A March social media post from the city asking citizens to report graffiti obscured a more serious problem that’s been developing in Great Falls — gang like activity carried out by local juveniles.

More concerning, multiple officials said, is some of these juveniles have access to weapons and are emboldened by a system failing to hold them accountable.

Senior Police Officer Chris Brown at the Great Falls Police Department has become the defacto local expert on gang activity.

He’s been on patrol for about six and a half years at the GFPD, and in 2023 or so, began to see an increase in juvenile violence and gang-related activities.

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That rise in juvenile violence was noted by GFPD’s school resources officers in reports at Great Falls Public Schools board meetings and publicly visible through multiple incidents and school threats in recent years.

Brown said the GFPD administration gave him the latitude to start gathering intelligence and tracking such activity.

That has grown to coordination with other agencies such as youth services, the Cascade County Attorney’s Office, Juvenile Detention Center, Probation and Parole and more.

It’s not necessarily traditional gangs — the names or types that people might recognize from television and movies — that are active in the city, Brown said.

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It’s primarily loosely organized, “a hodgepodge of like minded people,” that’s more organic and homegrown, but with some traditional elements such as colors, graffiti and violent crimes.

Sgt. Katie Cunningham, a detective who leads the SROs, said that some claim an affiliation with a traditional gang, but much of it is tied to feuds among groups of juveniles, who often act impulsively.

Much of it starts on social media, with threats or challenges, insults or beef between kids that spills over to real life, Brown and Cunningham said.

That can include graffiti, crimes of opportunity, drive by shootings and assaults with weapons, as in the April 9 shooting in the vicinity of 11th Street South and 4th Avenue South.

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That situation is still under investigation, but the alleged 14-year-old shooter was picked up April 11 on a probation violation, according to Cascade County Attorney Josh Racki. No charges have yet been charged in the shooting incident, Racki said.

In this incident, officers confirmed a 16-year-old male sustained a minor injury, believed to be from a bullet, to his foot, was treated and released, according to GFPD.

Officers also located to vehicles with fresh damage consistent with bullets.

“The parties involved have been identified; and we believe this to be an isolated incident and not a random act of violence. The investigation, to this point, has revealed it is likely a conflict occurred within a group of juveniles familiar to each other,” according to the GFPD release.

In October, three juveniles were charged in connection with a shooting in the 200 block of 8th Avenue North.

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Other recent cases have involved violent crime by juveniles, including last September’s attack in a downtown alley that left a man with a brain injury and a 14-year-old charged with deliberate attempted homicide.

In February 2023, three teenagers were charged in the shooting of another teenager who was walking to school on the 1600 block of Valeria Way.

“The incident was not random and results from ongoing disagreements. This by no means excuses this behavior, even ongoing disagreements should never result in violence,” according to a release from GFPD and Great Falls Public Schools at the time.

The alleged shooter was a 14-year-old East Middle School student who was a homebound student at the time of the incident, according to GFPD and GFPS.

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In 2024, a man was sentenced in federal court for assaulting a man with a baseball bat, but the investigation revealed his son had been involved in a spring 2023 fatal shooting in Great Falls, followed by a fatal stabbing in Chowen Springs Park in August 2023 that was deemed gang related.

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In September 2022, a 15-year-old was taken into custody in relation to a stabbing in Chowen Springs Park.

While many of the incidents of violence start on social media, some stem from groups tagging each other, crossing them out and adding their own marks, the officers said.

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Earlier this spring, one of those tagging instances led to an incident with a weapon, they said.

In many cases, the juveniles in these groups are finding that people leave unattended firearms in vehicles that they’re stealing to carry out their acts of violence.

“Not all graffiti is created equal,” Brown said.

Some is just run-of-the-mill tagging and others is street art.

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But some areas are juveniles tagging areas of rival gangs to get attention, some linked to the type of graffiti you’d see in larger cities, Cunningham said.

Alex Mansikka, a Montana Probation and Parole officer, said that the gang activity isn’t as structured in Great Falls.

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In the Department of Corrections, he said they see people who do time in federal prison then come back and bring that gang behavior back with them. Others grew up somewhere else and bring it when they find themselves in Great Falls.

He said that years ago there were older guys with more traditional gang affiliations, but that had largely fizzled.

Cunningham said now they’re seeing kids as young as 13 with weapons.

They’ve created a safety team in schools, comprised of representatives from multiple agencies including GFPS, who share information across those agencies and run threat assessments.

Those assessments determine if a particular juvenile can be in school and if they are, develop a safety plan to figure out what that looks like. That might mean not being allowed to carry a backpack, or being in the building only during certain times. If that doesn’t work, they might be required to do schoolwork remotely.

“We do a really good job keeping it out of the schools,” Cunningham said, so the public often doesn’t realize it’s happening.

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Mansikka said that some juveniles are sent to the state’s Pine Hills Correctional Facility in Miles City, which used to house adults, but some go in as juveniles and come out as adults on supervision, which allows for tighter controls.

At the end of March, Pine Hills transitioned back to housing only juveniles after transfering the last adults elsewhere.

