When Memphis police disbanded its notorious street team after officers beat a man to death in January 2023, then-West Palm Beach Police Department Chief Frank Adderley went on national television to defend a similar unit he created.
“We're not getting calls in our city to disband it. I think if you go to some of these community meetings, they want more of them. They don’t want less,” Adderley told ABC News about West Palm’s Gang & Habitual Offender Suppression Team, or GHOST.
But over a year later, Adderley quietly dissolved GHOST after officers led a high-speed chase into Boynton Beach that killed a pregnant woman and her mother on July 30, 2024. Instead of stopping to help, the seven officers silently turned around and told nobody what happened, prosecutors said.
Adderley put the seven pursuing officers, five of whom were in GHOST, on leave. In June 2025, Palm Beach County prosecutors charged the officers with official misconduct and leaving the scene of a crash involving death. They have all pleaded not guilty and were fired.
A WLRN investigation reveals how the GHOST unit and the pursuing officers exhibited warning signs well before the Boynton chase and crash that killed Jenice Woods, 27, Woods’ unborn child, and Marcia Pochette, 57. The reporting found lapses in West Palm Beach’s oversight including lax discipline of the now-indicted officers.
The investigation comes as the department's new chief seeks to re-establish a street crimes unit, since GHOST was disbanded.