Juveniles finding guns in unlocked cars remains a problem, Hinesville Police Chief Tracey Howard said Tuesday.

Speaking to the Hinesville Rotary Club, Howard said Hinesville is not immune to the kind of activity that took place last week at the Oglethorpe Mall. In fact, it was the HPD’s investigation that led to a broader and more encompassing investigation that ended with 30 indictments of the Sex, Money, Murder gang.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office issued indictments in May to 30 people on eight counts, with charges including racketeering (RICO) conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and related firearm and drug trafficking crimes.

“That all started right here with the Hinesville Police Department,” Chief Howard said. “We realized it was regional, so went to the GBI.”

From there, law enforcement officers discovered it was also an operation that crossed state lines, and that brought in the FBI and the ATF.

“It’s quite involved,” Chief Howard said.

According to the indictment, gang members lured a fellow gang member seeking to get out of the organization to a meeting. The victim was picked up a few hours after he stepped off a school bus, having gotten a text from his gang “big brother” about a gang meeting he needed to attend. The victim got into the vehicle but instead of going to a meeting, he was taken to a rural residential neighborhood, where a gang member shot and killed him.

The indictments and any arrests that follow are expected to have an impact, according to Chief Howard.

“I anticipate there is going to be a large reduction in criminal activity,” he said.

Meanwhile, communities are dealing with rising juvenile gun violence and the regional youth detention centers in Savannah and Claxton are full, Howard said. There is a push to build more RYDCs, but those two will be at full capacity in short order, the chief said.

Juveniles no longer break the glass of vehicles in order to get into them, Chief Howard said. They simply pull on a car door and if no alarm is triggered and the door is unlocked, they will go into those vehicles. And they only spend about 30 seconds inside the car looking for valuables or weapons.

A spate of shooting incidents in Hinesville several weeks ago was attributed to juveniles.

“These 14-, 15- and 16-year-old kids are stealing guns out of people’s cars and shooting each other,” the chief said.

HPD investigators recently recovered eight of 13 guns stolen by three people from a local gun shop. But one hurdle law enforcement keeps running into is from the victims.

“We get people who are getting shot and who aren’t saying anything,” Chief Howard said.

The solution to juvenile crime, the chief said, lies with the community. The community also can have a hand in solving the homeless problem Hinesville encounters, he added.

Some of the homeless are those whose situations are temporary and are between places to stay, Chief Howard said. Others, though, work a circuit from Savannah to Hinesville to Brunswick, using up benefits and resources in each city before those run out and moving on to another locale.

The answers, the chief said, again are within the community’s reach.

“We need to get people involved to fix it,” he said.