Schumer Announces, After His Push, New Crime Fighting Resources Coming to Chautauqua County With Designation of County as "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area"

Press Release

Today, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer announced that the President's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has designated Chautauqua County a federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA). This designation will now help Chautauqua County address a recent and disturbing uptick in heroin usage and drug-related crime by improving coordination among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as providing equipment, technology and additional resources that the County needs to tackle this challenge. In June, Schumer pused ONDCP to provide Chautauqua County with this HIDTA designation and noted that, in the city of Jamestown, heroin-related arrests have tripled over the last three years. In 2013 alone, heroin use was linked to more deaths in the area than any other drug. The Jamestown Police Department estimated that approximately 90 percent of crime in the city is drug related. Schumer also noted that a major drug trafficking group -- the Angueira Drug Ring -- was busted in 2011, after a three-year investigation, and found to have been moving more than a half a kilogram of heroin per week through Chautauqua County to a number of states in the northeast. Schumer said that he is pleased to hear ONDCP has agreed, after his urging, to designate Chautauqua County as a HIDTA in order to curb this emerging threat.

"For too long, heroin use, fatal overdoses, and drug-related crimes have been on the rise, plaguing Upstate New York communities like those in Chautauqua County. Chautauqua deserves every federal resource possible to combat the growing scourge of drug trafficking, and that is why I went to bat for the county and called on the feds to designate Chautauqua County a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area,'" said Senator Schumer. "I'm pleased that the ONDCP has finally issued this designation, which will provide technical expertise, more law enforcement personnel and the additional resources needed to combat heroin use and tackle this challenge head-on."

"Drug trafficking and fatal overdoses are on the rise in our community," said Chautauqua County Sherriff Joseph Gerace. "This designation will provide critical funding and resources to fight drug trafficking in Chautauqua County. I am grateful to Senator Schumer for his efforts on behalf of our community to secure this designation. Thanks to the Senator's advocacy, law enforcement officials will have access to vital drug-related intelligence, and we will be able to share information across federal, state, and local agencies. Through cooperation and collaboration, we will have the ability to initiate effective strategies for fighting drug activity in our community."

In June, Schumer called on the President's Office of National Drug Control Policy to establish Chautauqua County as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. This designation will prioritize resources for Chautauqua County, as well as promote greater coordination between local, state, and federal law enforcement personnel in the region. In support of these efforts, the HIDTA program will fund intelligence-sharing initiatives, drug use prevention and drug treatment initiatives, and general support for programs that provide assistance to law enforcement beyond their normal scope of duty. There are currently 28 HIDTAs, which include approximately 16 percent of all counties in the United States and 60 percent of the U.S. population. Each HIDTA assesses the drug trafficking threat in its defined area for the upcoming year, develops a strategy to address that threat, designs initiatives to implement the strategy, proposes funding needed to carry out the initiatives, and prepares an annual report describing its performance the previous year.

Schumer noted that the goal of the federal government's drug policy is to build safe and healthy communities, and a HIDTA designation for Chautauqua would help supplement the hard work already being done by Chautauqua County law enforcement. Schumer said that this designation will now be critical to Chautauqua law enforcement, as they will now have many as resources at their disposal as possible in the fight against heroin usage and trafficking.

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