From CID to Classroom: How Army Investigators View Gangs Differently Than Street Cops:

I didn’t set out to study gangs when I joined the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. I wanted to chase bad guys, same as any investigator. But after a few years at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, it became obvious that “bad guys” didn’t always work alone—and when they did work together, they moved like they’d been trained. Because many of them had.

The difference between street cops and CID agents isn’t just jurisdiction or rank—it’s mindset. Street cops are trained to think in the immediate: who did what, who’s on the corner today, who’s driving that car that wasn’t here last week. It’s tactical thinking, and it works for patrol, especially in dense urban environments. But CID investigators, especially in military towns, start looking for connections the moment the badge comes out. That’s not a criticism—it’s a byproduct of the mission. When a soldier gets into trouble, we’re taught to assume there’s more to the story than one bad decision.

At Campbell, gang cases weren’t just about who threw up a sign or flashed a color. They were about who was moving weapons, who was laundering money through military surplus sales, who was bringing military tactics into civilian groups trained for race war. Gangs on base didn’t look like the ones back home on the block. They wore the same uniforms as everyone else, but their loyalty was elsewhere. The signs were subtle—tattoos hidden under sleeves, coded language in conversations, small shifts in behavior off duty.

What I noticed then, and still see now, is that most civilian law enforcement wasn’t trained to read those signs. The average patrol officer, including military police, sees a fight in the barracks or a shooting outside a club and thinks impulse crime. An investigator with military experience looks for hierarchy: who gave the order, who benefitted, who’s protecting whom.

That perspective shaped how I teach today. When I walk into a classroom, I don’t just want students to know what gangs are—I want them to understand how networks form, how power operates within them, and why leadership matters whether you’re running a platoon or a criminal crew. Most importantly, I want them to know that gang members in the military aren’t new, they’re just better trained. And that makes them more dangerous.

I wrote Gangs and the Military because no one else was willing to put it in writing. People wanted to believe that military service cleans up a gang member. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it just teaches them better tactics.

For those who want to understand how military training influences gang structure—and what that means for communities and law enforcement—start by thinking like an investigator, not just an officer.

If you want to read more about my work on gangs and military service, you can find it at carterfsmith.com.