Flashmob Criminality

Bay Area crime tactics.

I have been poking around looking for something I wrote about side shows - a Bay area thing where dozens of vehicles and hundreds of spectators descend for dangerous stunt driving. I can’t find it now, so maybe it was just a Note.

California recently passed Prop 36, which is meant to interdict retail crime. Like the side shows, we have loosely organized gangs that flashmob high end retail, pharmacies, and convenience stores.

This is interesting in the context of peaceful protest …

Attention Conservation Notice:

My days of protest march overwatch are long gone, but I recognize when interesting things are happening in this realm. This is speculation about how things here may escalate. We’re in for a long, hot summer in 2025.

Mobs:

Some mobs are for fun, albeit a very dangerous sort that only appeals to young adults who still believe they are invulnerable.

Example #1, a side show shut down the Bay Bridge. The big issue here is that the police are not going to confront something like this - six single officer police cars can’t do a thing about a crowd three hundred rowdy predominantly male participants. Trying to make an arrest in a situation like this could easily lead to the responding units getting mobbed. The solution here is traffic cams, careful investigations, and for this one they seized two dozen vehicles a month after it happened.

Side shows are a nuisance, example #2 are the smash and grab mob thefts - Prop 36 passed to put an end to this problem. Decriminalizing works for people who want to recover from drug problems, but it emboldened those who organize trouble. Here’s one of the first prosecutions using the new law.

Here are examples of what Walgreens stores face.

Example #3 are the “crash and grab” burglaries. Vehicles are used to swiftly provide access. The gas station thefts are often small crews focused on grabbing the store’s safe.

The other targets are sometimes “verticals” - electronics and jewelry stores are popular.

Radicalization:

The young men who do these things are in it for excitement, or there’s a drug use/traffic angle, while the small crews are working criminals. The far end of this spectrum is scary - Iran hiring Hell’s Angels to attack dissidents in the west.

If the U.S. were stable, these boys would be classified somewhere between thrill seekers and thugs. When the U.S. becomes unstable they are irregulars that can be tasked with politically motivated activity that matches their existing skills.

Like everything else, this too is a spectrum. No matter how noble the origin story of an insurgency, they will always devolve into clusters of crime rings, even if they meet their political goals. If you want to know more about macro scale behavior of such things, National Defense University’s Convergence is a good read, and David H. Ucko’s The Insurgent’s Dilemma focuses further up the food chain.

Conclusion:

A month ago in Your Personal Rubicon, I noted that one of my red lines got crossed late last year, a bit of much deserved violence in response to relentless bad behavior. The parties involved were not the sort of people who’d file charges, they work things out on their own. I laughed a bit upon hearing of this “find out” event, but it was a red line for me, one that I set long ago. This is … historic. I escaped my twenties in one piece and I have no desire to repeat those experiences.

There are … networks of networks, all sorts of groups involved, all sorts of motivations. One of the things we face constantly is the dividing line between mil/intel and law enforcement. Agencies like the CIA and the SOF component of our military understand the value of aggressive partisan groups that are willing to make mutually beneficial arrangements.

U.S. law enforcement in the form of DHS/FBI, on the other hand, are a uniquely toxic source of fail. Mike German’s Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide is an excellent read on how an existing problem got so much worse after 911. The thing I foresee is that their business as usual is going to backfire; the practice of framing dumbasses and elevating psychopaths that have been turned works when things are, generally speaking, quiet. We are entering a period of intense disquiet, with a weakened, discredited central power.

When fights break out, people pick up whatever is handy as a weapon. The same principle applies here.