ATLANTA — The GBI says gang membership in Georgia is rising and made the case to lawmakers Monday for more money and state agents to fight them.
State officials say that while crime rates overall have dropped over the years, gang violence has not.
Earlier this month, three alleged members of a white supremacist gang were arrested in North Georgia. And state officials say one of the state’s largest crime organizations is a white supremacist gang called the Ghostface Gangsters.
Authorities say most of its membership is in state prisons – as is most of its gang recruitment. Yet the gang’s reach is well beyond prisons, extended with cell phones smuggled into state prisons.
"They’re quick to resort to violence against our law enforcement," said GBI director Vic Reynolds. "I’ve personally prosecuted cases where they were perpetrators of violence against my law enforcement folks."
Reynolds, the former Cobb County District Attorney, says that’s only a snapshot of Georgia’s gang issues.
In 2018, the FBI told 11Alive News there were 50,000 gang members active in metro Atlanta. The GBI says there are at least 71,000 across the state – members of more than 1,500 suspected gangs.
"I currently have a number of Ghostface gang members sitting in my jail," Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman told a legislative committee Monday. He told the panel gang activity fuels much of the crime in Georgia’s most affluent county — and that a statewide task force can only help curb it.
"In this state, we’re approaching it not only from a local perspective, not only a state perspective, not only a federal perspective, but all together. And that is very rare," Reynolds said.
The statewide gang task force was an early promise made during Brian Kemp's 2018 campaign for governor. Additional gang-related legislation is expected this week.
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