Alleged gang members taken into custody following probation raids

ATLANTA — Only Channel 2 Action News was there as officers checked on gang members out of jail on probation parole.

Officers say they arrested a gang leader in the middle of an interview with Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne.

Are you a Ghostface Gangster?” Winne asked William Ackley.

“No, I’m retired now,” Ackley told Winne.

“This was Operation Poltergeist,” a Department of Community Supervision officer said. “We focused primarily on the Ghostface Gangster street gang.”

Winne was with officers from the Department of Community Supervision on Tuesday when they did a random check on known gang members out on probation.

It was a statewide operation.

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“This gang is very dangerous,” DCS Officer Krystle Hunter told Winne.

As Winne was talking with Ackley, an officer took him into custody.

“During a search we found some suspected methamphetamine,” the officer told Winne.

The officer showed Ackley a baggie they confiscated from him.

“Man, that stuff had to come out of that stuff from a long time ago, check it. Can you test it real fast?” Ackley told the arresting officer.

At one point Ackley seemed to suggest the baggies might have come from stuff he got dumpster diving.

Ackley told Winne he could not discuss any Ghostface Gangster business or who his associates were in the gang

“They’re only doing this because I’m Ghostface. They’re only doing this cause I’m prior Ghostface,” Ackley told Winne.

“Right now we're going to treat this as a parole and probation violation, we're not taking new charges on you, so that's the good news. We're going to drug screen once you get to the jail. If you’re clean, obviously that will show us how you’re doing,” the arresting officer told Ackley.

“I’m right back in it now,” Ackley told Winne.

"So if you go back in prison, you think you’ll be back in Ghostface?” Winne asked Ackley.

“Chain gang life and out here's two totally different things,” Ackley said.

Most of the activity police did Tuesday were compliance checks on parolees or probationers.

Cox Media Group