How Military-Trained Gang Members Threaten Communities (Part 1)

I sit down with Dr. Carter F. Smith to unpack a topic that doesn’t get nearly enough attention—military-trained gang members and the real-world impact they have on our communities, law enforcement, and national security. This is Part 1 of our conversation, where we start laying the foundation and breaking down how gangs intersect with military service, why this issue is often misunderstood or underreported, and what it really means for those working in the field.

We get into some hard questions right out of the gate: Are gang members using the military as a training ground? How are they slipping through the cracks? And what happens when highly trained individuals bring those skills back into criminal organizations? This first part sets the stage with real-world insight and context you won’t hear anywhere else—and it only gets deeper from here. 

Episode Highlights

[0:55] - I introduce the episode’s focus: the intersection of gangs, military service, and criminal intelligence

[3:04] - Dr. Carter F. Smith shares his background and how his research into military-trained gang members began

[5:07] - We break down the historical roots—this problem has existed since the founding of the United States

[7:54] - Defining “military-trained gang members” and how training is transferred within criminal networks

[8:31] - We uncover a major intelligence gap: why law enforcement often misses military-style tactics used by gangs

[11:46] - The “small percentage” myth—why even a tiny number of trained gang members poses a serious threat

[16:33] - How gang members get into the military and the loopholes in the recruiting and background check process

[21:06] - We discuss how gang involvement spans all ranks—from junior enlisted to senior leadership

[25:24] - Are individuals joining the military to escape gangs… or to enhance them?

[29:01] - Real-world examples of organized gang activity involving military personnel and weapon trafficking

[31:35] - The structural differences between street gangs and highly organized groups like outlaw motorcycle gangs

[34:04] - Why law enforcement often targets low-level offenders while missing larger organized networks

Links & Resources

Dr. Carter F. Smith’s book: Gangs in the Military: Gangsters, Bikers, Terrorists with Military Training
https://www.amazon.com/Gangs-Military-Gangsters-Terrorists-Training/dp/1442275162

If you found this conversation valuable, make sure to follow, rate, and review the podcast, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Stay tuned for Part 2 as we continue breaking this topic down even further.

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Listener Advisory

This episode includes discussions of real-world violence, criminal activity, and emotionally intense subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.

Transcript

Carter F. Smith: 0:00

We have a certain percentage of gang members that are in the military, and then they get out, and if a certain percentage of them are military trained gang members, we have an ongoing flow. I explained it to them this way, if you had a glass of water here and you watched me pour 10 drops of cyanide in it, it's less than 1% cyanide in your water, Marc, why wouldn't you drink it. Or if I made a hamburger for you, and instead of mustard, I put dog shit on there, it's less than 1% are you eating the hamburger? Absolutely not. That's gang members. Y'all. They are infecting our communities, and if we don't do something to fix that, we get more problems. This

David White: 0:40

podcast contains real world accounts and discussions related to law enforcement, military, criminal investigations, public safety incidents and violent crime. Topics may include graphic descriptions, strong language, trauma, death and emotionally intense subject matter and may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener, discretion

