Today, Explained - Who's afraid of teen takeovers?

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Teenagers are taking over pockets of American cities and local governments are struggling to deal with them. We set out in search of solutions. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. An AI-generated flyer saying “Link up at U Street” advertising a teen takeover in Washington, DC. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, today explained Sean Ramos for him here in Washington, D.C., where the biggest story over the weekend was the guy with the gun at the dinner with the president. Big crime. And we're going to talk more about that on the show tomorrow. But on the show today, we're going to talk about smaller crimes here in Washington. Have you heard about the teen takeovers? A ton of teenagers get together in a corner of the city on, say, a Saturday night. And there's good times, but also, inevitably, there's shenanigans. Police say nearly 200 young people were involved Saturday night. Two robberies were reported. Someone fired off gunshots in the air. If some of these kids need to spend a night or two in jail in order to feel that their repercussions to their actions, then so be it. It's not just a DC thing, though. Teen takeovers have been happening in Detroit, Chicago, Jacksonville, Los Angeles. So on the show today, we're going to ask what's to be done when summer's around the corner and the kids just want to have fun, but also there's some petty larceny and property damage.

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I don't know. Jenny Gathright is a Washington Post reporter who writes about the nation's capital. We asked her how exactly a team takeover happens in the first place. They're planned on social media. mostly Instagram is what I'm told and what we see flyers on Instagram. Flyers?

Yeah, they're flyers on Instagram. You know, sometimes there will be like join this group chat for the location or location will be posted later. Large Instagram DM chains. So that's a lot of how this is organized. And, you know, there are some young people in the area who kind of fashion themselves up-and-coming promoters because of the way they're able to attract large crowds to their gatherings.

All right, I'm pulling up one of these ads right now. I'm very excited to see what it looks like. Because, like, what are the advertising? Okay, so it looks first and foremost. It looks like it was made using AI. Okay, this first one I'm looking at says link up at U Street. There's like fire, cartoony fire in the top left and right corners and then an image of U Street but also cartoony.

5 p.m. till whenever pull up and be hype 100. Find your age link with the crew and get turned up music emoji dance vibe and shake some ass good energy only if you ain't coming to turn up stay home. Okay, this doesn't necessarily sound chaotic or like, I don't know, illegal. But what happens at these takeovers that's troubling cities like DC so much? So what's brought the trouble for local officials like the mayor, the police chief, the D.C. Council is that in some cases, the takeovers have ended in some kind of violence. Before you knew it, there was 20 national guards and a lot of MPD and Metro Police that were out, kind of pushing them to one way or kids were running one direction or another. Make no mistake, these teen takeovers are dangerous, they are violent, And they end up in fighting, assaults, robberies, businesses are impacted.

By the time they get into a large group at the Navy Yard or someplace else, there's already danger. There is no law against loitering. There is no law against congregating in different areas. The piece that I have to focus on is the violent behavior. There are some robberies, either young people robbing other young people who are around or stealing from cars. There was one case in March where one of the so-called takeovers ended in gunfire. No one was hit, but a teenager was arrested for firing shots. And so that is really what has brought up a lot of the concern for people like the mayor, the police chief, and the officials who are responsible for public safety in the city.

The government can do its part. The police can do its part. Community can do its part. And families have to do their part to keep their young people safe and engaged. So you went to one. Did you get the sense there that people were coming to wreak havoc? Or did you get the sense that, you know, when you put this many teenagers together in one place, there's bound to be some shenanigans or something in between or what?

Maybe it's something in between. I mean, it's hard to say, right? Because teens are not a monolith. And so, you know, I spoke to young people who were just older teens, 18, 19, who had come to the, so-called takeover and who had been to several. And they said, you know, they were not there for drama. They were not there to try to cause violence. They were genuinely there to try to meet other people their age and have a good time.

We're all people who get together like this because you got the clubs 21-up, man. You know what I'm saying? The adults can go out and have fun on the weekends and enjoy themselves. So what we do is we actually get everybody to come together or try to get everybody to come together and enjoy themselves. You know what I'm saying? Have a little fun. Get outside. You know what I'm saying?

