Last year, unlike most other Council candidates who wanted to reactively deploy our additional police resources downtown in a show of force that was more “feel-good” than strategic, I called for enhancing our forces expertise in “gang management”.

For the last few years, gangs, mostly from outside our community, have been involved in some of the worst incidents our force has faced. While it’s speculated that the recent Avalon shooting might be gang related, we know for sure that the shootings during this years After Chill (after Apple Chill) were associated with gang activity. Developing expertise now would be both tactical and strategic.

Well, earlier this year we put the extra-forces downtown sans gang management support. Troubling.

The good news is that as of today “the Chapel Hill police will focus on developing gang expertise among certain officers.”

Chapel Hill’s Capt. Chris Blue says that while we don’t have an epidemic, just, to-date, a presence, the force will take steps to pro-actively address the gang issue. I met Capt. Blue during this Spring’s WCHL Downtown discussion (where I once again brought up the gang issue) and was impressed by his desire to “work the issue”.

More from today’s N&O.