Mark Bridgeman: 0:55

is advised in this episode of Behind the thin blue line, we tackle a topic that sits at the intersection of national security, gang investigations, criminal intelligence and other aspects of intelligence, the presence and influence of gangs within the military and post military service as well. Our guest Carter Smith has coined the term military trained gang members across the United States, law enforcement and military investigators have documented cases where gang members have enlisted in the armed forces, sometimes seeking discipline and opportunity, but in other cases, gaining advanced weapons training, tactical knowledge, operational experience that can later be exploited by criminal organizations. The issue raises serious questions about force protection, gang migration, intelligence sharing and a long term impact on the communities when they encounter military trained gang members in this episode of Behind the thin blue line, I'm your host. Marc Bridgeman, I retired from Fayetteville police department after serving for 26 years, and Fayetteville Police Department in North Carolina is located right outside of Fort Bragg, where I gained employment after retirement and worked nine years there as a criminal intelligence analyst, so working in and around Fayetteville and Fort Bragg and back there was Pope Army Airfield, and in those areas, we knew There were gang members, and when I came into contact with gang members, street gang members, outlaw motorcycle gangs, extremists, the whole gamut. So I know it's a real phenomenon. Today's guest is Dr Carter F Smith, an Associate Professor and Director and masters in Criminal Justice Program at Middle Tennessee State University. Dr Smith brings a unique perspective in the conversation. Before entering academia, he spent 22 years as a special agent with the US Army Cid at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he investigated narcotics, violent crime, organized criminal activity, while coordinating with all important state, local and federal partners. Dr Smith is also the author of the influential book, gangs in the military, gangsters, bikers, terrorists with military training, which examines how criminal organization, including street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs and extremists, to recruit active duty or prior military within the ranks to enhance their capabilities. In this episode, we will discuss how and why gangs Get active military service. So I'm going to turn it over to Dr Smith. He has he has the experience of both practical application of the law, as well as academia, which is very rare in this field. And you know, some people have great, a tremendous amount of experience. You know, within law enforcement and others have academia, but it's really uncommon to have both. Is a skill set explain to us a little bit the historical perspective. You know, the gangs in the military, post military is not anything new. You know, historically,

Carter F. Smith: 4:08

it is not and Marc, first of all, thank you for having me to this. I've been this is, I won't say this is a passion, lifelong passion, but it's been a pretty much of my adult life passion, primarily because when I first looked at it and saw something few other people did, and there was a lot of naysayers, until there weren't. And that's that's recently. I'll answer your question in this way. One of the issues I had with the naysayers was they said we don't see a problem. And what I've learned in management and leadership is if the leader doesn't see a problem. It's usually because he or she doesn't see a solution. So I started presenting a solution, and all of a sudden, the military leadership that said there wasn't a problem, started saying, Oh, I see, I go back all the way to the beginning of the country. If you go back that far and there's always been a problem, something tells me that leader takes a little bit. Makes it a little less serious that there is a problem in their unit. And we have had military trained gang members since we have had the United

Mark Bridgeman: 5:07

States of America, and I can think of going back to the Whiskey Rebellion, sure. Oh, he said a good example, yes.

Carter F. Smith: 5:13

And that's, it's funny, you should say that, because the first in my I've estimated and recently wrote a book on it, military trained gang member. Was a fellow named Sam Mason who fought in the French and Indian War. He was a captain in the Revolutionary War. And then, when they just released all the all the militia and soldiers and everything, and most of with most of them not receiving any kind of compensation for the time they they they'd invest in their country, he became a river pirate, ultimately. And his brother wasn't a was a law abider, and he was actually instrumental in quashing the Whiskey Rebellion. Very neat connection, but yeah, that was as long as we've been a country, we've had those problems.

Mark Bridgeman: 5:57

Yeah, and people tend to not relate to historical perspectives, you know, because it's not affecting them directly, or they didn't hear it on the 24 hour media cycle. Didn't see it on Tiktok, exactly, and Tiktok

Carter F. Smith: 6:10

is another very bright person. Several 1000 years ago, said Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it. You know what? Goes around, comes around, and any other number of things you want to go through.

Mark Bridgeman: 6:23

So when you hear gangs and the military, how do you couch that for people that are, you know, trying to separate fact from fiction, because some people think it's over publicized or it's very dramatic when there's actually real, live cases that even happened? We're filming this on March 20, but happened at Old Dominion, right a week ago, where you had a National Guard trained gang member commit an act of terrorism?

Carter F. Smith: 6:52

Sure, military trained gang members, in my estimation, or or my Trent, my my explanation, are basically gang members, any jurisdiction that qualifies a person as a gang member, that's that checks that block. But the military training is either they received it directly from the military, whether it's National Guard, Reserve or regular Army or Air Force or Marines or Coast Guard, because we they've been in all these branches, absolutely and and that military training directly or from somebody who received that military training. In the military and law enforcement, we have this thing called train the trainer, and gang members aren't prevented from doing that as well. And you know, we did, that's

Mark Bridgeman: 7:33

how we've learned a lot. You know, they teach one another how to commit crimes. Train the Trainer, exactly. And I've dealt with generations of criminals, right, if not gang members as well, right? You know, so it's an always learning process. And if they go to prison, that's like their university.

