Behind The Thin Blue Line Podcast
Behind the Thin Blue Line is a raw, unfiltered podcast diving into the real lives of law enforcement, military, and public safety professionals. Through honest conversations and real-world stories, we go beyond the uniform to expose the grit, sacrifice, dark humor, and hard truths that come with the job, on and off duty.
Behind The Thin Blue Line Podcast
How Military-Trained Gang Members Threaten Communities (Part 2)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
I continue my conversation with Carter F. Smith as we dig deeper into the evolving world of military gangs, extremist activity, and how these threats are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect. We break down the realities behind the headlines and challenge some of the assumptions people make about gang members versus domestic terrorist extremists.
We also get into how technology—like drones, cryptocurrency, and social media—is changing the game entirely, and why law enforcement and military investigators have to rethink how they approach these cases. This one’s packed with insight, hard lessons, and real talk from the field that you won’t hear anywhere else.
Episode Highlights
[0:00] - Setting the stage: military gangs and long-term community impact
[1:44] - Why domestic terrorist extremists are often more dangerous than street gangs
[4:55] - Special Forces skill sets and how they can be misused
[6:35] - Media perception vs. reality of January 6 events
[7:56] - The Fayetteville case and its impact on Department of Defense policy
[11:17] - Educating prosecutors and adapting outdated legal strategies
[12:56] - Social media restrictions and identifying gang affiliation online
[13:56] - Drone technology and emerging criminal threats
[15:07] - Border pressure and how criminal networks adapt
[17:08] - Cryptocurrency and accessible surveillance technology
[18:57] - The myth of the “lone wolf” and hidden influence networks
[22:10] - Intelligence gaps and lessons from past investigations
[25:29] - Why traditional gang identifiers no longer work
[28:28] - Leadership changes and shifting law enforcement priorities
[32:22] - Solving problems with limited resources and building cases
[34:30] - The value of corrections officers and probation networks
[36:27] - Advice for young investigators: creativity and imagination
[40:47] - Courtroom realities: articulation, honesty, and credibility
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
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Contact us: mbridgeman@behindthethinblueline.org
Listener Advisory
This episode includes discussions of real-world violence, criminal activity, and emotionally intense subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.
Last time on behind the thin blue line, I talked to cops in LA in 1992 and they said, Oh yeah, you got a gang problem. 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, 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, this podcast contains real world
Unknown: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:is advised. We talked about street gangs. We talked about outlaw motorcycle gangs. And there's not just they're not just white males in these outlaw motorcycle gangs. You have black outlaw motorcycle gangs, like the Thunder Guard. You have outcasts, which we have a couple of chapters in and around Fayetteville. You know, we had a individual. He was an e8 involved in the outcast, and he wound up becoming non deployable, and he wound up having to retire early because of it. So let's talk about, you know, the extremists in the military. Because, you know, that's a hot button issue. Should be it's well, because you talk about, you know, a vile and all this, to me, is vile. It's this type of criminal activity. But mainstream media, they try to desensitize us, oftentimes, into saying, hey, well, you know, they're gang members, but they're not bad gang members, you know. And we had attorneys, and a trial I was in that said, okay, they're gang members, but they're not bad gang members.
Carter F. Smith:So it's like, it's cancer. It is real bad cancer.
Mark Bridgeman:Yeah, it's gonna
Carter F. Smith:harm you. Let's work with that.
