DA Hoovler Announces Release of District Attorney’s
Office 2017 Annual Report and Executive Summary
Report Subtitled “Doing the Right Thing . . . For Everyone . . . Every Day”
Orange County District Attorney David M. Hoovler, on Thursday, March 7, 2018, announced the release of the District Attorney’s Office 2017 Annual Report. In addition, the Office released a one-page Executive Summary of the full Report.
The Report outlines the structure of the District Attorney’s Office and the operations of its various units; provides statistics on the number of cases that the units in the Office handled in 2017; and describes the facts of several individual cases that the Office prosecuted last year.
The Report also notes the significant recoveries that the District Attorney’s Office had under the New York State Crimes Against Revenue Program (CARP). In 2017, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office initiative recovered over a million dollars in fraudulently obtained government funds. That recovery reflects a more than ten-fold return on the amount of money that the State provided to the District Attorney’s Office to support CARP activities. In addition, the District Attorney’s Office finished sixth in the State in overall CARP recoveries, and eighth in the State in recoveries in State Department of Labor cases, bringing in more than $187,000 in recoveries of unemployment insurance funds. Those finishes are remarkable, since Orange County is the twelfth-largest county, by population, in the State, and OCDA’s recoveries exceeded the recoveries achieved by several counties with much larger populations. Finally, the Report notes how various enforcement actions conducted since District Attorney Hoovler took office have resulted in an estimated savings of over $22.5 million to County taxpayers, representing the amount of money that public benefits programs administered by the Orange County Department of Social Services would have paid out to people who would have fraudulently obtained benefits if the enforcement actions had not taken place.
The Report details 2017 operations of the District Attorney’s Office in narcotics enforcement. Last year, the Office prosecuted over 300 felony narcotics cases in Orange County Court, bringing to over a thousand the number of felony narcotics cases prosecuted since District Attorney Hoovler took office. In addition, the Orange County Drug Task Force, which is administered, in part, by the District Attorney’s Office, recovered approximately $278,000 worth of illegal drugs, a 65% increase over 2016. Finally, 2017 saw the prosecution of some large-scale drug operations, including the Operation Family Ties investigation, which brought down two major drug-trafficking organizations, and which resulted in the arrest and conviction of 35 participants in those organizations.
“2017 was a banner year for the District Attorney’s Office,” said District Attorney Hoovler, “as we built on our successful recoveries of fraudulently obtained public money, and saw improvements in our efforts to stem the opiate epidemic that is still gripping our region. We don’t, however, intend to rest on our laurels. Much remains to be done to address crime in our County and in its communities, and in 2018 we will continue our work to see that justice is served, and that our citizens are protected.”
Copies of the Annual Report and Executive Summary are available by contacting District Attorney Hoovler’s Special Projects and Community Affairs Bureau at (845) 291-2050 or by email to DACommunityAffairs@orangecountygov.com.