Carter F. Smith: 7:51

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Mark Bridgeman: 7:54

So how do we scale this? You know, you know, to talk about intelligence and some of the gaps in reporting. You know, how do we scale this so, you know, people in the field, and we don't want to give away trade secrets or anything like trade craft or anything like that, because in this area, it's very under reported, in my opinion, as well as gangs in general across the United States. I think it's very the numbers that we know, I think are very minimal, you know at best, because it's a reporting problem, right? So how would you describe the intelligence gaps?

Carter F. Smith: 8:31

The biggest issue is the gang cops don't recognize military training very well. I'll give you an example that and I, I intentionally programmed a survey that I administered to every gang association that I go to to talk about I intentionally designed it this way. I asked in this order, do any gang members in your area use military tactics or anything like that in their operation? And they say no, 90% or more every time say no, and then I ask, Do they ever do bank robberies or home invasions? Now I understand that it's hard to think of those as military operations, but every time our military has been overseas in the last 50 years, we have taught them how to go into a house as if they were serving a warrant, yes, and tell people to get down on the ground quickly and put your hands up. And if that's not a home invasion that a gang member can do, I don't know what is. Again, I intentionally crafted the survey that way, so I'm never surprised when it happens. But when I point it out to officers, they're like, Oh, I didn't think of that. And that's why we're here, and that's why I do this. And a lot of

Mark Bridgeman: 9:46

these officers have probably taken reports where gang members or drug crews will rip off another drug crew and it's a home invasion. And there's actually been criminal cases where that I know people get in charge. Charge for going in there and stealing somebody's drugs and money. Sure, you know, falls under the federal Hobbs Act and a lot of other different federal laws.

Carter F. Smith: 10:09

But to your to your earlier question about scaling numerically, speaking, I'll say that military trained gang members are a very small minority of a very small minority. There are more people in America who are not gang members, yes, than there are who are. There are way more people in the military that are not gang members than are and there are way more veterans who are not gang members or terrorists or extremists or whatever than those who are. But it doesn't mean we should not focus on those that are any more than we would if we had cancer in our bodies. If you have 2% of your body is cancer and 98% is water, let's do the math on that. Yes, right? You want to get it removed, you want to get it fixed. You want to get it prevented, and then you want to tell other people how to keep it from happening to them absolutely, regardless of how that is. We don't do that well in our in our government, and surely not in our military. What we do is say it's only some certain percent, and the best numerically speaking, what the closest I've come, I've been able to put a number attached to it is a 10th of 1% okay? And if that's in the United States, a 10th of 1% what that means is we have a certain percentage of gang members that are in the military, and then they get out, and not all of them stay in that role, but that's still quite a few, because we have veterans coming into the civilian community every year, and if a certain percentage of them are military trained gang members, we have, we have an ongoing flow, or

Mark Bridgeman: 11:46

even if, after they get out, they don't have any ties, they may get recruited. And a lot of times, they get recruited into outlaw motorcycle gangs and other street gangs, if it's such a small percentage, you know, and people tend to look at percentages, and I've done Intel analysis enough to know that there's lies, damn lies, and statistics. And you know, the statistics and the numbers don't always represent the true problem. So if this is a small, low risk, minuscule topic, why wouldn't the military commanders or communities be concerned about this?

Carter F. Smith: 12:25

They wouldn't, usually, unless they are concerned about the civilian community that everybody in the military goes to if they don't die while they're in the military. I explained it to them, to them this way, if you had a glass of water here and you watched me pour, let's say, I don't know, 10 drops of cyanide in it, and I slid it over to you. Would you drink it? No, of course not. It's less than 1% cyanide in your water. Marc, why wouldn't you drink it? Or if I made a hamburger for you, and I said, Would you like some mustard? Yeah, give me a little bit of mustard. And instead of mustard, I put dog shit on there. Yeah, it's less than 1% are you eating the hamburger? Absolutely not. That's gang members. Y'all. I'm not trying to say they're not human by any means, but they are infecting our communities, and if we don't do something to fix that, we get more problems.

