State task force members cite training gaps, staffing shortages and a reluctance to acknowledge gang problems — raising questions about why North Carolina lacks mandatory gang intelligence reporting requirements
When North Carolina law enforcement officials gathered last week to discuss gang prevention and intelligence sharing, one of the most striking admissions was not about gangs themselves. It was about paperwork. Or rather, the lack of it.
Throughout the June 23 meeting of the North Carolina Gang Prevention and Intervention Task Force’s Enforcement: Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Work Group, officials repeatedly returned to a fundamental problem: many gang encounters are never formally documented.
That raises a larger question for policymakers, taxpayers and communities: If intelligence gathering is one of law enforcement’s primary tools for preventing violent crime, why isn’t North Carolina requiring agencies to document gang-related contacts consistently?
The answer, according to officials participating in the task force subcommittee discussion, appears to be a combination of culture, training, technology, and politics.
Sanford Police Department Detective Nate Snyder described how local officers frequently encounter individuals suspected of gang involvement but fail to document those interactions unless an arrest or reportable crime occurs. He said officers often approach him after the fact to discuss suspicious activity or contacts with known gang associates, only to discover there is no written record of the encounter.
For intelligence investigators, undocumented contacts represent lost opportunities.
“If it’s not documented,” Snyder said, “it effectively doesn’t exist.”
Yet North Carolina currently has no statewide requirement compelling law enforcement agencies to document every gang-related field interview, intelligence contact or suspicious encounter. Agencies decide individually what to collect, how to collect it and whether to share it. As a result, the quality of gang intelligence can vary dramatically from one county to the next.
The state’s primary crime reporting system, the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, provides only limited gang data collection. Officials acknowledged during the meeting that NIBRS captures just three broad categories: juvenile gang involvement, other gang involvement or none.
Participants identified several reasons for the gaps.
First, training.
Task force members repeatedly emphasized that officers cannot document what they do not recognize. Several participants argued that many officers receive limited gang identification training, resulting in missed intelligence opportunities.
Second, turnover.
Officials from the Governor’s Crime Commission noted that high turnover rates among local law enforcement personnel create constant disruptions in data collection and intelligence reporting practices.
Third, technology.
North Carolina’s hundreds of law enforcement agencies use different records management systems, many of which were not designed with gang intelligence collection in mind. State officials acknowledged that software limitations often prevent agencies from capturing the information investigators later need.
But perhaps the most revealing explanation discussed by the task force was institutional reluctance.
One participant noted that some jurisdictions remain unwilling to publicly acknowledge that gang activity exists within their communities. “You can’t deal with the problem until you admit that you have a problem,” one official told the group.
That reluctance may also explain why gang intelligence collection often struggles for attention compared with more immediate demands.
During the meeting, veteran law enforcement officials argued that agencies have become increasingly reactive rather than proactive, focusing on today’s crimes rather than identifying tomorrow’s threats. One participant warned that leaders have become too focused on immediate political and public pressures — “the 5 o’clock news cycle” — rather than collecting intelligence that could help prevent violence months later.
The irony, according to several participants, is that gang intelligence often proves most valuable long after it is collected.
A routine traffic stop. A field interview. A school resource officer’s observation. A patrol officer’s note about who was with whom on a particular day. Those seemingly insignificant details may become critical months later during a homicide investigation, a gang conspiracy case or a violent crime prosecution.
Yet without documentation, that intelligence disappears.
The task force’s discussion revealed another uncomfortable reality: North Carolina has built an extensive network of intelligence-sharing systems, fusion centers and deconfliction platforms, but those systems depend entirely on agencies entering information in the first place.
For policymakers, the question becomes whether the state should continue relying on voluntary participation or establish minimum standards for documenting gang-related encounters.
As the Gang Prevention and Intervention Task Force prepares recommendations for the full task force, Gov. Josh Stein and state lawmakers, one issue appears unavoidable: before North Carolina can improve gang intelligence sharing, it must first answer a simpler question.
Why are some of the state’s most important criminal intelligence encounters never written down at all?
Some of the subcommittee and guests included:
Chair Steven Holmes - State Bureau of Investigation
David Drew - Federal Bureau of Investigation
Nate Snyder - Sanford Police Department
Ashley Cox - State Bureau of Investigation (Crime Reporting)
Mark Rascoe - Regional Organized Crime Information Center
Dylan Garis - Department of Homeland Security
I was the only member of the media present.
Read a transcript in the player above and/or on DocumentCloud.
ICYMI
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