Winston-Salem Police Looking for Way to Stop Criminal Organizations That Recruit Minors

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (WGHP) — In July, Winston-Salem police sent out a news release detailing what it described as an “ongoing criminal enterprise.” It said officers had charged seven people in connection with 16 separate offenses dating from May 2023 through February 2024.

Of the seven defendants, five were minors.

“A lot of the criminal activity is gang related, so it’s all connected,” said Sergeant Adam Prim of the Winston-Salem Police Department’s Gang Unit.

The cases mainly involved firearms offences and theft and vandalism of motor vehicles.

“We’ve had information about 10-year-olds getting involved in these types of gangs,” Prim said.

The WSPD estimates there are thousands of gang members affiliated with more than 50 gangs in the city.

“We’re seeing people from Mexico coming here and recruiting heavily among the Hispanic side of the gangs,” Prim said.

His unit’s job is not only to identify and track down gang members, but also to get the most dangerous members off the streets and prevent the youngest generations from getting involved in gangs.

“If we don’t catch these guys until they’re 15 or 16, they’re already set in their ways and they’re on a path that’s very difficult to get back on track,” Prim said.

In recent years, local law enforcement agencies have detailed problems with keeping young offenders within the juvenile justice system. They often say that young criminals are eventually returned to their parents without any real consequences.

That is starting to change.

“Youth law has been working better with us lately,” says Prim.

As a result, Forsyth County authorities report an overall decrease in violent crime in the region.

“The problem is that violent crime among young people is increasing, and that’s something we should be concerned about,” said Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill.

For example, O’Neill said that 38% of car theft crimes are committed by minors, despite them making up only 6% of the population.

“Legislators understood the problem as prosecutors described it,” O’Neill said of the challenges of disciplining juvenile offenders.

Officials believe that fear of detention is increasing.

“You have kids driving stolen cars … The police come to the window. The first thing the 16-year-old says to the police is, ‘I’m only 16 years old. Take me home or you’re going to have to go through the juvenile court process with me,'” O’Neill said. “The gangs understand that if they’re going to have minors committing their shootings, they’re going to have to go through this juvenile court process, which is long and arduous.”

O’Neill believes more help is coming from the Legislature in the form of House Bill 834. He says the bill would ensure that any minor who commits an AE offense in the state would automatically be sent to adult court.

It was originally introduced in the House of Representatives in April 2023, but was vetoed by Governor Roy Cooper in June 2024. Cooper argued that it would “undermine our bipartisan ‘Raise the Age’ law that we passed four years ago.”

The veto was overridden by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

“If you take those young people who are causing violent crime out of our communities, violent crime goes down,” O’Neill said. “It’s just simple math.”

The WSPD’s Gang and Gun Crime Units were recently named “Gang Unit of the Year” by the North Carolina Gang Investigators Association at the NCGIA’s Gangs Across the Carolinas Gang and Violent Crime Conference.