Analysis and digests
Profiles, history, analysis and the Daily Intel Digest: longer reads built from the same graded source register.
This morning's summary covers recent developments regarding state-level organized crime indictments, ongoing law enforcement actions against illegal weapons possession, and judicial updates concerning historic prison unrest.
This briefing reviews recent activity involving state-level narcotics trafficking indictments, law enforcement operations, and ongoing judicial proceedings related to South Carolina's security threat landscape.
State authorities have announced a major indictment against a criminal organization operating in the Midlands, highlighting the ongoing intersection between regional drug trafficking and gang activity involving SCDC inmates.
This briefing summarizes recent developments in South Carolina regarding organized criminal activity, gang-related violence, and institutional security challenges.
State law enforcement dismantles a multi-county narcotics trafficking and criminal enterprise involving 25 suspects, including incarcerated individuals.
This morning's summary covers recent developments in South Carolina regarding gang violence, criminal judicial proceedings, and public institutional security incidents observed over the last few weeks.
This update reviews recent security developments across South Carolina, focusing on prison sentencing, regional gang activity trends, and public discourse surrounding historical hate group artifacts.
This morning's briefing reviews recent developments in South Carolina regarding gang activity, criminal justice proceedings, and public discourse surrounding historical extremist materials.
A review of recent security incidents and gang-related legal developments across South Carolina, focusing on ongoing trends in Greenville and recent judicial actions regarding prison violence.
This morning's intelligence briefing covers recent gang-related criminal incidents, updates on prison riot legal proceedings, and public concerns regarding historic extremist artifacts in South Carolina.
This briefing reviews recent security developments across South Carolina, focusing on criminal justice outcomes, violent incidents, and recent public discourse involving hate group artifacts.
No new reports regarding gang activity or security threats were filed overnight. This update reviews the most recent trends in South Carolina concerning gang-related violence and judicial developments.
South Carolina officials have dismantled a major drug trafficking pipeline linked to Mexican cartels, resulting in over 30 indictments across the Lowcountry.
This briefing covers a recent firearm-related arrest in Charleston County involving a convicted felon.
A federal investigation that began with North Charleston street gangs in 2017 worked up the supply chain to Atlanta and Mexico. 26 people are now charged.
A state grand jury has indicted 31 defendants on 59 charges in a multi-year case that officials tie to Mexican cartel supply routes and Lowcountry gangs.
State prisons can now use targeted jamming of contraband phones. Here is why South Carolina pushed for it and where its limits are.
What the site covers, how to use it, and the sourcing standard every entry meets.
This timeline records Security Threat Group activity in South Carolina from national origins in the 1960s and 1970s through October 14, 2026, drawn from court opinions, prosecutor releases and news reports. It traces the June 16, 1995 SCDC designation of the Five Percenters, the 2007 Criminal Gang Prevention Act, the April 15, 2018 Lee Correctional riot, and federal and State Grand Jury cases built on inmates' use of contraband cell phones.
The citation rules, the A to D grade scale, the source checks and the naming policy.
Federal court records state that the Bloods formed in Los Angeles in the 1970s and that the United Blood Nation was created on Rikers Island, New York, in 1993. In South Carolina, federal and state prosecutors have charged members of UBN-lineage sets including the Gangsta Killer Bloods/G-Shine, Billie East Side Bloods and Nine Trey Gangsters, along with Piru sets such as Elm Street Piru and Fruit Town Piru. Bloods sets also appear in public reporting on South Carolina prisons, including the 2018 Lee Correctional Institution riot.
Public court and prosecution records place Piru-named Bloods sets in South Carolina from at least 2001, including South Side Piru and Fruit Town Piru in the Charleston area, 900 Boyz / O31 Piru in Florence, 135 Piru in Sumter, Elm Street Piru across the Upstate and Pee Dee, and Tree Top Piru. Recorded cases include a 2010 State Grand Jury gang indictment, a 2017 federal witness-murder conspiracy indictment, and a 2021 appellate ruling on gang evidence. As of October 2026, a Fruit Town Piru-linked federal drug case in North Charleston (26 charged) and a state cartel case citing Piru Bloods asso
The Crips are a Los Angeles-origin street gang whose South Carolina sets appear in court records and prosecutions from 2002 onward, with named sets in Columbia (Rollin 60s), North Charleston and Greenville (Rollin 20s) and Myrtle Beach (Rollin 90s). Federal and state cases from 2020 through 2026 have charged Crips members alongside Bloods and Gangster Disciples, and a 2019 Post and Courier investigation described the Crips as the first national gang to establish itself in South Carolina prisons.