Basically, you get a new. community. Long story short, like you create new bonds with new people, like the person I was just with. I ain't know him at first, but now we, that's like my brother. So it's like, you can't just be on your phone making new friends or thinking you're making friends with people your age, whole time it could be somebody older. This way we connect them with each other in person without no screens. Like, we having fun, having them less. You know, they described some of the violence as unacceptable, but in some cases maybe inevitable when you have such a large group of people that maybe there will be a few who will act up or some people who come with some kind of

intent to cause trouble. Trauma everywhere, you know what I'm saying? You can't avoid the drama. The best way to do is stay out of trouble, you know what I'm saying? A lot of people don't like a lot of people. Regardless where there is, there's always going to be some type of drama, some type of conflict. Try to trust in the young people to try to handle it a certain way because it has been a couple

of takeovers where there was violence or about to be violence and it was stopped in its tracks. Which makes it a complex issue to deal with from the city's standpoint, right? Because kids want to get together on the weekend since, I don't know, the dawn of time. But if you put a lot of kids together on the weekend, something might happen. How is the city responding? Yeah, so the city has responded in a few ways. One of the major and most publicized responses has been this curfew policy. And so what we saw that was very successful when we implemented the curfew,

over the last year was that parents got the message. It's a tool for parents, too. The parents can say, you can't go there because there's a curfew. The city at the urging of Mayor Bowser and a couple council members has put in place a policy where young people under the age of 18 are forbidden from gathering in groups of more than eight in certain designated places that the police chief can choose and set a temporary, more intense curfew zone in advance of what they see as a plan. takeover, right? So if the police chief sees one of these flyers and gets the sense that

young people are slated to gather in Navy Yard, they will often declare a special curfew zone in Navy Yard that forbids teens from gathering in groups and gives police the ability to disperse them if it, you know, the clock hits eight and there are more than eight young people in that space. Does the curfew actually work? Because when I speak to teenagers in my neighborhood about this curfew, most of them say they're just going to violate it. Yeah, I mean, it's been really challenging to measure. I'm not sure that I have a way of measuring what would have happened if not for the curfew. The curfew, I'm not going to lie.

There's no point of having the curfew for real for them because they're going to stay out here anyway. Like, honestly, us being at Banderker, we won't even want to stay alone. 8 o'clock. Everybody was leaving. But now since the police here and interacting with certain kids and doing and saying certain stuff, it's making it more like, now we are going to stay, now we are going to do this. The mayor and the police sheep insists that it's been a useful tool and say that these gatherings would get more out of hand if they weren't able to disperse them earlier in the night or break them up. But there are some curfew detractors who argue that it kind of has created this tense space in Navy Yard around the curfew where young people repeatedly return.

There's also something else going on here, right, to address this teen takeover thing. It isn't just curfew and more law enforcement and strict apology. It's also like, let's give them something else to do. Yeah. So one thing that D.C.'s government has done is the Department of Parks and Recreation has been throwing, and they've been doing this for a little while. I mean, they did a lot of this last summer as well with a series called Late Night Hype, where they kept the public pools open later and allowed teams to hang out there.

Were there flyers? They did make flyers for Late Night Hype. Actually, it was called Late Night Drip at the pools. That's what it was called Late Night Drip, yes. I mean, I think it was a. a smart name. And then they had teen spring jams on the weekends that bookended spring break where at rec centers they hosted events with music, dancing, games, sports. And they actually said across two weekends, 6,000 teens attended the events. And, you know, a lot of people gave them a lot

of praise for those events. I mean, there were some fights outside the events on the outskirts that, led to some headlines about arrests of young people. There was definitely some issues surrounding them, but there was a lot of positive feedback from the teens who attended the events, and also from a lot of youth advocates who've been really critical of the city's curfew, but who pointed to the events as something good the city was doing to kind of create that space that teens had been asking for, which was basically a later night option

where they could be around a lot of other people at their age. and also feel safe. This feels like something that really gets at people's, like, core philosophies about criminal justice, about adolescents. I've seen people sharing videos of these teen takeovers in Navy Yard in D.C. And saying stuff like... Wow, such an impossible issue to deal with. What's the city going to do?

And then someone will, like, respond. I know what they can do. Don't every one of these kids in jail. It ends up feeling much bigger than D.C. It feels like a sort of philosophical question about what to do about kids wild and out. Yeah, I mean, I think it cuts across a lot of different issues that get at people's emotions. It gets at issues of public space, issues of race, issues of class, issues of sort of who has the right to occupy space in a city, and also issues about, you know, policing the role of police in a city and the role of police with, young people, and then also public safety and fear. I mean, a lot of what's motivating the mayor here is that she's worried that something really bad might happen at one of these.