Mark Bridgeman: 13:17

This gets into we talked about the communities military communities are often extended beyond the installation itself, into the community, because their kids go to the local schools. Oftentimes they become involved in gang members, which impacts the service member for force readiness and deployability. Or if a significant incident happens, they recall that service member from the deployment you had

Carter F. Smith: 13:45

to come after replace them. That's That's exactly right. The biggest problem with that is and family members. Of course, even people who've never been in the military have problems with their kids. Let's be real. But if you're in the United States and you're anywhere near a city and you go overseas, you have the credentials that come along with that city. If you're a 15 year old that wants to be a thug and drove or flew through Los Angeles on the way to where you are now, exactly, you have instant credibility. You must have been an la gang member. And we're going to listen to what

Mark Bridgeman: 14:15

you say. Exactly It goes to, you know, military installations having a reputation, right? And, you know, what would be the reputation of, you know, Fayetteville, North Carolina. What's the common, right thing? Well, they refer to it as faet now, right? Yeah. And people still to this day, the Vietnam War has been over since the midcent. People still refer to it as Fayette now, and those things that went along with the Fayette now, you know? Oh, yeah. So it's interesting.

Carter F. Smith: 14:43

There have been juvenile family members, yes, overseas and in many in the United States installations and in the communities around them that have been involved in this. It doesn't go away. The first time we happened across the issue in Fort Campbell was in the early 90s, and we first. Saw that there were military folks. Well, I'll tell you how we did it. We were doing crime prevention, yeah, and we were in a parking lot because that parking lot had had a lot of their five and $6,000 stereos in their four and $5,000 cars being stolen. And so we figured we'd go see if those vehicles are being locked up, and imagine that they weren't. So we'd start locking doors. We'd put a note inside me and another, a partner of mine, and we'd say, Hey, we're the cops. We didn't steal anything. Here's your, here's your, here's your note. We locked the car behind you. If we'd been criminals, you might have lost that nice stereo system. We realized, after a couple days of doing this, that there was two other guys on the other side of the parking lot, so we went over and we showed them our badges and asked if they had and they didn't. So we showed them our handcuffs. We took them to the station. We talked to them a little bit about it. These These guys were two young military folks who wanted to join a local gang, and this was their initiation. Yeah, we also learned that there were juveniles, family members and non family members that were in part of this gang, and this was their 91 and you probably had the same thing in Fayetteville. We had, we had a Clarksville in Tennessee. That's a gang Oh no, that's a wannabe. I talked to cops in LA in 9019 92 and they said, Oh yeah, you got a gang problem, yeah. And I got really serious. It was like, You know what? Let's just start here. I said, Brother, I have what wants to be a gang problem. And when I'm finished with them here in the military, we're going to send them back to your community, and they will know how to shoot people, yes, and they will know how to move things. And then they'll be your problem is that a wannabe gang, or you think it's a gonna be gang, exactly?

Mark Bridgeman: 16:33

How do these individuals get past the recruiting screening process? And we've talked about that a little bit yesterday, but, you know, some people want to join the military, like I did. You know, I came from a town in Connecticut that Waterbury, Connecticut, not a very good town, and I joined the military to change my life, but I didn't assimilate back to my former life, where you have individuals that may want to join the military, but they assimilate to becoming involved with gangs in their area once they get to their permanent party station.