Mark Bridgeman:So, you know, when we talk about extremists, you know, historically, you know, you talk about how, you know, some of this extremist movement has come about. And then I'll say
Carter F. Smith:something aside of that. So if I say something that annoys any of your listeners, please ask them to stick with me, because I'll Okay. I'll make a complete I'll make a complete point. There have been domestic I call them domestic terrorist extremists, because when I looked at definition, looked up the definition of domestic terrorists, it says, See, extremist. Because the federal government has a very bad habit of circular definitions, and so I just, I lump them all together, and I call it DTEs. If we got OMGs, we might as well have DTE domestic terrorist extremists. They've been around for a very long time in some way, shape or form. They're global. You've got a left and a right side, and that's what I'm going to talk about in just a few but you've got you've got this group and you've got that group, you've got the progressive and you've got the conservative, however you want to. That's we've labeled terrorists that way, yes, and they don't get attention all the time, but when they do get attention, they get a lot of attention. I had a reporter one time asked me, which is more dangerous a street gang member or domestic terrorist? And I said, Well, I said, generally speaking, I would say the domestic terrorist, because the street gang member at least is predictable. The street gang member at least is going to act on something he or she, usually, he promises you is going to happen. The domestic terrorist extremists. They have taken notes from from terrorists, from international terrorists, and they will wait until you're sleeping. Intellectually, they might wait until it's it's your next generation is engaged, and they're gonna they wait till you've forgotten what you thought they were about to do, and then they'll smack you, yes, and that's the mindset. There was a I don't remember. I don't remember enough to quote the gentleman who designed this leaderless resistance that was big or known about long before 911 and leaderless resistance is exactly what Al Qaeda did. They had people doing things that didn't have any connection to the big guy. Okay, they did, but you get what I'm saying, yes, the average the average cop, or even the average Intel in a big city, wouldn't be able to connect this street member to that leader up above. Yes, leaderless resistance is the best strategy on the planet, and we're able to do it so well now with technology and with concealed identities and a variety of other things. And I, quite frankly, am surprised the criminals don't do it
Mark Bridgeman:more often. Well, I read a book when I was I did a fellowship at the National gang Intelligence Center, and one of the ATF agents that was there referred me to a book, the starfish and the spider, the power of the leaderless organization, absolutely. And that covered a lot of historical perspectives, including terrorists and street gangs. They are, if you take one element out, somebody takes their place. Yes, correct.
Carter F. Smith:So in the military, best I can tell if I had to pick an area that. Was the most represented in domestic terrorist, extremists, and this isn't just in America. It would be the Special Forces folks. I'm not saying they have a propensity. I'm saying they seem to have more of a propensity than other moss and other jobs and other services. Now, granted, most special forces folks can are the be all and end all of knowledge of everything. Yes, they specialize in being able to teach other people how to do a variety of things that will get you killed, and then go from there. And so that's that's been my experience, at least some of them. But on the flip side of that, although some still related, let's a politically in other words, without it, without a political hat on, let's evaluate what we were able to see on January 6, not very long ago. You're right. I don't know about you, but when I studied military movement and communication, it was nowhere near the amateur hour that I saw leaving this place and going to that place and taking over a building that we all pay taxes for? Correct who in the heck was in charge of that? Surely not anybody who had ever been in a leadership position and yet. And I'm I'm not saying there weren't crimes committed. I'm not saying anything about about pardons. No. All I'm saying is what I saw on television would have been a B movie at best, and those actors should have been fired if they were actors, but they were not. These were allegedly people who had military experience. Excuse me, I've never been in that movement, and I know how to do it better than you do big guy,
Mark Bridgeman:yeah, well, I mean, like in you have the individuals, what you see in the media, and you got what really happened, right? You know, because we, a lot of people, only know what they see in the media versus
Carter F. Smith:way more to that, yes, and here's, here's the wrap up that I that I promised, and then anybody can tune me out that wants to. I know, I don't believe. I know that the only way any of this military trained gang members gets to dress properly and successfully is if we make it absolutely apolitical. It cannot be tied to who's in the frickin White House, or who's in charge of the governor's mansion, or any of that totally agree. Because if you, if you look, and you don't have to look carefully, if you just take a glance, you will see that every time one side is in power, the conservative side is in power. We look at street gang members, and every time the liberal side is in is in power, we look at domestic terrorist, extremists. We have rarely looked across the whole spectrum unless there was something about it that benefited us or our side, or whatever the heck that is. Yes, so how did how exactly do you think you can investigate something four to eight years at a time? Yeah, just not happening. So that's the that's the downfall for both of them, is that we were intent, and now we're not intent. We're focused, and now we're not focused. That's never going to work.
Mark Bridgeman:Well, there was an incident that happened in Fayetteville in 1995 that changed the protocol for Department of Defense quite easily. You know, I know you don't like referring to the individual's name, but his name was Burmeister, and he located him in Malcolm Wright and another individual, I forgot his name, that they located African American couple walking downtown about nine or 10 o'clock at night in Fayetteville area, they were totally unfamiliar with and they executed this. They put them on their knees and executed this African American couple to earn their spider web tattoo because they were self proclaimed skinheads, right? So, you know, you go a little bit deeper into that and talk about how the command was dealing with this, and what was in burmeister's room and that type of stuff.
