Fed-up residents are setting electric scooters on fire, smearing them with poop and burying them at sea
LOS ANGELES - They've been crammed into toilets, tossed off balconies and set on fire. They've even been adorned with dangling bags of dog droppings.
As cities from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills struggle to control a rapid proliferation of electric pay-per-mile scooters, some residents are taking matters into their own hands and waging a guerrilla war against the devices. These vandals are destroying or desecrating the vehicles in disturbingly imaginative ways, and celebrating their illegal deeds on social media - in full view of authorities and the public.
"They throw them everywhere: in the ocean, in the sand, in the trash can," said Robert Johnson Bey, a Venice Beach maintenance worker who regularly comes across scooter parts on the Venice Beach boardwalk, Speedway and adjoining alleys.
"Sunday I was finding kickstands everywhere," Bey said. "Looked like they were snapped off."
The vandalism echoes a rash of pellet-gun attacks on so-called Google buses in the Bay Area and appears to be motivated in part
