Flash mobs have been a menace for more than a decade, and it is time that law enforcement cracked down on them.

They’re no longer the cute social media phenomenon that used to appear in the early days of Internet video, when a crowd of strangers would magically appear in a public space to perform a dance and have a good time.

The same technology, and the same tactics, can be used to call upon crowds of young people to invade a neighborhood or even to loot a commercial district.

The involvement of large numbers of people often gives individual participants cover. Police can only arrest or identify a small proportion of the perpetrators. And by then, the damage is done.

We saw the devastation over the Fourth of July weekend in Newport Beach. The streets by the strand can often be a little loud and rowdy on holiday weekends, but nothing had prepared the beach community for the chaos that erupted when crowds went wild.

The sand — normally a broad expanse — was completely overrun, so much so that police on horseback had to restore order.

And a mob invaded a local grocery store, looting the goods and leaving an absolute mess in its wake.

Police reported that almost half of those arrested were visiting from Arizona. But they may have simply been the unlucky few who didn’t know where to run when law enforcement finally began to restore order.

Terrified residents were forced to shelter in place on what should have been the happiest night of the year — the happiest night in 250 years of American independence.

Rumors flew throughout a community bewildered by the upheaval. Some heard that members of the mob were paid to show up. If so, those financial transactions must be tracked to their source.

This is not a problem isolated to Newport Beach. It has appeared throughout the country, and especially in California.

Flash mobs have looted malls across the state, and launched a spate of mass looting in Union Square at the end of the pandemic that nearly killed the retail industry there.

Flash mobs also targeted high-end malls in the East Bay and across Southern California.

And of course there were the flash mobs of the Black Lives Matter riots, which used legitimate protests as cover for mayhem.

Whatever resources would help — technology, drones, informants — we need to stop the flash mobs now.

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