The move was due to increasing crime amongst juveniles statewide.

“The DOC has seen significant changes in its juvenile population over the past few years,” DOC Director Brian Gootkin said in a release. “Our juvenile offenders are more violent than ever. Approximately 42 percent of our population are affiliated with two gangs. This is incredibly challenging for our workforce because the offenders must be separated. This creates another challenge with the offenders that are not gang members.”

Some of the juveniles being pulled into gang activity and criminal justice system come from broken homes or are exploited by the adults, Mansikka said.

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Others are facing peer pressure and a desire for acceptance, Brown said.

Social media is a significant driver for the problems that start there and escalate. Plus social media is a powerful recruitment tool. The glorification of gun culture in media, movies, music and general pop culture, plus the perceived sense of power and respect, are factors in juveniles participating in the criminal activity, Brown said.

Cunningham said the more concerning factor is that the juveniles are impulsive and emboldened as they suffer few consequences for their actions through the criminal justice system.

“They have weapons, so they will not and have not hesitated to hurt innocent people,” Cunningham said.

There’s growing fear and frustration they said over the growing public safety issue and they have limited resources to deal with it, Brown and Cunningham said.

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Mansikka said he’d had a parolee confronted for the shirt color he was wearing, while going about daily tasks, and Cunningham said the escalation, particularly with gun play, is concerning since they’ve recently had a few close calls with innocent victims.

She said officers had taken a firearm off a 13-year-old and state law only prohibits minors 14 and under from carrying or using firearms, unless under certain adult supervision.

She said the laws, available resources and reluctance to hold minors accountable for crimes — particularly violent crimes or those involving weapons — further emboldens these juveniles, but she said GFPD continues to what it can to investigate and take action when they’re aware of these situations.

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Brown said they’re being proactive with increased officer presence in areas with known gang activity of juvenile violence, working to have frequent contact with those known to be engaged in this type of behavior and identifying suspects through follow-ups, all of which is taxes there resources. This is particularly difficult when victims and witnesses are uncooperative, leaving them piecing investigations together.

Cunningham said the rising juvenile crime has increased the caseload for GFPD, and coupled with the public safety levy failure, is making life harder.

“We have to focus on what’s on fire,” she said.

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The department previously had a gang and street crimes unit, but over the years, those went away due to a lack of resources, Cunningham said.

SROs identify potential problems and they’re seeing kids flying colors down to the middle school level now.

Cunningham said some of the juveniles who are getting into trouble have siblings in elementary school.

“It goes deep,” she said, and they’re seeing some of the juveniles take more leadership roles as they get older, using younger kids to do things for them, knowing they’ll get in less trouble.

To stop the behavior, Cunningham said there are some options such as the Restart program through GFPS or remote school with their teachers, but they’re seeing many of these juveniles refuse to engage at all and drop out.

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“The onus is on them to change their behavior,” she said, and many have parents that don’t care, are unreachable, are unwilling to hold their children accountable and blame others for the situation.

“This is a community problem,” Cunningham said.

She and Brown ask the public to make reports when they see graffiti, suspicious behavior and most importantly, to secure their weapons and not leave them in vehicles.

Incidents of graffiti may never be solved, but the reports help law enforcement track the activity.

Brown has been watching the graffiti while he’s patrolling, photographing it and creating a repository of that information to help officers keep their ear to the ground and recognize trouble brewing.

They’re also asking parents to talk to their kids about the dangerous behavior, even if their kids aren’t involved or associated with it. That way they will know what to do if they encounter it and can make reports to their SRO or school administration.

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When the city posted asking the public to make reports of graffiti, it posted that they’d had an influx of reports.

The Electric checked the numbers.

By mid-March, only four graffiti complaints had come into the code enforcement departments over the previous six months.

Lt. Matt Fleming told The Electric that he’d call it a slight uptick and there are waves of graffiti issues, but they take it seriously and investigate the possibility that some could be gang related.

For comparison, he said the graffiti complaints reported to GFPD were:

• 2022: 19
• 2023: 14
• 2024: 23
• 2025: year to date at mid-March, 8

Cunningham said there are increasing instances of juveniles posting menacing or threatening photos on social media, often with firearms. That behavior isn’t always reported for fear of being labeled a tattletale, and some have become desensitized to it.

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Great Falls Parks and Recreation said graffiti had seemed more prevalent over the last winter.

From Oct. 1, 2024 to mid-March, he said the department costs for removing graffiti from parks and trails was:

• $370 for removal products, cleaning equipment, paint, cleaning agents, etc.
• $8,470 for labor

That was a total cost of $8,840 at that point, and staff had logged 242 man hours cleaning up graffiti over the same time period. But there are other incidental costs to include administrative/clerical time, vehicles/gas, time spent filing police reports and investigation reports.

“I believe it’s important to provide and maintain a clean and welcoming environment for the community. We do our best to respond and address these issues promptly and effectively. Vulgar or inappropriate pictures and language take the highest priority, then we address everything else,” Kevin Vining, park supervisor, told The Electric.