Carter F. Smith:So after that, the Secretary of the Army named togo West, an African American lawyer, decided to find out if that was a widespread problem. He told hundreds of leaders, NCOs, I believe, I don't think any of them were cops, or we would be more impressed with what they came back with. But he told, he told hundreds of people that he could trust with the inquiry. I want you to go out there and find out if there's a big problem of domestic terrorist extremists in our military community around the globe. And hundreds of people went out and conducted 1000s of interviews, and I'll paraphrase how they said it. They came back and they said, Yes, sir, Mr. Secretary, there is a problem with that. But a bigger problem is the presence of gang members in and around your communities. And the way it seemed like they were, they were reporting it was, and if you don't get on that really quickly, there's going to be a phenomenally large, unfixable problem. And they were, there was a lot of follow up work too. That that identified we have this problem. But what togo West did that I thought was pure genius. Even though he's a lawyer, pure genius was he did a press conference, and one of the reporters asked him, and I got a clip of this. I used to play it in my, in my, in my presentations. One of the reporters asked him, Secretary West, you have said that you will not allow extremists in the military, and the law is preventing active extremism, et cetera, et cetera. Would you please define extremism? And he said, I will not. I have. I have given that task to my commanders, for them to apply it. Ere, we were at Fort Campbell. We were excited because we had the commanders Absolutely and we could help the commander define extremism all day long. So we decided, how about if we present it this way? We actually had a good jag opinion, a legal opinion on how to how to do this. Anybody who is violating your rights under the Constitution of the United States of America, whether they're committing a crime or not, could be considered an extremist, yeah, and we ultimately got a conviction for distribution of extremist literature when a street gang member took a spray can and painted some graffiti on the side. And, you know, and that's
Mark Bridgeman:just one thing working gangs and bikers and extremists that you have to be very creative. How do you interpret the laws? And the other thing is, is you have to educate the prosecutors that, or the special judge advocates that have to take this to the next level and take it to trial. You do because, you know, that's an education in and of itself. I mean, they don't have a clue. And if they've never been exposed to it, they don't know, right? And, you know, we see things on the cutting edge, and they're oftentimes, you know, still looking in their law books for historical cases, trying to apply stuff that happened 3040, years ago to something that's current today. Yep. So, you know, with these extremists, you know, and going back to Burmeister, this individual in his barracks had a swastika flag, had pictures of himself that was doing Heil Hitler had paraphernalia, you know, the written documents and army Cid assisted Fayetteville Police Department in that investigation, and they identified a number of individuals that were also identified as skinheads that went through other installations as well. Yeah. So, you know, with the military, it could be a migration, and it's even worse now. And you know, this is probably a good segue into talking about technology, you know, and how these individuals can communicate nowadays, and how, not only we as civilians or law enforcement, we have secure communications, but if we have it, they have it
Carter F. Smith:as well. Sure, let me. Let me take it a step back from the advanced technology the recent rulings, rules, as it were, that prohibit active and it's now not just extremist engagement, but also street gangs. They've they lumped in the street gangs to the extremists in a law that is questionable, but it seems to work. They have recently prevented people from posting on social media any gang affiliation, suggesting or stating that that is, in fact, active gang participation, if you're just showing an allegiance to a gang or extremist group on social media. So that's just the basic stuff, and that was a long time coming in and should have been there a lot earlier. But also recently, there have been some cases involving people who were in the digital world and and were moving information in a variety of different ways and doing things that are hard to make tangible to a courtroom who's not ever seen anything like that. Yes, and even that stuff applies under the current rules. We have big issues that we haven't we aren't preparing to face very well. In my estimation, we have gang members and domestic terrorist extremists that are in the military learning any, any number of digital issues, but the simplest ones that they're learning is drones, yes, how to operate drones. And you can get a drone from a company called DJI, and you can equip it with a lot of things, and it may not be weaponized, but anything else that you're taking on there can be and they can do counter surveillance, and they can do dropping off of a variety of different products. And that's, to me, that's dangerous. That's dangerous for prison gangs, obviously, but for military gangs. There's been information in the past year, since last July, that there are members of the cartels in Mexico and South Central America that are joining. The forces fighting in the Ukraine so they can get training on how to operate a drone. That shouldn't be a problem, right?
Mark Bridgeman:No, and that's just how they with less and President Trump and current administration closing our southern border, that doesn't mean the activity of the drug trade is going to stop there. It's squeezing the balloon, right? And the criminal activity pops out on either end, right, you know. So now these individuals are migrating to Canada using the networks up there. The previous guest on the show, Bill Lux, you know, he said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that they're doing raids almost daily on, you know, fentanyl labs, right? You know. So you know, that is squeezing the balloon. The Mexican
Carter F. Smith:drug gangs have have been given the Canadians business for a very long time, from Vancouver all the way over to Nova Scotia. From what I've heard, the biggest challenge there, though, is that there's the communication that isn't happening because, yes, we don't know who to talk to. And if we know there's a problem, we don't know who to talk to get it fixed. That could be an issue.
