DUBLIN, Ga. — Laurens County Sheriff Larry Dean said you can find gangs in every Georgia city and every county — including his own. That's why he's happy 11 gang members are under arrest after a joint investigation.
The suspected gang members were part of the Money, Power, Loyalty gang, also known as MPL. All were men from Dublin, and they were indicted in a massive 114-count indictment.
Among the crimes they are accused of are aggravated assault, attempted murder, possession with intent to distribute drugs and unlawful possession of a machine gun. They are all facing counts of racketeering, too.
"You know, everybody thinks you got gangs in just your big cities. No, you got gangs in every city," Dean said.
Daniel Lampp, who works as lieutenant of crime suppression at the Laurens County Sheriff's Department, said the problem's only growing bigger.
"I mean, you'll have gang activity going on every night. We get notifications every night of drive-by's or shootings in the area," Lampp said.
The 11 gang members charged in the indictment are currently aged 20 to 26, but some of the charges go back to 2016 for each of them.
Dean said gangs often recruit young children, including middle schoolers.
"The gang members that are in it for a while know that the juveniles is not gonna get in as much trouble as somebody that's 17 years old that could be prosecuted as an adult," he said.
To help combat gang activity, in the past four months, the Laurens County Sheriff's Office created a special gang unit to help Dublin Police patrol streets at night a couple of times each week.
Lampp said the unit consists of about 12 off-duty deputies who are assigned to other additional units outside of the gang unit.
"We rely heavily on the Dublin Police Department with information and stuff going on in the city. We have a very good working relationship with the Dublin Police Department, and a lot of that is due to the work efforts that we all put out, and we just work good together," Lamp said.
He says they try to spread their manpower to best address gang activity.
"We try to divide it up into different areas, and we target those different areas at different times just according to where the gang activity is happening at the time," Lampp said.
Dean said they started this investigation about a year ago, and they're still investigating more people.
"We was hoping to make these, the arrests for six months ago, but anytime you involve the RICO-type case like this, it takes a lot of information together, and a lot of time to put these investigations together," Dean said.
One of the men, Jamil Thompkins, is facing three murder counts for the shooting death of Travis Plumber in 2020.
The Laurens County Sheriff's Office worked with the Dublin Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Gang Task Force, the GBI’s Southeastern Regional Drug Enforcement Office, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, the Swainsboro Police Department, the Wrightsville Police Department, ATF, FBI and the Attorney General’s Gang Prosecution Unit.
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