The Gangster Disciples are a Chicago-origin street gang, founded in the early 1970s under Larry Hoover, whose Folk Nation alliance has had a documented South Carolina presence since at least the 2001 NDIC threat assessment. Public records place GD and Folk sets in Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Myrtle Beach, Sumter, Orangeburg, Laurens and the Allendale-Barnwell corridor, and federal prosecutors charged GD-associated defendants in Columbia (2020), West Columbia (2023), Myrtle Beach (2024) and Charleston (2025-2026). Inside SCDC, the group was identified in the 2018 Lee Correctional riot and i
The Insane Gangster Disciples (IGD), described by federal prosecutors as a branch of the nationwide Folk Nation gang, were the target of the largest federal racketeering conspiracy in South Carolina history: a 147-count superseding indictment of 40 defendants announced on 2020-12-10. Prosecutors said three South Carolina sets, each with its own leader, were run from inside SCDC by inmates using contraband cell phones to direct methamphetamine trafficking, firearms sales, a kidnapping that ended in murder, and other violence. All 40 defendants pleaded guilty; set leader James Robert Peterson re
Federal appellate opinions describe the Latin Kings as a nationwide gang organized in local tribes and group them with other People Nation affiliates. In South Carolina the public record is thin: local agency gang lists from 2005 and 2007, a 2019 Charleston County manslaughter plea by a man the Solicitor said is affiliated with the Latin Kings, and a 2008 SLED statement describing a Hampton County murder defendant as an "Insane Vice Lord."
The South Carolina Department of Corrections designated the Five Percenters, also called the Nation of Gods and Earths, a Security Threat Group on 1995-06-16 after a January 1995 assault on officers at Allendale and an April 1995 riot and hostage-taking at Broad River. Roughly 300 inmates were moved to segregation, releasable on renunciation. The Fourth Circuit upheld the designation in 1999 (174 F.3d 464), and later cases, including Incumaa v. Stirling (2015), show the designation still in effect while most validated members lived in general population.
Public records place MS-13, a gang that DOJ says originated in Los Angeles among people of Salvadoran descent, in several South Carolina counties from 2006 onward, mainly through local police statements and arrests of people wanted elsewhere. The main South Carolina federal case is the 2008 West Columbia murder-for-hire, in which two MS-13 members were convicted in 2011 and sentenced to life. The State Department designated MS-13 a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February 2025.
Public reporting places Surenos (Sur 13), Nortenos, Vatos Locos, 18th Street, Neta and Latin Kings members or graffiti in Charleston, Dorchester, Lexington, Horry, York, Spartanburg, Greenville, Greenwood and Richland counties from 2005 forward. Most South Carolina records are 2007 to 2012 news reports of ICE-led arrests, graffiti and sheriff's office gang lists; the most recent prosecutorial record is the Attorney General's August 24, 2026 Operation Last Stand announcement citing 18th Street associations.
Public South Carolina cases from 2020 through 2026 describe local and regional drug trafficking organizations supplied by Mexican cartels, CJNG among them, in Horry, York, the Upstate and the Charleston area. Tren de Aragua appears in South Carolina public records mainly through ICE statements, a 2025 Summerville shoplifting case and the 2026 Operation Last Stand indictments, which name it as an association, not a charged membership. Since February 20, 2025, TdA, CJNG, Sinaloa and CDN have been designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is an outlaw motorcycle gang that DOJ describes as having more than 230 chapters in the United States and 26 foreign countries. In South Carolina, federal prosecutors documented the South Carolina Nomads (Rock Hell City Nomad) charter operating between Lexington and Rock Hill, whose June 7, 2012 indictment produced 16 convictions, with four appeals affirmed by the Fourth Circuit on February 25, 2015. Public reporting also documents a Myrtle Beach charter, clubhouses in Spartanburg and Anderson, and the Red Devils as a support club, with incidents reported throu
Federal court records and Justice Department releases place the Outlaws (a Rock Hill clubhouse in 2008) and the Pagans (a territorial conflict with the Hells Angels recorded in a 1999 appeals opinion, and a 2021 Aiken County drug stop) in South Carolina. Sheriffs and local news document the Warlocks across the Midlands and Pee Dee, and the Outcast, Thunderguards, Wheels of Soul, Red Devils, Black Jacks and other clubs in cases from Chester to Charleston. Hells Angels are covered in a separate profile.