And of course, if something bad happened at one of these, people would be looking at her. Like, should you have done more? Another thing that occurs to me is that all the teen takeovers that have been happening this spring in D.C., we're happening in the spring, but we're like a month away from all these kids having nothing to do all day. Well, the mayor would push back strongly. It's nothing to do all day. I mean, her Department of Parks and Recreation has been advertising its slate of events and, you know, all that they're doing with programming. But yes, we are headed towards summer, which is, again, part of what's animating the debate and the tension around this. And, you know, some of the calls for, you know, more coordination and actual conversation about kind of what should be done next and how people, teens, adults, parents, government officials, business owners. can all kind of get on the same page about what's the right approach here. And no clear answers yet.

No clear answers yet. We're going to try and get some clarity when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Upwork. Starting a business takes a lot of hard work. And there's no romance in doing it all by yourself, says Upwork. Wow, fast-growing businesses aren't doing more. They're delegating smarter. Smart delegation starts and ends with Upwork.

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Explain D. When I see these videos of these teen takeovers, which aren't happening terribly far from where I live in Washington, D.C., I'm kind of thinking like, okay, this does look a little hectic. It does feel kind of new because so many of these kids are streaming it from the takeover. Some of these kids are there because of social media. but then I also think this kind of feels like Westside story, the original. Hey, you, give me one good reason for not dragging you down the station house.

Or the Steven Spielberg remake. We ain't no delinquents. We're misunderstood. We asked Thaddeus Johnson what he makes of them. He's a former cop and a professor of criminal justice at Georgia State University. So, you know, I think about, first of all, I think about, you know, my best, Grandma, right, nothing's new under the sun, right? Things may take different versions. They may have different mechanisms or what have you, but it's pretty much unprinciable, very similar.

And, you know, and I think, you know, when it comes to juvenile crime, think about terms like super offenders. They are not just games of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators, no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heal. There's a moral panic for some reason. around juveniles. I came out to walk the neighborhood just to see what was going on. And they are hiding in the bushes barking at me. They're being kids.

They are doing crossing the street by my goddamn dog. These little pieces of shit. And whether people want to say is racialized or ageism involved, when you have a group of unsupervised kids who are being unruly, you think about juvenile crime, is something that's a little bit more shocking to the system. So I think, you know, many times, you know, juvenile-involved crime is actually, we're a little bit more fearful of that because they're so much more risk-taking. They're so much more impulsive.

They think it's not fully developed. They can be a little bit more thanches because their rationale is different. I think there has been a long-time fear of juvenile offenders and crime in general that, you know, we shouldn't minimize or either sensational violence. And, of course, because these are minors, cities law enforcement can deal with them in a specific way, a specific tool they have, which they wouldn't have if these were adults, which is curfew laws. Do curfews work? Let me say, you know, oftentimes, and I have to keep a balanced perspective,

oftentimes when I see people just immediately go on to curfews and not just curfews, but any other reaction to everything we see from our leaders and DC and all over, you know, some could say that perhaps that's lazy governments of taking the easy, the way out when it comes to governing these things, right, and not doing the harder work. But think about it. Part of the thing as the mayor is maintaining order, right? And so perhaps, even though we don't see that it reduces crime, right? Perhaps that we see because the fact that it doesn't have any long-term effects on keeping juveniles or community safe, right? There's a real strong evidence that's showing that. But if you kind of read the T-lees, you think about if I'm a citizen

And I saw what happened in the Navy yard, right? As a mayor, I cannot afford to do nothing. So I can see it as a temporary, almost as a symbolic way of governing, maintaining order, but we shouldn't lean into it and rely on it. So with juveniles, the best thing is prevention, right? And we can't expect that we're going to have 100% effectiveness in reforms or things that we do. It's also a suite of things and not one thing. So, mind you, juvenile crime is a small portion of all over all kinds.

right? So we can't afford to throw every resource and means at it. And it's also unfair to ask police to police us out of this, right? Just as like it's unfair to also throw it all on the parents, right? You know, these kids are our kids. And so first of all, I will work through trying to change their thinking. So you need to have things like the Safe Passage program, which in some of our preliminary work, we found that it works. When it comes to Safe Passage, we want to make sure that those kids that are 18 years and under get to and from school in a safe manner. We have identified target hotspots in the community where a lot of the kids seem to conjugate and get into disputes. So we strategically place workers there to help motivate the kids to go home safely,

make sure they get on the buses, make sure that they don't have any disputes or fights at the bus stops in those local hotspots. We're going to speak to them. We're going to make sure they are right. You want to make sure that they well-being is paramount to them getting home. What we found is that it shows that it appears to keep juvenile safer, particularly we know that juvenile crime doesn't happen in their whole neighborhoods. And so first of all, we have to stop treating it like it's just a home community thing or where they live. It's about where they go.