Mark Bridgeman:Yes, and you know, with the drones, and I know this is part of the reason, when drones first came on the scene with law enforcement and they were dropping packages, care packages to the inmates. Drone would fly over. And, you know, they enacted legislation. But you can enact legislation all day long, but it's not going to be you're not going to prevent the activity, right?
Carter F. Smith:There's legislation that says you can't go 25 and at 15, and people still do it
Mark Bridgeman:absolutely, you know. But with the drone technology that gives us another, you know, because the payloads are becoming more and more, you know. And if you talk about how they package the product, you know, with the fentanyl and the Fury fentanyl nano drugs and a lot of other things, that it's pretty much a very small payload that could affect, you know, hundreds and 1000s, 10 1000s of people, sure. Yeah. If it's exposed, and
Carter F. Smith:that's both in and out of prison, obviously, yes. In addition to that, technology such as cryptocurrency technology, surveillance technology, the improvised or the improved digital surveillance technology you can get for under $100 a video setup that will give you surveillance on your house, yes, and send it to your phone in real time. Ring. I can only, I can only imagine a number of opportunities that criminals it's
Mark Bridgeman:kind of funny, working the bikers in and around Fayetteville. There was a number of them that had, and this going back into the early 90s. They had cameras set up. One of the individuals that later on became one of the first Hell's Angels, you know, he was a military intelligence guy, you know, and his vice president, he was a retired Special Forces guy, and they had a certain skill set that they brought to that club, having those the technology, the, basically the cutting edge technology, which you could go on Amazon and pretty much buy it nowadays, you know. And it's relatively
Carter F. Smith:YouTube video and learn how to put it together exactly.
Mark Bridgeman:It's like my podcast skills on what was YouTube? So? Some of these extreme cases, you know, these extremist cases, and I know we're going kind of back and forth, you know, how does the lone wolf, you know, come into play, where you got one individual, or maybe has two or three people that influence them, then all of a sudden they're committing acts of violence because of this ideology, like, what was the name of the group out of Florida, the Adam Waffen Adam waffle? Yes, you know. And they were, they were kind of a flash in the pan. You don't hear about them too much anymore, but they were military, you know, they were trained gang members,
Carter F. Smith:Army, National Guard for the most part. Yes, I don't, with the exception of perhaps Ted Kaczynski, I don't know if there's any real lone wolves that have ever been affected. I'm pretty sure nobody recruited him. Is the only reason I give you that example, but, but Al Qaeda has given us many examples of how no touch, like we went through with covid, right? Non contact recruiting still happens, and nowadays, with the ability, okay, nowadays with social media's ability to recruit people and deny that they're doing it into doing a variety of things, I don't put anything past somebody with very creative skills to be able to recruit somebody to something that they find is very basic and is very impactful. So I would my thought is, if we think it's an isolated incident, we probably aren't digging far enough.
Mark Bridgeman:Yeah, and I agree, and that sometimes that's the limit of the
Carter F. Smith:only got eight hours on shift.
Mark Bridgeman:That's exactly right, and sometimes it's also the. Um, willingness of the detective, agent, investigator, to dig
Carter F. Smith:further well, and as you and I, I'm sure, have seen many times, it's the willingness of the prosecutor, or the needs of the prosecutor to have more. You can only over prove something so many times, if the person is going to do a cop a plea, you don't need to keep proving it. They admit that they Yeah, so there's that, but that that's why prosecutors before Rico always were very bad at prosecuting conspiracies, because there was something in the wording that they found convoluted, and they couldn't make work. Two people, three people, whatever the number is, agree to commit a crime, and one does something in furtherance of that crime. How hard is it?