Carter F. Smith: 17:08

Right to answer the question of how they get in the military? Yeah, it's because background checks aren't polygraph supported. I don't know about your background check, but they asked me for a list of people that could vouch for me? Yeah, if there were three people in my life that would throw me under the bus, do you think they'd have gotten their names? No, that'd be stupid. I gave my best friend's name. I gave him another guy who got in trouble with me a couple times, name I gave him all and teachers who never knew me outside of the classroom. Yeah, they all vouch for me. I didn't have anything to not vouch for, but you get, you get my point. And then they go through the background check, and they're free and clear. It's like, you can join the military. Great, come on in. And then what did? What does the recruiter do after that? He ships them over here and he ships them over there. But they have, they have ways around that. We actually learned that prior to 2006 the recruiter would be talking to the enlistee, as it were, the prospective enlistee, and he would either get an indication, or he would hear directly that this fellow was involved in gang activity or some other kind of criminal activity. And there'd be this revelation. He'd say, You know what I tell you, what I need you to do something for me. I've got a buddy of mine in the next county over or two counties or whatever? Have you ever been to such and such County? No, I never have. Okay, good, because I owe him a favor. I'm going to let him put you in the army, and then we'll go, you'll be you'll be good. Everything happened. I'll buy you dinner. We'll put you up in a hotel. You mind doing that? Oh no, no, no problem. So this fellow would go to another recruiter's office and they'd run a background check in that county. The guy had never been to the county. How's he going to commit a crime there? Of course, his background is going to be clean. Yeah? We put a quash on that, and we started doing national agency checks, about 2005 or six or something like that, yeah?

Mark Bridgeman: 18:55

Doing a NCIC criminal

Carter F. Smith: 18:57

history check, yeah, as opposed to just a local agency check, yes. Now the bad news is we had to start, they the government had to start waiving a whole lot of criminal activity, even on the background,

Mark Bridgeman: 19:09

even recruiters, could only get a limited scope of a criminal history search. It's not like the full scope search law enforcement would get exactly so, you know, some of that stuff is, I'm not going to say hidden, but not disclosed. Well, it's not disclosed.

Carter F. Smith: 19:23

And it's logical. If, if you come to the if you are a recruiter, a military recruiter, and you ask the police whether this guy's a gang member, they go to criminal records, and if there's no convictions for gang activity, that guy's not a gang member, if a fellow cop says, Hey, is this guy a gang member? You're going to criminal intelligence, right?

Mark Bridgeman: 19:41

Exactly, which isn't

Carter F. Smith: 19:43

a light on, light off scenario, it's a we've got indications he might have been but nothing was ever proven or there'd been a case. Yes, you're not going to get that

Mark Bridgeman: 19:50

if you're a recruiter. Well, even with the recruiter and the Recruiting Command that we've done countless presentations for them so they can recognize the science. Words and symbols.

Carter F. Smith: 20:01

They overlook them.

Mark Bridgeman: 20:02

Yeah, a lot of times they do, however, you know, with the recruiters, you know, we can't give them our criminal intelligence. You know, we may know this individual is a validated gang member. We could say you might want to ask certain questions, or, you know, kind of steer them in a direction where they can ask those questions and find the information out, but by most laws, federal and state, we can't disclose that information, right? So that's a gap in and of itself that can probably overcome with, you know, some coordination down the road, if that's what it's needed,

Carter F. Smith: 20:39

if it was, if it was deemed to be important.

Mark Bridgeman: 20:41

Yeah, a lot of the commanders and a lot of the people I've dealt with tend to look at individuals involved in criminal activity gangs. You know that in the military is your typical e1, to e4, 17 to 24, years old, and you know, it's just a lower enlisted problem. What's your opinion? Does it span across

Carter F. Smith: 21:06

all ranks, pretty much all ranks, all branches and all Moses, all jobs. There have been several junior enlisted, most of them were street gangs, right? There's been several senior enlisted. Most of them were outlaw motorcycle gang members, right? Yes. And there have been several domestic terrorist extremists. And they cross the gate. They're across everything. But there have been field grade officers that have been clearly involved. Oh, now they're smarter in that they try their field grade officers, well, any officer, for that matter, and several of the senior NCOs, they follow the organized crime model they do. The further away they get from the street crime, the better off they are, and the more likely they are to continue their career unimpeded. But they're still involved in the gang, whether they're getting their hands dirty in it or not. They're like the Dons and the mafia,

Mark Bridgeman: 22:00

and they they're smart enough to realize the buzz words, that if they say, Well, I'm doing this. This is, you know, it's my silver it's a civil right, you know, I'm just associating with other people. Sure, you know, you're violating my civil rights. And sometimes the command will back off on that sometimes, and it depends on the special Judge Advocate and their legal counsel with that unit. Oh, no, let's not touch that right now, because we might get in trouble, right? You know. So the individual stays within that unit, stays within that rank, and you know, they provide, you know, good service while they're at work, of course, you know. But why wouldn't they? Exactly, you know. And some of these we've talked about, you know, some of these individuals are, you know, if you go and talk to their unit, you know, they're best soldier, right? You know, I'm putting them up for the soldier of the quarter.

