‘Solve Crimes As They’re Happening:' OBN Tracks Crime Using Innovative Intelligence Watch Center

The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is hard at work tracking gang activity across Oklahoma through its Oklahoma Intelligence Watch Center.

Just last week we brought you a story where the center helped prevent nearly two dozen gang members from infiltrating the county jail. 

The OBN says the Watch Center has only been around for a year, but in that short time, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics says it's been able to help solve crimes across the state, as well as prevent them from happening in the first place.

“We have all this intelligence information. I didn’t want to hoard that information because you’re talking about people’s lives and crimes that can be solved,” Donnie Anderson, OBN’s Director, said. 

In 2023, Anderson had a vision.

“Oklahoma’s kind of unique. Like most southern states, a lot of crimes, especially violent crimes and drug crimes, that happen in the state of Oklahoma are dictated and controlled through our prison systems,” Anderson said. 

Anderson saw a way for agencies to work better together. 

“When gang members here on the street get put in prison, they go to the prison and they’re still gang members. They still operate like gang members,” Anderson explained. 

He created the Oklahoma Intelligence Watch Center which has intelligence information available to all law enforcement agencies. 

“I knew I could take those bits of intelligence information, put them together, and solve crimes as they were happening and actually prevent crimes from happening,” Anderson said. 

Since it's inception, Anderson says the Watch Center has broken up human trafficking rings, prevented homicides, and helped track communication from gang members inside Oklahoma's prisons

“They were smuggling people into the U.S. for human and sex trafficking here in Oklahoma and other parts of the U.S., but it was dictated and controlled from inside our prisons here in Oklahoma,” Anderson said. 

That case led to 35 federal indictments and is just one of many cases for The Watch Center. 

“I absolutely know that those cases would have come to fruition if it weren’t for what our folks are going in the Watch Center,” Anderson said. 

Anderson tells me the Watch Center's success has brought in representatives from several states, like Arkansas, Ohio and West Virginia, to learn how OBN is using this system to fight crime in Oklahoma.

Since it began in 2023, they have assisted on over 100 cases and had over 250 requests for information from law enforcement.