I had just left dinner with friends in northern Washington, D.C., last Friday. After we said goodbye, I started walking alone through Le Droit Park toward the nearest metro station. Within minutes, the sirens started. Several police cars appeared almost immediately — and almost as quickly, the street was filled as black teenagers flooded in from several directions at once. Some walked, others sprinted, and teens carrying blaring speakers took over the street. Hundreds of teens packed the roadway. I asked a few of the kids running past what was happening. They yelled obscenities at me and kept going. Soon I realized that I had found myself in the middle of a “Teen Takeover,” the social media trend that that goes viral for the wrong reason every few weeks. It’s this generation’s version of a flash mob, and this version almost always ends in violence. Just earlier this year, a “Teen Takeover” in D.C. took over the internet with footage of numerous teens trashing a Chipotle, throwing metal chairs across the restaurant.  I moved to the edge of one of the groups and walked with them. An 18-year-old girl named Mekala told me the event was coordinated by “DPR.” I asked what the letters stood for and she didn’t know, only that “DPR” puts these events together for teens to “come out and have fun.” She said the organizers reach the kids through Instagram. It turns out DPR is the District of Columbia’s Department of Parks and Recreation. The teens I spoke to that night said they were there for the government-organized event. Its Instagram account identifies it as a government organization that organizes “fun programs and events.” One of those events, according to the department’s website, is called Late Night Hype. It’s a program it created in 2021 to give teens and young adults “safe, high-energy spaces to connect after hours.” The government office had planned a Late Night Hype event at the Banneker Rec Center Fields just north of Le Droit Park, according to its online schedule of events. Attendees knew what was coming. A young Muslim man in a keffiyeh named Janar joined us as we walked. I asked him what the kids usually do at these DPR events. He answered without softening it: “All these n*gg*s out here are wildin’.” He described how the teens rob each other and take each other’s shoes and clothes. Mekala said that at most of these events the teens “go overboard” and take it to “the next level.” When I asked what that looked like, Janar said, “You gonna see.” We moved through alleys, dodging police cars and leaving spots fast because fights kept starting. Mekala said DPR calls these “late night hype” events for teens and families to hang out and have good fun. The signs, she said, are made on the spot to get “experience with graffiti.” As both Mekala and Janar warned, fights broke out. I moved closer to one of the fights to record it. As I approached to get footage, everyone was running the other way. Seconds later, I witnessed a masked teenager fire off a gunshot. I stopped for a second. The masked ones ran and the rest of the crowd continued faster with them. I had gotten Mekala’s phone number and was able to reconnect. “This is why we can’t have fun because they want to act a fool,” she told me. Mekala told me the area was under a youth curfew. No one cared. She said these kids “target other people.” Then she said something more direct. She has watched, on multiple occasions at these same events, kids shooting at each other or jumping kids. She said it was commonplace. I asked several teenagers in ski masks why they covered their faces. One said, “I can’t say too much.” Another said, “They gonna lock us up.”  A witness near me claimed the police had “shot people,” which almost certainly didn’t happen. What happened was pepper balls after the gunfire and after more fights started inside the running crowd. The teenagers stampeded in short bursts with no clear provocation, even with National Guard standing in view, and they kept doing it. I asked an officer for comment. She said she could not give details but confirmed an investigation into the discharge of a weapon was open and that numerous shots had been fired. I told her I had a video of one of the shots. She told me to submit it through their information page so I could be listed as a witness. At that moment, they had no other footage of the shots. While I spoke, other officers dealt with teenagers yelling obscenities at them and stretched caution tape to protect the crime scene. I gave authorities my statement and left. On the way out, I watched officers arrest the person I had seen fire the first shot. No further official information has been released.  What the Department of Parks and Recreation frames under the guise of an opportunity for teenagers to gather and have fun instead fosters a place for teens to commit crimes. They all knew what was going to happen.  This was not an isolated night. As Heather Mac Donald has written in The Daily Wire, the same trend is popping up from Chicago to Florida, and repeated outbreaks inside Washington itself. Large groups of urban teenagers, often coordinated online, take over public space and the mass violence follows with enough regularity that participants treat it as expected. According to the teenagers who attend these events regularly, the violence happens at nearly every single one. I wonder what they would say to the children who have been murdered by others at these takeovers, whose behavior they condone.  There are Late Night Hype events planned for the next three Fridays this summer. The Department of Parks and Recreation did not respond to a request for comment.