Police, sheriff combine forces
By John Joyce
Published in News on March 2, 2016 1:46 PM
Wayne County's two largest law enforcement agencies -- the Goldsboro Police Department and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office -- are combining forces to combat violent crime with a new joint-force initiative.
The Regional Enforcement and Crime Targeting Team, otherwise known as the REACT team, will combine the efforts of the police department's Selective Enforcement Unit and the sheriff's office Aggressive Criminal Enforcement teams.
Interim police chief Michael West said the idea was born out of the recent Operation Team Effort campaign that brought the two agencies together -- along with ALE, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Marshals Service -- to clamp down on violent offenders in Wayne County.
"This came out of a discussion (Sheriff) Larry (Pierce) and I had a while back about the sheriff's office helping out with our manpower shortages to cover those 'hot spot' areas," West said.
The REACT team will focus primarily on areas within the city limits that are prone to gun violence and heightened drug activity, but operations will also extend into the county.
"If the opportunity comes up that (Sheriff) Larry (Pierce) finds he needs our assistance out there in the county, then that is something we are going to do," West said.
Pierce said there will be specific areas in the county targeted as well, but none that he could identify publicly.
"They will be doing some operations that will be visible, and they will be doing some operations that will be more clandestine," Pierce said.
He said the REACT team would operate more as a "special operations group" than as a separate shift of some kind.
"They aren't going to be out there every day," he said. "They might work different days of the week, they might work at different times, they might work out in the open and they might do some things where they are not so visible."
West said the police department is currently down 15 positions, with four new hires in training now and additional recruits being looked at now. The department's SEU unit consists of four officers including a sergeant, which works four days a week.
West said the sheriff's office now has two ACE team shifts which work seven days a week.
The (SEU) guys will kind of mirror their schedules," he said.
There are no specific target areas outlined yet within the city the REACT team will focus on, West said, but the focus will be on areas known to have large quantities of shots fired reports, high levels of drug activity and numerous complaints called in from the community.
"This is something that is going to be driven by the community, by citizen complaints," West said. "And it is going to be sustained. This is not something that we are going to abandon once we get back up to speed our manpower."