Mark Bridgeman:Well, oftentimes, prosecutors, you know, they're young, of course, and they're underpaid, and they don't want to be the first one right to prosecute a new law, because they don't want to have, you know, it, be challenged and have it overturned in famous for the rest of their lives Exactly, they don't want to have their name associated with the case, which I understand that because in law enforcement, I always said you don't want your name associated with the policy, right? You know? So we talked a lot about a lot about these street gangs, OMG, extremists, different levels. What is a way that if the military in a perfect world, and I'm talking about all the military criminal investigative organizations, how can they change things for the betterment of communities and law enforcement in the field, is there a mechanism that they can and I know I'm talking about with NCIC, the National Crime Information Center's computer system, and having the violent gang, terrorist organization file. Do you think that would help if they would document that? And I know that's a challenge for, you know, state, federal, local law enforcement to have that same documentation, sure, but you know, to be able to track these, do you think that would be a an enhancer or a way to track these military trained gang members?
Carter F. Smith:I think let me, let me take a step back to answer your question, because one of the things that connects gang members, weirdly connects gang members to extremists, is back in the day when the FBI was investigating the weatherman. Think was right around the Vietnam War.
Mark Bridgeman:Yes, in the 70s, early
Carter F. Smith:70s, yeah, and and the weathermen have none. One of them has ever been prosecuted because their rights were so badly violated that there was nothing you could do to fix it. And the the FBI just basically wrote it off, and that prompted a lot of people going forward to avoid investigating domestic terrorist extremists. They wouldn't keep information on all the things that were prevented because they were done wrong. It was like, let me use my imagination, let me let me avoid doing this and this and this. And somehow that got encapsulated in the process for investigating street gangs, because at the time, we were lumping them all in the same category. They're not in the same category. The weathermen were not prosecuted well because their First Amendment right to associate was violated. Gang members could have that same have that same right they do, because until they behave in such a way, they can think all they want, but behavior in action makes it a crime, and it always has. But we have a bunch of military investigators who are third generation learning from people that have taught them not to do this, not to do that, take this, take the blinders off. If they're committing a crime, or They're conspiring to commit a crime, that's a crime too. You can ask them questions. You can surveil them. You can do a variety of other things. It's not that hard.
Mark Bridgeman:Well, exactly. And I know an army CIDs, regulation 195, one, they have a section for criminal intelligence, and within there they have the gang extremist, you know, Type section. And finally, yeah, exactly 30 years well, and they reference using the violent gang terrorist organization file, which gives a definition of what a gang is. That's a standardized national definition. It also gives the criteria that you use, and it's not hard to prove the criteria. There's eight different criteria, and it's like a gang tattoo, gang signs or symbols, gang hand signs associated with other gang members, criminal activity. You know, it's typical point structure. Yeah, exactly.
Carter F. Smith:The problem with that, though, Marc, is gangs, as we've seen. Do you remember back decades ago when you could teach a basic gang class and it's like, here's the blue gangs, here's the red gangs? Yes, these are more black and blue. These are more red and black. These lean red. That left. These lean right. These use Playboy Bunnies. These use a six pointed star. These that's out the window. And what the gang said, Oh, wait, they're using information that we have provided. Let's stop doing that. Let's all wear T shirts. Let's not have bandanas. Let's be ambidextrous. Let's do a variety of other things. So those points, and I, I that's one that's a very solid way to qualify quantify gang activity, but it's not going to work if they're smart enough to stop using them.
Mark Bridgeman:That's where you have to continually investigate, and that's where the resources come in. And working with military agents and investigators, I found that one of the main complaints from local law enforcement was to get transferred soon as we get a new guy in. That's why we build them. He gets transferred, right? You know, we get him trained up, and we share information. And you know, oftentimes, when they leave that information leaves with them, or you have an individual that does criminal intelligence that's not motivated, right? And they are overworked, or overworked Exactly, yeah, and they'll take your information and like, if I get a validation, let's say from Army Cid, you know? And I get it, you know, they're saying, Hey, we just validated this gang member. I still have to do an independent evaluation based off of the information, right? So it's not like military criminal investigative organization could just get a data dump and say, Oh, we got all these gang members you got to go by individually, because you can't label somebody you know with a tag like that without documentation, because that's very important in the court proceedings.
Carter F. Smith:And the thing about the military, there's, there's, there's a couple different issues with the military that that rarely happened even close to this in the civilian community. The first one is that, as you pointed out, soldiers, sailors, Air Force, airmen, Marines, etc, they leave every once in a while. Yes, and so if you don't have intel on them before three years, yes, you're not gonna You don't have to worry about something.
