On Sunday, at about 11:30 p.m., the San Francisco Police Department received an alert that a massive sideshow was going down at Third and King streets, right next to Oracle Park.
When officers arrived, they noticed the action had moved north along the Embarcadero to an area near Pier 30. What happened next is a look into the law enforcement’s ever-changing strategy to bust drivers who block off the city’s streets to stunt and burn rubber, all under the cover of darkness.
Parts of SFPD’s response were caught on camera by drivers at the scene. One video, from a Bay Area car enthusiast who posts on Instagram and YouTube as “GooferVlogs,” shows SFPD officers waiting outside of the Pier 30 parking lot (adjacent Red’s Java House) and shutting the gate, blocking in the hundreds of drivers who had assembled in the lot.
(Gazetteer SF reached out to GooferVlogs for more information, but did not receive a response. Their Instagram page was deleted a day after this reporter reached out on the platform, but the YouTube channel remains.)
A longer unattributed video posted on X shows an SFPD sergeant addressing a crowd of drivers by that closed gate, emphasizing that they need to check each car one by one before releasing them, and that any attempts to run from police will be forcibly shut down.
“If you have anything illegal in your car, any guns, anything like that, you might wanna get rid of your shit,” he says. “Line your cars up. The gates will open. You won’t be able to go anywhere — you’re going to have patrol cars on your left, and patrol cars on your right. There are gonna be spikes lined up. If you take off, guess what? Your tires are going to get flattened.”
The sergeant states that officers will be checking license plates and matching them to the VIN, or vehicular identification number, on the cars to ensure none of them are stolen.
“If everything matches up, guess what y’all get to do? Y’all get to bounce,” he continues in the video. “Don’t come back. Every time, we’re going to do the same thing.”
More than 200 vehicles were involved in the Sunday gathering, SFPD spokesperson Paulina Henderson told Gazetteer.
“Officers made several announcements for subjects to disperse, however, many refused to comply with the orders. Officers developed a plan and successfully flushed the vehicles from the Pier after detaining each vehicle to conduct a records check,” Henderson said in an email.
Henderson did not detail how said “plan” was designed or how the cars were corralled at the Pier 30 lot, but noted that SFPD is still “actively investigating” the incident. Nobody was detained during the enforcement, and just one car was impounded, according to the department.
Sideshow busts by Bay Area law enforcement result in a range of outcomes. One action last week had Oakland police and California Highway Patrol towing 50 cars at a sideshow. Other times, officers use surveillance footage to track down cars that were involved and detain suspects, weeks after the event happened. City officials have also approved policies to make it easier to punish not just sideshow organizers and participants, but spectators, too.
In comparison, the bust of this week’s gathering at Pier 30 appears to lean on more of a “catch-and-release” tactic intended to discourage future activity rather than to snare as many potential participants as possible in one fell swoop.
