In the early hours of Sunday morning, October 5th, (around 2 a.m.), a crowd of over 100 people gathered in the South End of Boston around Massachusetts Avenue and Tremont Street, blocking intersections, performing burnouts, donuts, and illegal racing, and attacking responding police vehicles with fireworks, traffic cones, and poles, with a police cruiser being set on fire in the chaos. In the same weekend similar incidents occurred in other Massachusetts cities including Fall River, Middleborough, Randolph, Dedham, and Brockton. In Fall River, police reported a crowd of roughly 200 people who blocked streets near Central Street, performing burnouts, and preventing ambulances from accessing the street. In Middleborough, around 50 vehicles converged in a commercial parking lot, with many vehicles displaying stolen license plates. At one point, a Dodge Charger with Connecticut plates attempted to ram/strike a law enforcement officer. In the Randolph gathering, participants were seen sitting on hoods of police vehicles, striking cruisers with objects, and setting off fireworks. There were also incidents in Hyde Park (Boston), with more than 100 vehicles trespassing on private property with one person being struck during vehicle stunts and having to be taken to hospital. In West Roxbury, police responded to reports of shots fired near a Home Depot, where there were over 100 people and vehicles, with participants lighting fireworks and obstructing police movement.

                The modern U.S. “takeover” culture began in Oakland, California, in the late 2010’s, growing from earlier sideshow street-racing traditions (“sideshows” differ from takeovers in that they are more organic and lack the organization of takeovers and are usually conducted in parking lots instead of streets that are blocked and taken over). By 2020–2022, takeovers had spread nationwide, fueled by social media and pandemic-era declines in traffic enforcement. Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, and Dallas have all experienced large-scale incidents. Boston and other Massachusetts cities are simply some of the latest places to experience them. Takeovers, unlike sideshows, are coordinated online, often occurring simultaneously across multiple cities, and are designed to “take over” public intersections or highways rather than just parking lots. The modern takeover phenomenon is more likely to involve fireworks, vandalism, and/or assaults on responding police, as well as moving between multiple intersections in one night, and include cars with fake plates or stolen tags. They are also more likely to draw participants from outside the immediate community e.g., two men, Julian Bowers (18) and William Cantwell (19), both from Rhode Island, were arrested in connection with the South End (Boston) event on October 5th.

                Takeovers differ from traditional car meets or drag races in that they involve seizing public roads and intentionally shutting down traffic, often overwhelming police, ambulance and/or fire services until the group disperses. Participants may use vehicles to create barricades around the areas where stunts are performed whilst crowds stand dangerously close to spinning/performing doughnuts/drag-racing cars. Most of the cars used are privately owned rather than stolen. However, police occasionally find stolen “burner cars” e.g., vehicles used temporarily for stunts and later abandoned or torched to destroy evidence. These are more common among repeat offenders and gang-linked participants seeking anonymity. However, many are fake-plated, so as to evade citations or vehicle seizures. Many of the vehicles involved are highly modified sports cars, hatchbacks, or what are termed “drift vehicles”. These events are less about profit and more about visibility with young drivers competing for online/social media attention and dominance in a subculture that prizes risk.

                It is easy to trivialize such one-off events, such as vehicle takeovers as having no long-term risks regarding crime, however this is not the case. When takeovers occur repeatedly, in a locale, without swift consequence, they erode the perceived boundaries between entertainment and crime, leading to a normalization of lawlessness and disorder, within a community e.g., neighborhoods start to view illegal road obstruction, reckless driving, and assaults on police as “part of the weekend scene.”. This fosters a culture of tolerated illegality which is sometimes referred to as the “broken windows progression”, where visible disorder leads to more serious offending. In Los Angeles and Oakland, studies by local police task forces found that intersections repeatedly used for takeovers later became hotspots for robberies, drug sales, and vandalism, as offenders recognized the area’s weak law enforcement presence i.e., from a Routine Activity Theory perspective: a lack of capable guardians. Such events can also lead to criminal cross-pollination and the creation of secondary illegal markets. Those who attend such events who have no previous criminal connections may find themselves interacting with seasoned/experienced offenders who can introduce them to illegal drugs and firearms etc. Often attending performative criminal events see those who have no past history of offending mixing with those that do. In such a highly emotionally charged atmosphere, crime may appear an attractive and romantic activity. Whilst it is easy to recognize the “push” factors that motivate people to offend, it is likewise easy to forget the “pull” factors that draw people towards crime. As these networks overlap, takeovers can also function like pop-up criminal marketplaces: places where illicit goods and stolen vehicles circulate under the cover of noise and crowd anonymity.

                Alongside non-offending individuals interacting with experienced offenders there can also be spatial reputation and economic damage e.g., commercial corridors (for example, in Boston’s South End and LA’s Florence-Crenshaw district) gain reputations as places that are unsafe after dark, deterring customers and investment, with residents experiencing stress, property damage, and a declining trust in local government. This can also see businesses closing earlier or relocating, reducing foot traffic and natural surveillance which in turn reinforces crime concentration in these “dead zones.” Urban criminology refers to this as “reputational decline”: a state when/where visible disorder devalues property and drives away legitimate users of space, leaving it more vulnerable to crime and predation i.e., repeated vehicle takeovers can be the start of “there goes the neighborhood”, and this is another reason why they shouldn’t be looked on as one-off events.