Mark Bridgeman:CFR, CFR part or
Carter F. Smith:28 part 28 CFR Part 23 the one that makes you flush everything. What is it every five years? Every five not a problem? Well, he, he transferred, yeah, many military agents do that too, and investigators so MPI Cid, until recently, every three years they'd rotate. I was, I was an anomaly. I tried to stay, and I successfully stayed at Fort Campbell for most of my time because I didn't want to keep introducing myself when I needed a favor of something from somebody, right? But then you have the experience of the gang member that they'll take when they transfer, and they'll go somewhere else, and they'll rebuild, and they're exposed to a variety of different things. And then you have the movement of the investigator, and then you have the movement of the prosecutors and the leadership. And then we only have 168 hours in our weeks. God didn't give you 169 or 170 168 70, 168 you can only do this many things. And quite frankly, Cid specifically has said, If you don't have a felony crime that meets our purview, we don't have time for you to dig into things that might result in this massive, large case. We've got these crimes over here that are happening every day, so it's about prioritization as well, absolutely. And if you're not going to do it on your own time or while you're doing other things, it's not going to get done, whether you think it's important or not.
Mark Bridgeman:Yeah, and, and sometimes, well, it depends on who's in charge. Exactly the priorities priorities will shift. Which is, okay, I understand that. Yeah, and some totally understand, and not necessarily military, but I noticed civilian law enforcement that new chief comes in, everything changes, and we don't have a gang problem anymore. You know, we have issues, just like we have traffic congestion gang problem.
Carter F. Smith:You know, there had been, and we've, we've seen that come and go several times in the Nashville area, where fort Campbell's part of and and even where we are now in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is part of and I was at a gang conference the year after 911 as you can imagine, 911 was disruptive in Nashville, Tennessee as well. Of course, the bad part was for the Tennessee gang investigators Association. Our conference was scheduled within a week or two of 911 so when they shut down the airports and then they opened them back up, not too long after that, given what happened, we still had a bunch of police officers who were now terrorist investigators by default, so we had very low turnout. Sadly, the hotel, an otherwise nice hotel, great hotel. They held us to our contract because they didn't see 911 as an act
Mark Bridgeman:of God, and they didn't recognize the force majeure clause. Right, act of God or right?
Carter F. Smith:So I had just returned from law school, and I decided to practice my negotiation skills. And the agreement, what we reached with them was we don't pay extra for this year, and we'll come back next year and spend money. Yeah. That year we came back, everything was good, and in the parking lot of that hotel is where this event happened, there was a bunch of local police officers. Nobody from Davidson County had a gang job at the time, and I think it was pretty recent. Within a couple of weeks, there were all still people who, like me, were investigating whether that's your job or not. Exactly, because you see continued criminal enterprises, you see conspiracy going on, you're going to solve cases, but no assigned department or division or anything like that. One of the outside agencies, not connected to Nashville, but very sympathetic to Nashville, had seen that Ronald surpass the chief of police at the time was there, and a group had gathered around him, talking, and this one enterprising detective said, Hey, Chief surpass, could you answer a question for me, please? He said, Sure, I'd love to. He said, So, hypothetically speaking, and then he hit the nail ahead, hypothetically speaking, if, if I was investigating gangs and I didn't have a gang team in my in my in my jurisdiction, how would I go about successfully doing that, Serpas knew exactly what he was aiming for, and he gave him what he needed, not what he was asking for, but he still answered the question. He said, anytime, and this works even outside of gangs. Sure, any time you have focused on something and identified a problem, you devote the resources you have available to you to that problem, and you address the problem as best you can. You find other people who want to address the problem, in other words, people on your shift or whatever. And you address the problem as best you can. And if you realize that with more assets of any kind, you could better address the problem, you identify the people who can give you those assets, and you show them it's essentially a business model, yeah, right. You show them that, hey, we're addressing 30% of the problem. Now. We can't do any more than that, because here's our here's what we have, here's our resources, etc. If you could help us with funding, manpower, whatever we could get at least up to 70% probably within three or four weeks. Here's the plan, here's where we go. And he said, that's how you do this. There were jaw there were Jaws dropping all around him, like, why didn't I think of that? But it was well put. And I'm not trying to give or take any credit from him, yeah, but that's that's a life lesson that we can implement just about anywhere. Do what you can with what you got and then ask for more, but be prepared to do what you can with what you got if you don't get it
Mark Bridgeman:exactly, and it's okay to ask for help. Yes, and I think that's where the gang investigators association. So Tennessee was early on. I think we formed in 98 North Carolina we formed in 99 and you know, there was other ones, like California gang Association started in the early 70s.
Carter F. Smith:Virginia was earlier Florida, I think, was early on.
