywide takeover data comes from the Sheriff’s Department; enforcement inside the City of Los Angeles runs through the LAPD; and prosecution of takeover crimes runs through the district attorney. We name who holds those offices now, as a matter of record.

The trend is down. The danger is not gone. Both sentences are true, and the site reports both.

What is verified is favorable: LA County Sheriff’s deputies logged 113 takeovers at the Compton Station over six months, down 58% year over year, with a 56% countywide decline. The LAPD’s 2025 totals — 678 takeovers, 292 arrests, 483 cars impounded — are giving way to a lighter early-2026 pace. New state laws reaching spectators and concrete bumpers reshaping intersections are doing measurable work.

What has not changed is the lethality of the events that remain. Deputies still see crowds of 500 cars. A 15-year-old was shot dead at a South LA takeover; four people, two of them teenagers, were wounded in Rosemead; at least five were shot in a single recent weekend. Capt. Victor Puebla’s line is the one to keep: the department has made progress, and it has a lot of work to do.

The political record is part of the story, stated without overreach: the surge crested under DA George Gascón (D), and the reversal followed voters replacing him with DA Nathan Hochman alongside new laws and harder enforcement under Sheriff Robert Luna (D), Mayor Karen Bass (D), and Chief Jim McDonnell. We do not assign the decline to any single cause. We report what the data shows and who owns the offices — and we let readers draw the line.

More From Civic Intelligence

Science · Archaeology

Scientists Found 5,300-Year-Old Viable Yeast in a Mummy's Gut — and Baked Sourdough With It

Eurac Research in Bolzano extracted four cold-adapted yeast species from Ötzi the Iceman's preserved…

Drain the Swamp · New Jersey

A NJ Democrat Who Testified for the 1993 WTC Bombing Cleric Just Won a Congressional Primary.

Dr. Imad Hamawy (D) won the NJ-12 Democratic primary on June 2, 2026 with approximately 27.4% of the…