Carter F. Smith: 22:53

You know, we did. We tried to simplify our jobs several years and, well, a couple years into our investigations of gangs when we but we stood up the gang team, the gang investigations team, in at Fort Campbell after the mid 90s, so probably, I think, 9697 and we were just going and briefing everything we've learned to the to the NCOs and the officers, saying, if you see this, let us know. We'll try to investigate and see if these guys are active. Because that was the key. They have to be active gang members. And we ultimately found a dozen in a year that had been that had fraudulently enlisted, had lied to the recruiter. They were, they had a criminal record, and they said they did not, said, Never arrest. And ultimately, all but one of them was allowed to stay in because he was the commander's driver. Exactly. He was my best soldier. He's got such good discipline. He's got this, he's got this. And I, finally, I'd had, I told every officer that came up with that nonsense. Do you think they learned loyalty from you? Sir, yes, because they did not. They brought that with them. And I think that's

Mark Bridgeman: 23:56

an Achilles heel within the UCMJ, you know where it I think the commander should have a amount of discretion to adjudicate a soldier. However, if there's certain things that could impact force readiness and national security, maybe should get up to a higher level review. Yep, and that's things that we're not going to change here in this discussion today, and they've been, you know, working that angle for many, many years now, we talked about senior enlisted, or it doesn't really matter what rank. Sure, you know, we had a case out of Fort Bragg, where it was a Command Sergeant Major working at force comm. Which force Comm, for those that don't know, has the second number of generals other than the Pentagon, it's Forces Command. They had a e9 I believe e8 or e9 he was their career counselor. He got caught coming across the border, the California border, with 24 pounds of meth, and he had connections to the Mexican drug trafficking organization. Organizations. So, you know, when we talk about the infiltration, or I don't think some of these and you correct me if I'm wrong, or, you know, give your opinion that do you think some of these individuals intentionally join the military to infiltrate the ranks to overthrow our government? Or it's just kind of happens that they just want to make money, and they just want to get involved with the local gang.

Carter F. Smith: 25:24

And I think there are an enormous amount, a high percentage of people who are in the gang lifestyle and see the military as a way out, yes, without question. And I also think that most of them succeed. But I have seen time after time in all in domestic terrorist, extremist and outlaw motorcycle gang and street gang, where the gangs were smart enough to send somebody to the military to learn a skill, yes, and that's never stopped. And to add to that, we've still, I've heard of this in the past year, so I'm sure it isn't, hasn't gone away, although we were told it did. After the Vietnam era, we still have judges who will talk to a recruiter, and if somebody joins the military that the recruiter wants to bring in, they will drop or or hold the charges, just to make sure, yes, that's never going to stop. That's how we get committed people. And I don't mean committed to prison, I mean committed to the job, or at least that's how we're supposed to and many of them succeed at getting away from the lifestyle. I'm not worried about those people, right? I'm worried about the 2% that are cyanide and dog shit. I'm worried about the 2% that are whatever percentages that don't make it, or that thought they were making it and didn't have a support group, or didn't have whatever, and went back over time after time after time. Imagine this scenario. Imagine you and I were gang members in the military. First of all, the gang is a stronger connection than the military. Yes, and imagine we'd never seen each other, and we're both in pick a city and a state. We're both in Houston, and we connect. And you've been there for a while and you're having a hard time making money. I've been there for a while and I'm having a hard time making money. And we grab a beer, and we're sitting there shooting the breeze, and, you know, we made some money when we was in the army. And one thing leads to another, and logic takes over and says, Why don't we try some of that? Do you think we'd be able to organize a gang in Houston in about five days? Sure, all day long? Yes. So they don't have a backup to I'm just going to be better. The Army has never brainwashed people. Now they thought. We thought they did, but that was before the Vietnam War. There was never any washing of the brain. You did not have people going into basic training, Catholic and coming out, agnostic or Baptist or any of that. Right? You didn't have left handed people going into the military and coming out right hand, right? You had none of that. There's not a mental health program in basic training. It's I break you down and I build you back up. Now it's a lot less cussing, but that's not it's never been a fixing of a mental problem that with people, and it surely isn't keeping them from joining a gang just because they joined the military. It immobilizes their ability to join a game, because we own your time for several weeks while you're in basic training, but you can get out and go right back to that lifestyle. Nobody is going to stop you,

