Winston-Salem police look for way to stop criminal enterprises recruiting juveniles

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (WGHP) — In July, Winston-Salem police sent out a press release detailing what was described as a “Continuing Criminal Enterprise,” saying officers charged seven people in connection to 16 separate criminal offenses dating from May 2023 to Feb. 2024.

Of those seven charged, five of them were juveniles.

“A lot of the criminal enterprise stuff is gang-related, so they’re all connected together,” said Sergeant Adam Prim, of the Winston-Salem Police Department’s gang unit.

The cases were mostly connected to firearm-related offenses and motor vehicle larcenies and vandalism.

“We’ve had intelligence about 10-year-olds getting jumped into these gangs,” Prim said.

The WSPD estimates there are thousands of gang members who beling to more than 50 gangs in the city.

“We’re seeing people come here from Mexico recruiting hard on the Hispanic side of the gangs,” Prim said.

His unit is not only tasked with identifying and tracking gang members but also getting the most dangerous members off the streets and preventing the youngest generations from getting involved in them.

“If we don’t get a hold of these guys until they’re 15, 16, their mind is pretty much set, and they’re on a path that’s really hard to turn them around,” Prim said.

In recent years, local law enforcement agencies have detailed issues with keeping juvenile offenders within the juvenile justice system. They often say young criminals end up being released back to their parents without any real consequences.

That’s beginning to change.

“Juvenile Justice has been working with us better lately,” Prim said.

As a result, Forsyth County agencies say overall violent crime is down in the county.

“The problem is violent crime among juveniles is what’s on the rise, and that’s what we need to be concerned about,” Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill said.

For example, O’Neill said when it comes to vehicle thefts, juveniles are committing 38% of the crimes despite being only 6% of the population.

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

In turn, officials believe there’s an increased fear of incarceration.

“You’ve got kids driving stolen cars … Police approach the window. The first thing the 16-year-old says to law enforcement is, ‘I’m only 16 years old. Take me home. Otherwise, you’re going to have to get dragged through the juvenile process with me,’” O’Neill said. “The gangs understand that if they have juveniles commit their shootings, they have to go through this juvenile court process, which is lengthy and arduous.”

O’Neill believes more help is coming from the legislature in the form of House Bill 834. He says the bill would make it so any juvenile who commits an A-E felony in the state would automatically go into adult court.

It was originally filed in the house in April 2023 but was vetoed by Governor Roy Cooper in June 2024 with Cooper arguing it would begin “to erode our bipartisan ‘Raise the Age’ law we agreed to four years ago.”

The veto was overridden by both the House and Senate.

“If you take those juveniles that are driving violent crime and pluck them out of our communities, violent crime goes down,” O’Neill said. “It’s just simple math.”

The WSPD’s gang and gun crime reduction units were recently named Gang Unit of the Year at the North Carolina Gang Investigators Association at the NCGIA’s Gangs Across the Carolina’s Gang and Violent Crime Conference.

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