Laguna Beach Police Join County Push to Get Dangerous E-Bikes Off the Streets

The first visitor arrived at Angel Stadium at midnight. By daybreak, a line of residents stretched out of the parking lot, and in just over two hours on Sunday, Sept. 13, they surrendered more than 1,000 e-bikes and e-motorcycles in what officials believe was the first buyback of its kind in the nation.

The Orange County District Attorney's Office organized the "Buy Back Safety" event, modeled on traditional gun buybacks, offering gift cards from $200 for pocket bikes and homemade miniature bikes up to $1,000 for e-motorcycles, with $300, $400 and $600 tiers for class 1, 2 and 3 e-bikes. The first 75 participants also received two Los Angeles Angels tickets. Gift card quantities were limited and first-come, first-served, funded by seized criminal assets, and when the money ran out, dozens were still in line. Some left their bikes behind anyway.

Coast Highway beside the Main Beach lawns, a corridor where police say e-bike complaints have drawn enforcement attention.

Shistorybuff, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Source

"We are destroying these bikes," District Attorney Todd Spitzer announced to cheers. "They're going to be crushed!"

The Laguna Beach Police Department was among the participating agencies, alongside police departments from Anaheim, Brea, Cypress, Fullerton, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Habra, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Orange, Placentia, Seal Beach and Westminster, plus the California Highway Patrol, the California Office of Traffic Safety, fire agencies and trauma surgeons.

The buyback is part of a broader county crackdown. In May, the district attorney's office created an e-bike and e-motorcycle prosecution unit called "Ride Safely," and Spitzer has filed felony charges against parents who allow underage children to ride the high-powered machines illegally. E-bikes and e-motorcycles have become the number one reason Orange County children are admitted to the emergency room, with injuries up 430 percent in the last four years across Southern California. Nationally, patients treated for e-bike injuries jumped more than 1,000 percent between 2020 and 2024, according to a San Jose State University analysis of hospital data.

Electric hire bikes at a docking station; e-bikes of this class are the focus of the county buyback Laguna police have joined.

Sebastiandoe5, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Source

The issue is a live one in Laguna Beach, where police have been running their own education and enforcement campaign on e-bike and e-motorcycle violations on canyon roads and around downtown. The department has led multi-agency traffic operations targeting speeding, loud and modified exhaust, and e-bike violations, mirroring a state-funded operation earlier in the year.

For Laguna Beach parents, the buyback's message was simple: if a high-powered e-bike or e-moto is sitting unused in the garage, surrendering it is safer than letting a teenager take it out. The district attorney's office says more buyback dates are under consideration as the county tracks whether the seizures translate into fewer emergency room visits.