Mark Bridgeman:And those were the models that we both used to start.
Carter F. Smith:There's a wonderful thing we don't make. Them make
Mark Bridgeman:all the mistakes exactly, you know, and learning how to, you know, run an organization, and having informational, sharing meetings, not necessarily intelligence, right, sharing information between agencies.
Carter F. Smith:And that was the bonus, because when we'd have the statewide conferences, we had people from East, middle west, I'm sure you said same thing that had never met, yep, but, but lived and worked along a main highway in the United States of America, and realized, Oh, well, we got similar problems. Well, you have our guys drive by you to get to us. Yeah, you have I
Mark Bridgeman:40, runs right through, goes right through North Carolina too.
Carter F. Smith:And we have I 40, we have 65 and we have 24 so we've got three different, three different lines of travel here, yeah, and
Mark Bridgeman:those are routes for drug trafficking.
Carter F. Smith:And you guys have 95 and, yeah, it's 95 businesses like our area for the same reason, gangs like our
Mark Bridgeman:exactly good travel. You know, I would encourage these young agents, you know, to network. That's the biggest thing of going to any of these conferences, any of these trainings, because it's invaluable. And I'm going to touch a little bit about, you know, Department of Corrections and probation and parole, because they're an awesome asset without what we do, because they see things often about crypto and currency and how to do things and Hyatt and communications, and a lot of people don't realize that these inmates, they're supposed to be not have access to cell phones. They get them smuggled in. However, they get them smuggled in, and they have cell phone communication, you know, they get internet communication, and they can keep contact with their gang members. I would
Carter F. Smith:dare say that any law enforcement officer who does not know a corrections officer in his or her jurisdiction is making a mistake, yes, because they don't have near the number of restrictions that cops do. And they they have access, they have access to more data than they know what to do with,
Mark Bridgeman:and they're looking to provide that information to somebody to work out. Because, you know, I've done many, many prison interviews with in this. Security Threat group. Sergeant supervisor set up the interview, and oftentimes the inmate would be go on a medical, you know, so we would have a chance to sit down and talk like we're talking here, right? And I would get valuable information. A lot of it was already verified, but it's good to corroborate what was already provided agreed, you know.
Carter F. Smith:And probation officers are valuable. It's time to buy them lunch and dinner at least once a week. I'm just, you know, oh, make your job
Mark Bridgeman:so much easier. And I'll give a shout out to a friend of ours, Lou patalano. He's the one that taught me of the value of buying lunches, good deal, you know. And you know,
Carter F. Smith:whether networking, whether the business is
Mark Bridgeman:paying for it or not. Well, I didn't know that he had an account that he paid for those launches, so I felt a little slighted when I bought his lunch, you know, after I found that's okay, but Lou's a good guy. So we're getting towards the end of our talk here, you know, and you're gonna have a lot of young, you know, individuals, you'd have some seasoned guys. Quite frankly, this going out all over the internet and whoever watched it. But you know, I know my youngest son, he's involved in law enforcement. He's in it for about eight years now. You know, and you know, there's lessons to be learned. You know, what are some of the lessons that you would tell a young officer, agent, Detective, investigator, you know to do, I
Carter F. Smith:would suggest that you learn what you can learn from everybody around you, master the limitations and work within them. Yes, don't break the rules, but don't be artificially limited by rules that don't exist. Best example I can I can give you, and this relates to gangs, but it relates to all investigations. I teach, and have taught with people, and I've been to law school, but I never sat for the bar, and I never practiced a day in my life because I didn't want to have the lobotomy. But I've taught with several lawyers, and every single one of them gets this question from me when we first talk, so what do you know about the Constitution? And they look at me like, look, I had constitutional law like you did. And then some variation of this conversation. So when I teach the Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment, in my classes, I go through the obligatory here's how this works. You've got to describe with particularity. You got to do this. You got to do that. Are you of the belief that if a 55 inch television is stolen, I can't go in a kitchen drawer for evidence? Yes, yeah, that's part of the foundation of the law. I said Au contraire. When was the last time you misplaced your remote? Because I'm telling you, if the TV gets stolen, I'm thinking the remote might be stolen, and if I can't find it, that sucker is going on the search warrant, correct? It's about creativity, but more than that, it's about imagination. If you can imagine, and it's almost an exercise, it can be an exercise in futility if we're if we can't imagine not committing a crime. Do you know I'm saying, I believe we all make a daily decision to do the right thing, probably hourly, for most of us. So