The Post and Courier reported in 2019 that white supremacists of the Aryan Brotherhood and Aryan Nations were present in South Carolina prisons, and a 2016 Horry County Police presentation placed the Aryan Brotherhood in that county. The public court record for SC defendants is thin: federal releases name an Aryan Nations national leader formerly of Lexington County and a Kirkland inmate who invoked Aryan Nations and the Aryan Brotherhood in threats against presidents from 2014 to 2026, and a Union County couple pleaded guilty in killings tied to the skinhead gang Crew 41.
The Ghostface Gangsters are a whites-only prison gang that federal prosecutors say formed in 2000 in the Cobb County, Georgia jail system. Its documented South Carolina footprint in public sources is limited to eight Aiken County residents charged in Georgia's 2021 Operation Kibosh and two 2023 federal fugitives reported to have South Carolina ties.
Public records document Ku Klux Klan flyering and a 2015 Statehouse rally, Patriot Front propaganda and a March 1, 2025 Statehouse march, and SPLC listings of Patriot Front, the Proud Boys and other white nationalist groups in South Carolina. Federal prosecutions in the District of South Carolina include the Emanuel AME Church case against Dylann Roof and later cases in which defendants expressed white supremacist views or sought help from white supremacist organizations.
South Carolina's public record on this movement is mostly sovereign citizen cases: federal fraud prosecutions from 2015 to 2019, a 2020 SLED sham-legal-process case, and traffic-stop arrests and lawsuits from 2023 to 2026. The militia record is thin: a 2021 Columbia police personnel action over a Three Percenters sticker. The Bootleg Militia appears in a 2012 sheriff's briefing only as an outlaw motorcycle group.
The FBI's National Gang Intelligence Center labeled Juggalos, fans of Insane Clown Posse, "a loosely-organized hybrid gang" in 2011, and the Sixth Circuit left that label in place on December 18, 2017. The public South Carolina record is thin: a 2016 Myrtle Beach police statement naming Juggalos, and 2010 and 2012 Orangeburg County reports on the Santee-based Devil's Rejects and the Bootleg Militia.
Public court and law-enforcement records describe local and hybrid street gangs across the Midlands, from Columbia and Lexington to Newberry, Chester, Lancaster, York and Aiken counties. Only a few are named in public sources, including Paid Family, GPAN, the Cross Bridge Gangsters, the Roundtree Circle Gang and, by federal indictment, Dirty Money Entertainment. Most federal releases identify defendants as gang members without naming the group.
Public sources describe Upstate street gangs as largely neighborhood-based groups, such as the Highland and Park Hills gangs in Spartanburg and the Southside, Eastside, Osborne and Westside gangs in Greenwood, operating alongside sets of national gangs. Greenville County Sheriff's Office data reported 72 gang-related offenses from January through September 2026, down 11 from the same period in 2025.
Public court, prosecutor and news sources name more than two dozen neighborhood crews across Charleston, Dorchester, Colleton, Orangeburg, Jasper and Allendale counties, most named for a street, subdivision or community. Federal cases have targeted West Cash, the Dorchester Terrace Crew, the Wildboys and the Cowboys, and a 2025 North Charleston case ended with 18 defendants sentenced to 144 years in total. In January 2026 the Hampton County sheriff called a series of shootings gang-related without naming a group.
Public sources name a small number of local and hybrid crews in the Pee Dee and Grand Strand, including the West Marion Up Top Soldiers and a 2019 Florence list, the Down West Boys of Marlboro County and the Cedar Branch organization of Horry County. Federal and state prosecutions since 2008 have targeted these groups. In 2026, the FBI tied many of nine Dillon County shootings to a gang feud that public sources do not name.
SCDC designated the Five Percenters a Security Threat Group in 1995, and its 2025 Accountability Report counts about 1,021 inmates designated and entered in NCIC and Gangnet. The April 15, 2018 Lee Correctional Institution riot left seven inmates dead, and gang rivalry was reported as its context. Federal cases describe inmates running gang and drug operations by contraband phone, and the agency has campaigned for authority to jam those phones.
South Carolina's Criminal Gang Prevention Act, effective June 12, 2007, defines a criminal gang as a group of five or more persons engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity and creates offenses, forfeiture, a SLED statewide gang database and State Grand Jury authority. Federal prosecutors in South Carolina use RICO, VICAR and firearm statutes against street gangs, often through the FBI-led Columbia Violent Gangs Task Force. As of October 14, 2026, the 2025-2026 anti-racketeering bills S.76 and H.5062 show no enactment.
