Last week Sheriff Juan Figueroa and members of the Ulster Regional Gang Enforcement Narcotics Team [URGENT] came to the Plattekill Town Board meeting to present a check of $40,000 in forfeiture funds to Police Chief Oscar Lopez. A member of the Plattekill Police Department serves on the Team and this money is the town’s share of the proceeds gathered from arrests made throughout Ulster County.

 

Sheriff Figueroa said, “in the last five or six years we’ve had the largest gun and drug seizures in the history of Ulster County and we could not do that without the participation of the Town of Plattekill Police Department.” He said it took some time to distribute the funds to Plattekill due to lengthy investigations and audits by the Finance Commissioner but, “we finally got through that process and we’re able to cut checks for the towns and municipalities that have been helping to put away a lot of criminals involving drugs and a lot of money.”

 

Upon receiving the check Chief Lopez said, “I suspect this will help us continue combating drugs because it goes into our drug seizure account. We have this continuous relationship with the Sheriff’s Department, that’s very supportive of us and URGENT, which I was part of for nine years. They do a lot of work that people don’t know about because they’re all undercover and that’s the way it should be.”

 

Sheriff Figueroa thanked Chief Lopez, Supervisor Dean DePew, the Town Council and the people of Plattekill for their continued support of  URGENT.

 

“Hopefully there will be more of these checks coming as we continue to do the seizures that are still out there,” he said.

 

Supervisor DePew said the town is, “not only grateful for the check but we’re very appreciative; I just can’t say enough about URGENT.”

 

Capt. Sciutto explained how seizure money is divided up.

 

“There are two mechanisms, there are federal seizures and there are state and local seizures. This year is a portion of our state and local seizures and a towns share is determined by their contributing hours weekly for the 52 week year. So we add up all the hours, we add up all the money that we have at our disposal to disperse and of the $90,000 Plattekill is getting $40,000.”

 

Capt. Sciutto said any drugs seized are destroyed and any confiscated assets like vehicles are auctioned off and those proceeds go into an account and at the end of the year all the numbers are added up, “but just because we seize the money we’re not guaranteed that at the end of the day it is going to be rewarded to us as a Task Force to be able to disperse; sometimes there are fees associated with courts, or if there is a victim involved, they get compensated and there are other mechanisms and payments that need to be made before we actually see the end results of that seizure.”

 

Capt. Sciutto said presently in one of the federal accounts, “we have seizures from four or five years ago that are still pending a federal decision, so it’s a very long and lengthy process. He said the $90,000 this year is coming from state seizures, “and is a culmination of the last four years.”