let yourself imagine being a criminal, and then see what you would do, because you might be smarter than them. You might be able to get ahead of them, proactive, work right and catch them while they're committing a crime and shut that one down for a while, sure, but creativity and imagination will take you so much further. And the sad part about is when we're brought up, when we're raised, we are taught that imagination is not a good thing. I had an aunt. I nicknamed her Matilda, because I don't know anybody named Matilda, but I tell my students, I bet you had an aunt Matilda. I came up with the most genius idea on the planet when I was 11, and she was a trusted confidant. I told aunt Matilda about this brilliant idea I had. It wasn't a million dollar blah, blah, blah. It was just a great idea. You know what she had the audacity to say, oh, Carter, you have such a vivid imagination. And you know what that means? And Aunt Matilda speak, that means that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Where'd you get that crap from? I tell my students, no, you've got to get an imagination that is bulletproof. I don't care if other people don't understand it, you've got to have that's how we're talking today. I'd have given this I'd have given up talking about this topic in the early 90s if I hadn't had them, if I didn't know that it was a possibility, right? And the other thing you got to have is the ability to admit defeat, yes, but figure out how to do it better the next time we in law enforcement have such a a foundation of I'm right. I liken it to this. I'm a cop. I'm always right. I've got to be always right other than I want to. I wouldn't have said it. Now that's an introvert saying that, but it's that's the mindset we put on this force field in the morning and we go out and we're not quite bulletproof that we think we are, but we're definitely offensive proof, and we're definitely be wrong proof, and we're all those other proofs, because we have this force field. Up there, you've got to know when it's okay to be human. Yes, you've got to know when it's okay to admit your mistakes. In fact, I dare say admitting mistakes are way better, because if imagine the worst case scenario, imagine you're on the stand, imagine there's a line of questioning, and you see the defense attorney on question number six, and you look at question number eight or nine, and you think, dang, I forgot that one policy thing, not not an evidence thing. I forgot that one policy thing doesn't mean the bad guy didn't do it. Doesn't mean none of that stuff if that defense attorney, they never do. But if that defense attorney gets to that question, you have better give the right answer, and the right answer is the truth. Exactly right. Too many people have an inclination to, oh no, let me explain that no. Just yes or no. Let's just go there, yeah.
Mark Bridgeman:And usually, if it gets into a yes or no, the judge will say, please let the right. You know, the witness explain right? You know that's you have a good judge. Hope, yes, yeah. And, you know, I find the reasonable, prudent person standard, you know, and how do you articulate?
Carter F. Smith:Quite good articulation is another critical state, critical skill set.
Mark Bridgeman:You know, they have the reasonable articulable suspicion. Because many, many times the defense attorney or other people want to know what was your probable cause for doing X, Y and Z, I didn't have probable cause. I had reasonable articulable suspicion, right? Then you have to be able
Carter F. Smith:to explain that I share with my students, that articulation is also another critical skill, and I explain it this way. Articulation is the ability to take this long to explain something you decided in this much time. That's exactly right. You accept you decided it because it was the right thing. You just don't know why you decided. Well, guess what? Now you have time to figure that out. You don't need to know why you decided. When you decided it. You need to know when you're going to be asked. So sometime after that happens, sit down, talk to yourself and figure out, now, why did I do that? And when you figure it out, that's what you talk about. It's real simple. Yeah, it's not lying. It's figuring out
Mark Bridgeman:the truth exactly you know and how you articulate it. One of the common things is, you know officers, well, I patted the individual down for officer safety. Now, when I was a supervisor, I would ask them, what did that individual do that made you feel unsafe? Explain that to me. Well, we were in a high crime area, there were shots fired. I said, well, that needs to be in your report. Yes, you know, yes, Carter, we're winding down. I really appreciate your time and your expertise, and I think this should be a regular on the podcast, because new things come up all the time. We don't necessarily. Although I love coming to visit Tennessee. It's a great state. Every guest that comes here, you know, we talk about the four pillars and the podcast, you know, the sacrifice, the service, the strength, the support that we all need in our profession, right? You know, and you're the epitome of all those pillars that help support, you know, the criminal justice element and working these types of cases. So everybody gets a coin that comes on the podcast today. You get different one awesome. This is from the North Carolina gang investigators Association, very much
Buzz Burbank:sponsored by the North Carolina gang investigators Association an ironic media production. Visit us at I R O N, I C, K, media.com you.