Police and elected officials across Orange County are grappling with tackling street takeovers or sideshows – illegal driving exhibitions that draw large crowds to watch drivers, often in modified cars, do burnouts, drift and race in parking lots and public streets.
Although local officials in Anaheim and Irvine have noted a recent drop in street takeovers, they’re still wrestling with the sideshows and are cracking down on them through a mix of targeting illegally modified cars, air surveillance and monitoring social media.
It’s part of a nationwide issue that has led city council members in cities like Buena Park and Anaheim to crack down on these types of exhibitions in recent years – even passing laws making it illegal to watch street takeovers.
[Read: Another North OC City Tries to Curb Illegal Street Racing By Cracking Down on Spectators]
Kyle Oldoerp, a spokesman for the Irvine Police Department, said street takeovers create unruly situations, damage city streets and impact residents’ quality of life.
“It’s an extremely reckless and dangerous behavior and something that we will not tolerate in Irvine,” Oldoerp said in a phone interview last week.
“If you come to Irvine and you street race or you drive dangerously, you can expect to have your car impounded. You can expect to get tickets, and you can expect the full enforcement of our department.”
Law enforcement leaders in at least two police departments now say the amount of street takeovers happening in their cities are on the decline since the illegal sideshows surged in popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Keith Bogardus, chief assistant District Attorney, said in a Monday email the DA’s office has filed nearly 2,000 cases involving allegations related to reckless driving, street racing and street takeovers since 2022.
“Of those cases, 126 involved street takeovers (on a public street). In 2025, the OCDA filed 10 street takeover cases so far,” Bogardus wrote.
It comes after a countywide taskforce was formed in 2020 by a coalition of local law enforcement agencies to crackdown on illegal street racing and reckless driving amidst new laws at the local and state level aimed at curbing the sideshows.
In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law four bills aimed at addressing street takeovers that include allowing a judge to suspend an offender’s driver license for three to six months and impose employment related driving restrictions.
The new laws also allow cops to impound cars that block roads for illegal street races and get a warrant to impound cars involved in illegal state races and street takeovers.
Oldoerp said street takeovers are becoming rare in Irvine but was unable to readily provide data on how many have occurred annually in the past couple of years.
“We’re seeing less and less people wanting to take those risks,” he said. “We do believe that we have had a decrease in the street takeovers in the city of Irvine. They’re not prevalent.”
Oldoerp added the last street takeover in Irvine was four or five months ago.
He said the police department is aggressively and proactively looking for people with illegally modified cars and exhausts and illegal street racers as well as tracking social media to look for sideshows
Oldoerp adds that the city is testing out a sound detection system called Raven to detect noises from revving engines and screeching tires and the department uses drones to help with enforcement.
“On a daily basis, we’re strictly enforcing loud exhaust, modified emissions, reckless driving, unsafe speed. Because we get a lot of complaints from our community. We get a lot of complaints about loud exhaust racing vehicles,” he said
The Irvine police department spokesman said they’re targeting illegal car modifications as a street takeover prevention.
“Regardless of if we’re having street racing or takeovers, we’re trying to discourage the behavior of illegally modified cars, and we’re trying to discourage the races or the street takeovers from happening in the first place,” Oldorep said.
Irvine isn’t the only city seeing a decrease.
In March, Anaheim residents and leaders got a public update on how exactly police officers are trying to curb, quell and discourage street takeovers from happening in their city and other potential measures they could implement in the future.
“Anaheim gets saddled with a lot of this because we have large major thoroughfares, whether it’s Beach Boulevard, Brookhurst, Anaheim Boulevard, that allows for people to go long distances at high speeds if they want, and or big intersections that they can take over by Angel Stadium,” said Mayor Ashleigh Aitken at the March 25 council meeting.
The update came after a 7-Eleven clerk in West Anaheim was assaulted and robbed by a flash mob in October when police officers were responding to a nearby street takeover.
According to a presentation by the police department, calls about street racing and street takeovers have been decreasing in recent years – dropping from 1,230 calls in 2022 to 878 last year.
There were 35 calls in January of this year related to street racing and sideshows, according to the same presentation.
Anaheim Police Chief Rick Armendariz said even with the decline in exhibitions this is a focus on the department – pointing to recent street takeovers in the city where spectators were injured.
“This is an ongoing challenge that not only is limited to Anaheim, but across the state really, and although we are seeing a reduction in the number of events. It’s still a priority for us,” he said.
Armendariz said that Anaheim police officers monitor traffic cameras, track social media, communicate with other police departments and use license plate readers to intercept takeover events and detain drivers.
They also use a police helicopter to help cops on the ground to stop the “most egregious” offenders and arrest them as well as collect video evidence.
“We feel that one of the biggest deterrents with street takeovers is obviously when we’re able to seize their vehicles and take them off the streets,” said Armendariz at the March 25 meeting.
“Obviously, it really affects the violators directly, and that has been something that we’ve seen has been pretty impactful when it comes to making a dent on this violation.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.