TIFTON — The Tift County Schools security team has been diligently on the lookout for gang activity in their school system.

Officers Brandon Johnson and Mark Wynn of the school system’s safety and security department came before the board during their Sep. 12 meeting to give them an update on the gang issues prevailing the county’s educational facilities.

The officers reported that many of the active gangs in the county were sub-gangs, offshoots of other more notorious groups, with the 6’s, a successor to the Bloods, and the Crip 30s and 60s being among the most prevalent.

Johnson stated that 60 students had been confirmed to have known affiliation to a gang. Faculty, staff, and other students had identified an additional 51 students as being suspected of affiliation with a gang based on their behavior, characteristics, or associations, but investigation had not confirmed a connection.

Gang-related hand gestures and tags were noted as being particularly common in TCS schools, sometimes being reported daily. Johnson presented a list of common gang signs and tags for the board members and staff in the room to watch out for, and warned them to keep an eye out for tags hidden in bathrooms.

The officers unfortunately reported that gang activity had been identified in their elementary schools, but commended the TCS transportation department for mitigating the spread as much as possible by separating elementary school students from the older classes on bus routes.

In terms of criminal activity, Johnson clarified that while there had been 21 incidents of gun-related events involving someone that is suspected of being or is a known gang member, none of these had happened on any school campus. He proudly attributed this to the dedication and diligence of TCS faculty and staff.

Johnson recommended that if a student is identified as being involved with a gang, the best course of action would be to talk with them about their life or home situation that may have led them to joining the gang and try to convince them to make a better choice.

If that failed, the next step would be to contact the parents to provide the children with support needed for them to make better decisions. Law enforcement should only be called as a last resort.

Johnson stressed that this update wasn’t only to highlight the problems they were dealing with, but to properly address those problems and ensure the appropriate time and energy was dedicated to fixing them. He asserted that the security team’s goal was to encourage character growth and evolution, arguing that no student was truly a lost cause.

At the conclusion of the presentation, board member Rusty Harrelson asked if training could be implemented for faculty and staff so they would be better able to identify gang presence or activity. The officers assured him and the rest of the board that TCS principals are regularly briefed on that information, and from there, the teachers are educated as well.

The security team asserted that they were working to be as proactive with the information they received as possible, so as to curb the problem of gang activity before it even becomes one.