Street takeovers and their close relative Teen takeovers have turned American streets into lawless playgrounds from Chicago to Atlanta.
A resurfaced video out of Georgia shows exactly how to end one.
What that trooper did to the driver in ten seconds is going viral for a reason.
The Ten Seconds Everyone Is Watching
The footage is from a 2023 incident in Atlanta, but it started recirculating this week and it is easy to see why.
A black Ford F-150 was tearing donuts through the intersection of 17th Street and Northside Drive on a Sunday evening while a crowd blocked traffic and cheered the driver on.
A Georgia State Patrol trooper did not wait for backup. He did not wait for a supervisor's approval. He drove straight into the truck with a PIT maneuver and ended the show on the spot.
His patrol car wedged against the driver's door.
He jumped out, drew his weapon, and climbed onto the hood.
Then he reached through the window and pulled the driver out by force.
Pinned to the hood. Cuffed. Done. The entire sequence took seconds, not minutes.
No committee meeting. No press release apologizing for "trauma-informed" language. Just a cop doing the job cops used to be allowed to do everywhere in this country.
https://x.com/TheOfficerTatum/status/2085417741721165870“>https://x.com/TheOfficerTatum/status/2085417741721165870
The driver was charged with fleeing and eluding, reckless driving, hit-and-run, and serious injury by vehicle after striking pedestrians during his getaway attempt.
That is more than an apology owes – that is jail time, a repair bill for a wrecked patrol car, and restitution to the people he ran down in that intersection.
Freaknik Never Really Died, It Just Got A New App
Teen takeovers are not some brand-new mystery nobody saw coming.
Atlanta lived through this once already with Freaknik in the 1990s, when roughly 2,000 criminal incidents piled up every year until police finally crushed it by 1999.
The pattern came back with flash mobs and "wilding" incidents in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and New York back in 2010 and 2011.
Now it has returned again, this time organized on social media instead of pagers, and it has spread to Detroit, Milwaukee, Houston, Charlotte, and beach towns from coast to coast.
Academics keep offering excuses – pandemic loneliness, poverty, "lack of designated teen spaces." None of it survives contact with reality when the kids showing up have smartphones filming the whole thing and food in their stomachs.
A Detroit police oversight board member said it plainly – up to 95 percent of the young people he mentors have no father at home.
That is the real root cause academics refuse to say out loud, because it does not fit their preferred narrative about systemic oppression.
De-Policing Built This Problem, Real Policing Solves It
Formal adjudications for violent juvenile offenses fell 67 percent between 2008 and 2021 in the population researchers tracked most closely, not because kids got better behaved, but because prosecutors and school administrators stopped holding anyone accountable.
Cities like Chicago quietly told officers to back off after years of being demonized for doing their jobs, and criminals noticed instantly.
Some jurisdictions are finally waking up – Volusia County doubled traffic fines, started impounding vehicles, and now sues online promoters for the cost of policing their stunts.
Other cities, run by Democrats who still think a "summer safety plan" full of healing circles beats handcuffs, keep getting the exact results you would expect – more takeovers, more chaos, more viral videos of terrified drivers trapped in their own cars.
That Georgia trooper did not need a task force or a grant-funded outreach coordinator.
He needed a PIT maneuver, a set of handcuffs, and the freedom to actually use both without a city council member calling him a threat to public safety the next morning.
That is what real deterrence looks like, and it is exactly what every city drowning in teen takeovers refuses to try.
Sources:
- Teri Christoph, "More of This, Please: Viral Video Shows Hero Cop Absolutely Wrecking One 'Teen Takeover' Punk," RedState, August 7, 2026.
- Fox 5 Atlanta Staff, "WATCH: Georgia trooper arrests truck driver doing donuts in Atlanta intersection," Fox 5 Atlanta, August 22, 2023.
- Police1 Staff, "Watch: Wild video shows Ga. troopers pursue driver doing donuts in busy intersection," Police1, 2023.
- City Journal Staff, "The Scourge of Teen Takeovers," City Journal, 2026.
