Portland police remain overwhelmed by illegal street takeovers, despite new laws that target participants and aid efforts to stop them, the Police Bureau said.
The bureau has seen a “dramatic increase” in street takeovers since the COVID-19 pandemic, said Lt. Chadd Stensgaard, who oversees Portland Police Bureau missions against the events.
Late-night street takeovers in Portland, with cars racing each other and doing donuts and other stunts, can range in size, Stensgaard said. Small ones draw crowds of 50 to 100 people; large events have hundreds of cars participating and upwards of 1,000 spectators. The Police Bureau documented 139 street-takeover events in the city last year, he said.
Regardless of size, they are all dangerous, Stensgaard added.
In recent months, people have been hit by cars doing donuts in the middle of an intersection, and crowds of onlookers have blocked roads when emergency vehicles needed to get through. Many of the participants and spectators carry guns, Stensgaard said.
A 20-year-old Vancouver man was shot to death at a 2022 street takeover in Northeast Portland.
“And yet, people still turn out; they still want to participate,” Stensgaard said. “It’s a culture.”
A multi-day Police Bureau mission in April targeting street takeovers across the city netted a dozen arrests and 33 cars towed, police said at the time. As many as 1,000 observers had gathered to watch one of them, Stensgaard said. In the middle of a stunt, a driver hit spectators with the car, causing what police believed could be life-threatening injuries to one person.
“After striking at least three people, the suspect driver left the scene, but returned later to continue sliding,” the bureau said at the time.
Although he hasn’t tallied the total number of street takeovers in the city so far this year, Stensgaard said they “pop up almost every weekend.”
State data indicate there will be far more more street-takeover and street-racing violations this year than in 2023.
So far in 2024, 19 people have been charged in Multnomah County with misdemeanors under a Portland ordinance banning unlawful street takeovers, compared to nine people charged under the law in all of 2023, according to a newsroom analysis of Oregon Judicial Department data. And police so far have issued 62 traffic tickets under a state law banning street racing this year, compared to 71 such tickets all of last year.
Social media is the main driver of street takeovers, Stensgaard said.
“Every one of these people that is out participating -- in some way, shape or form -- is doing it for social-media likes,” Stensgaard said. “It’s a business.”
Police face several challenges in shutting down this business. The bureau usually doesn’t know about a street takeover until it happens. Once they find out about an event, Stensgaard and several sergeants launch a street-takeover mission.
The goal, of course, is to end the takeover and arrest participants. But low staffing levels at the bureau make it difficult to effectively tackle large events.
Since a law Gov. Tina Kotek signed last year went into effect in September, police have been able to confiscate street-takeover participants’ cars. Street racing now is punishable by up to 364 days in jail. While observing street takeover events isn’t strictly illegal, spectators who interfere with officers’ work can end up arrested, as well as drivers who use their cars to obstruct a road so that participants can do their tricks.
The core issue behind the events’ continued popularity is that the street-takeover culture is driven at least in part by a desire to defy authority — and brag about it on social media. The more that participants boldly contravene the law — and avoid getting arrested — the more “likes” they get, Stensgaard said.
Tracking participants down is hard, because drivers take off their license plates, and the people police corral usually refuse to share any information about other participants, said Stensgaard, who compared the ethos to the one expressed in the cult movie “Fight Club”: The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.
“They’re growing more bold by the day, where these guys are doing burnouts, cookies in an intersection, and they’ll actually drift off into the crowd and hit people,” Stensgaard said. “People continue to watch. Even though it’s such a dangerous event.”
— Fedor Zarkhin is a breaking news and enterprise reporter with a focus on crime. Reach him at 971-373-2905; fzarkhin@oregonian.