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Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: The initiative that enabled the creation of FBI-led task forces designed to mitigate the threat from the nation’s most violent gangs marks its 25th anniversary.

As the country’s lead law enforcement agency responsible for aggressively investigating the most violent gangs that plague our communities, the FBI oversees 169 Violent Gang Safe Streets Task Forces.

The task forces are composed of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that disrupt and dismantle prison, motorcycle, and street gangs nationwide and beyond.

Supervisory Special Agent Chris Tremblay says the task forces made nearly 6,000 arrests last year alone.

Chris Tremblay: Our Safe Streets Task Forces are intelligence-driven, and our agents use sophisticated techniques to not only target these gangs but also to disrupt and dismantle them.

Halpern: Despite being smaller and less organized than more established criminal gangs, neighborhood gangs are currently the greatest threat in our nation’s cities.

Tremblay: They might only own two neighborhood blocks and they want to start expanding, so they have to start doing violent acts to gain that exposure from the other gangs and/or recruit more people.

Halpern: Tremblay adds that gangs are contributing to the nation’s heroin epidemic.

To learn more about the FBI’s strategy for combating the gang threat, visit www.fbi.gov. With FBI, This Week, I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau.