The sheriffs of Orange, Durham, Alamance and Guilford counties came together Wednesday morning at the Durham County courthouse to brief the public on what they deemed a “Multi-Front Strike Team.” According to a release from the Durham County Sheriff’s Office, the aim of the strike team is to “identify offenders who commit crimes across county boundaries,” specifically the Interstate 85/Interstate 40 corridor.
“The concept of this initiative is not a new one,” Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood said at the press conference. “In fact, law enforcement agencies working together in teams or as a task force is has been around as long as I’ve been in law enforcement. That’s 42 years.”
This specific collaboration between the four counties began in September 2020. Between then and December 2021, the strike teams made a combined 199 arrests leading to 859 charges in Orange County alone. The team seized 81 firearms, 250 grams of heroin and more than $300,000, also just in Orange County. Gun violence and drug trafficking were and still are a top priority of the strike team, with Blackwood particularly focusing on guns.
“We set out to create this task force for the sole purpose of going after the violent gun offenders,” he said.
“It’s all about public safety,” Blackwood went on to say. “You should be able to let your child go to school and know that they’re not gonna get caught in crossfire. You should know that a bus driver shouldn’t have to take an evasive action to keep the children on that bus safe from a gunfight. You should be able to go to a restaurant with your family and eat, and know that you’re not gonna get caught in a gunfight. We are trying to stop that.”
Each of the four sheriffs expressed optimism at the effects of the strike team, but Blackwood said he believes more still needs to be done.
“We’re making some progress,” he said. “But we need the collective effort of our communities, our judicial officials, and our public.”
And while the strike team in its current form is only in operation along the I-85/I-40 corridor, Blackwood seemed open the possibility of further collaboration elsewhere in North Carolina.
“If there’s another sheriff out there that wants to extend [the strike force’s] jurisdiction for us, we’d invite them to do that,” Blackwood said.
Due to the active nature of the strike team’s various investigations, the sheriffs did not to into detail about the nature of their strategy. The quartet did explain that traffic stops would remain in their current form; for example, an Alamance County officer would not stop a motorist in Orange County. Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead referenced a “list” of known offenders in the area the strike team would be using to conduct their investigations.
“I don’t go to Orange County to work traffic,” Birkhead said. “This is not about working traffic. This is not about setting up a license checkpoint. This is about going after those folks that we know are committing crimes.”
Wednesday’s press conference was held just more than a month after an April 9 incident in Durham in which an unmarked vehicle carrying Durham and Alamance County deputies took gunfire outside Oxford Manor, a public housing complex. No one was injured. Prior to that night, neither Birkhead nor any of the other sheriff’s offices had confirmed the existence of the strike team. At a forum of sheriff candidates four days later, Birkhead acknowledged the team as a “regional partnership,” according to Indy Week.
“No arrest has been made,” Birkhead said of the Oxford Manor incident at the press conference Wednesday. “We’ve put out a reward for information leading to the identification and arrest of those responsible for shooting into that vehicle. We are committed to identifying them and bringing them to justice.
“In our mind, there was no threat,” Birkhead went on to say. “So why was this vehicle, unmarked, fired upon?”
At the time of the incident, the Durham County Sheriff’s Office said the deputies were working on an “active and ongoing investigation.”
This case and others like it are under the jurisdiction of the strike team, and are ones which the four sheriff’s offices hope to resolve quickly. According to the Gun Violence Archive, North Carolina has experienced 230 instances of gun violence in 2022, after seeing 778 such instances in 2021.
Birkhead is running for re-election to the Durham County Sheriff’s Office this year. Blackwood is running un-opposed in Orange County.
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