State gang task force meets in Raleigh to curb violence

State officials gathered in Raleigh on Tuesday to push the Gang Prevention and Intervention Task Force beyond broad talk and toward a response to gang activity that can be measured in arrests prevented, youth reached and violence reduced.

The 20-member task force, created by Gov. Josh Stein in August 2025 through Executive Order 21, met from 9 a.m. to noon at 1201 Front Street and was livestreamed for the public and media. The body sits within the Governor’s Crime Commission and is co-chaired by Department of Adult Correction Secretary Leslie Cooley Dismukes and North Carolina Office of Violence Prevention Director Siarra Scott.

The meeting came as state leaders continue to cite rising youth gang activity. A 2025 Governor’s Crime Commission report warned that gang involvement among young people was increasing, and juvenile gang offenses climbed from 397 in 2020 to 587 in 2024, according to NIBRS data cited by CBS17. FBI gang activity data from 2021 through 2024 showed aggravated assault was the most common offense in gang-related incidents, weapons were used in 80.4% of those cases, and victims and offenders were most often ages 13 to 16.

The Raleigh agenda reflected that mix of prevention, intervention and enforcement. Organizers scheduled remarks from Whitney Brown Tune, mother of Jaleeyah “Lee Lee” Tune, along with updates from the task force’s prevention, intervention and enforcement work groups. Andrea DeSantis of the N.C. Department of Commerce was set to present on workforce development, while Cindy Porterfield of the N.C. Department of Public Safety was scheduled to discuss juvenile justice crime prevention councils.

That lineup points to the central question now facing state leaders: which interventions will be funded and which will be judged failures if youth recruitment and violence do not fall. Stein has said the state needs to address the “root causes of violence” and use a “public health lens,” while Dismukes and Scott have framed the effort as a collaborative, data-driven push that brings together law enforcement, schools, health agencies and community organizations.

Wake County has a direct stake in the outcome. The North Carolina Office of Violence Prevention released a 2025 Wake County Violence Profile as part of county fact sheets for all 100 counties, underscoring the local demand for prevention strategies that reach beyond Raleigh city limits and into the neighborhoods, schools and agencies that shape whether young people are pulled into violence or kept out of it.

The task force is scheduled to meet again on July 28, 2026, with pressure mounting for concrete benchmarks that show whether the state’s newest anti-gang effort is more than another forum for concern.