Mark Bridgeman: 28:22

or you just stay within lifestyle or that, you know, and they keep communications going. We've had gang members from Fort Bragg still had ties to Chicago, and what they were doing is buying guns and shipping them back up to Chicago. And ATF, you know, it kind of had a red flag. This individual bought eight handguns within four weeks, you know, totally legal, but it's a red flag, and they want to find out where these guns going, yep, you know. And rightly so. It was like, hey, and he was giving them to the gang members or selling them to the gang members working with

Carter F. Smith: 29:01

the gangsters, he could do that for hundreds of them. Yes, Gangster Disciples especially have a very good system to do that. We had them at Campbell. They've had them out in Colorado, they've had them at Fayetteville. If there was a way for me to prove that somebody was trying to develop an insurgency from within the military, Gangster Disciples be my go to because they have been a problem in Killeen, Texas three times that I'm aware of, three different iterations that didn't show any other connections since the 90s.

Mark Bridgeman: 29:32

And I think they had a problem overseas too, in Germany. Oh yeah.

Carter F. Smith: 29:34

Oh yeah. And that was a good textbook example of how military or gang leadership and gang connections is is outranks all the time a Military Connection, because there were people who were beating up on a senior NCO. Because, depending on who you listen to, and I listened to the people that actually investigated it, he was either getting beat into a gang or he was getting disciplined. Yes, either way, if a problem. If it's punching a sergeant, you got problems. That's exactly right. You have a shadow government. Well, Gangster

Mark Bridgeman: 30:07

Disciples are very structured, absolutely. And it goes back to

Carter F. Smith: 30:10

Larry Hoover. Larry Hoover was ultimately one of the founders of what we now know as the Gangster Disciples. If you study gangs, you know there's a lot of transformation, there's a lot of mergers and acquisitions, dare I say, kind of like the business world. Hoover hasn't seen the light of day or breathed free air in decades, not this century, and yet, he is the beneficiary of billions of dollars, not all of it, but a portion of that in weapons sales, in drug sales, in sex sales and a variety of other things, he's still in control. Yeah, that doesn't happen when you're in the ad Max prison in Florence, Colorado, for just about everybody. It happens for Larry

Mark Bridgeman: 30:50

Hoover, though, yeah. So, you know, with some of these street gangs, you know, they, I think they rise to a higher level of organized crime, other than, like the street gang neighborhood crew that a lot of people come in contact with, you know, these high school groups or neighborhood crews, which are very dangerous in and of themselves, sometimes military dependence, that's the other issue, but the structure and organization of, let's say, examples of like an outlaw motorcycle gang, and there's countless different types of outlaw motorcycle gangs, or as OMGs, is what we refer to explain to us, you know, the difference between the structural difference between the two types of gangs and why they have a different impact.

Carter F. Smith: 31:35

Sure. So outlaw motorcycle gangs have been and all but one of the main OMGs was formed by military veterans at some point, they may, I don't know what the percentages are through history, but I know that one or so was was started before World War Two, and the rest of them started right after World War Two. And they I think it had something to do with missing adrenaline and camaraderie, yes, and friend and brotherhood and all that stuff. But they naturally have always had a military type hierarchy in all the cases, and they and they typically mirror each other in ways. They they have similar sayings, they wear similar clothing and all that. But the gangs that are doing that are more advanced. There was a two researchers who also had badges, had warm badges, and actually were wearing them while they were while they were academics. John Sullivan and Robert bunker coined the term third generation gangs. If you want to search it, you put three and then G, E N and all caps and gangs, and you'll get a boatload of research that they've done on it. I looked at that framework when I was studying military trained gang members early on, and that framework is very demonstrative of what we have in the military, because you don't have amateur hour. It's not a bunch of people who saw a cool movie like remember colors or warriors or whatever, and they decided to form a gang the Crips and the Bloods allow that across this country and have, as long as they've been in existence, they don't franchise, but don't try to start a gangster disciple chapter and pick a city outside of Chicago that doesn't have leadership knowing about it, or marasava Trucha for that matter. And those were two of the four gangs in North America that they identified as third gen gangs. These are corporate mindset. They don't make decisions. They they have autonomy at the lower levels, but they don't have autonomy to do just about everything correct? They have to verify it. They have to validate things with their lower with their leadership. Not unlike what OMGs are about, outlaw motorcycle gangs weren't considered in this evaluation. It was all about the street gangs, correct? It's the same it's the same mindset, and that makes them harder to catch, because the average street cup can be as smart and as enterprising as he or she wants to, but they get the low hanging fruit. They've got eight hours to be on shift. They don't have a lot of things they can do outside of this window of where you have to be and what you have to do, and they're not going to catch the bad guys that way. To give the

Mark Bridgeman: 34:04

audience a context of how organized these street gangs or motorcycle gangs or extremists, they have rules, you know, bylaws, whatever they call them, bylaws, regulations, books of not constitutions. Yeah, constitutions, you know, and they adhere to these to include, you know, we had a case in Fayetteville. We used Queen Queenie, it was a Jew, or she was a dependent. Came to Fayetteville. She was Air Force dependent. She started a gang rolling 40s, and they wound up killing and executing two young ladies. But we used her book of knowledge to help convict her, because everything that they did was involved in that homicide, right? You know. So these people outlaw motorcycle gangs, they have a bylaw. You have to be at least 21 years old, for example, and you have to be a white male and drive a Harley, you know. And they have meetings on a regular basis. So that they refer to his church, mostly on Thursday he'll

Carter F. Smith: 35:03

be there, yep. And

Mark Bridgeman: 35:05

when you talk about an officer having eight hours on the shift and picking low hanging fruit, well, a lot of times, if you're working in a high crime area, you're getting called about the drug boys or the street gangs on the corner, right? You're not getting called about the bikers, right? You know? Because what happens at Christmas time, you

Carter F. Smith: 35:22

know, right? Yeah, the bikers generally, and the HA, the Hells Angels, I think, are the one that prototyped it very well. They have their their kids. They have their run for the kids, the giveaway Christmas gifts to their entire community. Yeah, I like to call it grooming. Tomorrow's juries today, yes, because it's absolutely phenomenal public relations, and they will never stop doing that, because there's no law against being generous.

Mark Bridgeman: 35:49

And people think, you know, and I've known some gangs to give away hams and turkeys at holidays.

Carter F. Smith: 35:54

And the best, the only thing that cops can do to counter that is having Shop with a Cop, which is a great program. I've been part of that. But, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't keep it doesn't keep the mindset.

Mark Bridgeman: 36:05

Yeah, it's interesting how people just fawn. You know, all these guys are so nice. They have teddy bears on their bikes. You know, Christmas time. You know, it's just amazing.

Unknown: 36:15

Next time on behind the thin blue line, which is more

Carter F. Smith: 36:19

dangerous, the street gang member or domestic terrorist. Generally speaking, I would say the domestic terrorists, because the street gang member, at least, is predictable. The domestic terrorist extremists, they have taken notes from international terrorists, and they will wait until you're sleeping. Intellectually, they might wait until it's your next generation is engaged, and they're gonna they're gonna wait till you've forgotten what you thought they were about to do, and then they'll smack you. Sponsored by the North Carolina gang investigators Association,

Buzz Burbank: 36:53

an ironic media production. Visit us at i r, O N, I C, K, media.com you.