It's also providing activities for them and not things like midnight basketball because there's selection effect. The kids that were not going to get in trouble anyway are going to be the kids going to be a midnight basketball. The troublemakers are going to come there in that trouble or go somewhere else. So we can't just lean on it, but things like jobs. It may be expanding juvenile jobs beyond the summer, right? This is a capitalistic society.

And it really sucks not to have an economic identity. You have to help them get on a path in that way and treat them like people, but also understand that you all are still developing and need guidance. And so we have to make sure that we provide a village around these kids. And you have carrots and sticks. Hold them accountable, but also give them a path out. And we just can't view this as a parent problem. Because they're treated as Athenotomy and you're a bad parent or you don't care.

You're probably struggling too. And so it's our responsibility to kind of help fill in those gaps. So enforce where enforcement needs to be at, but don't throw away the key. Let's find the beauty and salvaging lives and not destroying them. Okay, so concepts like prevention, mediation, alternatives, activities, we've heard all of this, you know, coming out of COVID when kids were whaling out. We've heard about it earlier in the show in terms of what D.C. is trying to do. What is it about this cocktail? that works versus doesn't work? Because it sounds like stuff that is done, and yet here we have these teen takeovers and cities like D.C. seem a little paralyzed when it comes to solving it. Well, you have to kind of forecast.

I mean, you stay in a reaction mode, right? And you have to also be realistic. Like, so having those events, I think y'all had a few weekends ago out for the takeover, they had like this family-friendly event somewhere. Eight juveniles were arrested last night after several fights broke out. But picture this.

All of the chaos happened at the same time. An event meant to provide a safe space for young people was underway. Crowds of kids waiting to get in, but several times, fights broke out. Some teens wearing masks and hoodies jumped the gates and started fighting. And so one, we have to be realistic. And what is the realistic reduction in crime? or what is the amount of crime that we expect as a benchmark before we can start considering whether we go.

So we have to have some real issues. But it also, I mean, conversations, but also it has to be coordinated. But enforcement, accountability, opportunity, supports centering the schools, centering the communities and the families, you know, the research shows and that stuff works. And it can't be one shot in the dark.

You got to be ready for five, 10, 15, 20, 30 years to make that investment. It's not just, you know, because soon as you stop making that investment, we're going to see things perhaps start to backslide. So we have to, as a community, make sure that we're willing to invest the money. Does that mean increasing property taxes? I don't know wherever you're at, but we have to have hard decisions about how we can make long-term sustainable investments and not be interrupted by political appetite and things like that. Do you think there's an issue here where, like, if you're a kid scrolling Instagram and seeing, you know, a flyer for a teen take over, or, and it's next to a flyer for some city organized, I don't know, dance event, whatever it might be,

that the teen takeover just looks more fun. Like, the kinds of events and alternatives provided by a city are never going to look as good as the opportunity to get wild with your friends in a park? No, I mean, you know, if you, no, this is even, I think, you know, some of the school surveys done in D.C. carbon a edge there, well, they were talking to students, right? And why are you all not engaged in after-school program? Quote, it's whack. It's not good, it's not engaging, and they don't expect that you're gonna turn up at these events.

But what isn't there for me, right? What, and this is not just some adults telling me what I want. So we have to find a way to give juvenile leaders, develop juvenile leaders, representatives, you know how we have representatives in every ANC and DC, those commissioners, we can't do the same thing for juveniles because we have to involve them. So anything that does not involve them that their peers don't endorse and sign off on, we've already lost.

There's a bunch of old folks, church folks, or whatever else, and we can do some vacation Bible school and some dunk in the teacher in the water. That's not going to fly. And perhaps we should not leave the parents out of the conversation instead of pointing fingers and blaming them, support them and help them get involved in and provide them that we got you back. and it's not us versus you. So a lot of this is symbolic as well as evidence-based as well, too. Thaddeus Johnson is a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice.

Earlier in the show, you heard from Jenny Gathright from Wapo. Hadi-Mawaddi is a producer today, explain he made today's show along with Amina Alsathe, Gabriel Donatab and David Tattashore. Thanks for listening.