He was a National Science Foundation research fellow assigned to the National Consortium on Violence Research from 1998 to 2000 prior to joining the faculty at Georgia State. He has been funded by private, state, and federal grants to study criminal violence and drug markets. From 2002 to 2003 he served as the Director for the Atlanta component of NIJ's Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program. He has authored scholarly articles on carjacking, drug robbery, drug dealing, and retaliation, presenting his research at national and international academic research forums.