WHITE PLAINS, NY, July 27, 2010 -- Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore has today released the 2009 Annual Report of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.
The 45 page report outlines the accomplishments and initiatives of the District Attorney’s office in 2009, along with setting goals for 2010 and looking forward to expanding upon the programs that have been implemented over the last four years.
“As I completed my first term as Westchester County District Attorney at the end of 2009, I looked back with satisfaction at the work that we accomplished with our partners in law enforcement and the community. In four years, the District Attorney’s Office has evolved from a traditional, reactive prosecutor’s office to a proactive model, engaging in crime prevention and public education initiatives that enhance public safety. At the same time, we sharpened our prosecutorial effectiveness, introducing a state of the art center capable of analyzing and sharing crime fighting intelligence, a violent felony screening process to direct appropriate prosecutorial and investigative resources to these cases, and enhanced prosecutions for domestic violence, child abuse and crimes against the elderly”, said District Attorney Janet DiFiore.
Some of the report’s highlights are:
• The 2009 conviction rate for all felonies was over 98%, and for violent felonies, 94.6%; these figures surpass statewide conviction rates.
• There were forty three deaths in Westchester County as a result of homicide in 2009. Fourteen of those deaths were vehicular homicides resulting from eight incidents. The Taconic State Parkway homicide resulted in seven fatalities in addition to the death of the vehicle’s operator. The twenty nine non-vehicular homicides consisted of 14 shootings, 9 stabbings, one arson resulting in the death of a Yonkers Firefighter, one drug overdose by injection, one strangulation, one starvation, and two suspicious deaths still under review by the Medical Examiner.
• In 2009, 12 individuals, including four children, lost their lives in drunk driving crashes. The District Attorney has named a senior prosecutor from the Superior Court Trial Division as Vehicular Crimes Coordinator to closely monitor all related prosecutions and to ensure appropriate dispositions.
• In 2009, the District Attorney’s office obtained indictments against 56 individuals for felony gun related charges, as compared to 47 in 2008. The overwhelming majority of the defendants were sentenced to state prison. Additionally, 206 individuals were arrested for firearms related offences, an increase of 25 over 2008.
• The Westchester Intelligence Center, opened in 2008, was instrumental in a year long investigative case culminating in 2009 with a wiretap authorization and the subsequent arrest of nine suspects for conspiracy charges related to multi-state burglaries, some of which were committed in New York City and Westchester County. Known as the “Best Buy Burglaries”, these pattern commercial burglaries subsequently expanded to more than thirty. They occurred in multiple states and were being executed in an organized fashion, collectively yielding property valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• In response to the skyrocketing rate of mortgage related fraud seen throughout the country as well as here in Westchester County, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office established a Mortgage Fraud Unit to operate within the Public Integrity Bureau to investigate and prosecute real estatefraud including mortgage fraud by owner, refinancing fraud using straw buyers, deed theft and foreclosure rescue scams. This unit uncovered an expansive mortgage fraud scam in 2009 resulting in the indictment of 8 defendants in addition to actively investigating several other unrelated mortgage frauds.
• In 2009, the Public Integrity Bureau handled 40% more investigations than it conducted in 2007. The District Attorney’s commitment to aggressively fight public corruption has created an atmosphere of public trust and confidence in our endeavors, and, in turn, fostered a greater willingness on the part of residents to come forward with complaints of corruption in the public arena. The steady rise in the number of investigations is indicative of an ever increasing readiness on the part of police and other governmental agenciesto approach the District Attorney’s Office for assistance and cooperation in the area of public corruption and misconduct.
• The Bias Crime Unit investigated 16 individual incidents in 2009. These investigations ranged from anonymous distribution of anti-Semitic flyers to the indictment and prosecution of a woman for throwing a caustic liquid, believed to be bleach, into the eyes of another woman merely based upon her belief that the second woman was a lesbian.
• The District Attorney chairs the Westchester County Reentry Task Force, which assists individuals returning home to Westchester communities from state prison by linking them with needed services, and identifies barriers or gaps in services that impede successful reentry. The goal of the Reentry Task Force is to reduce recidivism among these returning offenders by facilitating their access to appropriate drug and alcohol programs, housing, employment services, and other needed assistance. In 2009, the Reentry Task Force assisted 197 individuals, making 212 referrals to substance abuse and alcohol treatment, 36 referrals for mental health treatment, 25 referrals for educational services, 61 referrals for employment services, 30 referrals to Fathers Count, a family reunification and assistance program, and 41 for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
• In 2009, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of the New York State Court of Appeals appointed District Attorney Janet DiFiore to co-chair the Justice Task Force. The JTF is a new permanent task force formed to examine all aspects of wrongful convictions in a broad range of cases, make recommendations for needed changes, and monitor the impact of these changes. The work of the Justice Task Force will make a continuing contribution to the important efforts to prevent these injustices from occurring.
“Public safety and fiscal responsibility are not mutually exclusive. The District Attorney’s office has established a record of financial management making effective use of our County funds over the past four years and supplementing these with federal and New York State grants and money forfeited from criminal activity. For each year that I have served as District Attorney, including 2009, the Office has fulfilled its public safety responsibilities and returned taxpayer dollars to Westchester County in the amount that averages over $1.1 million each year. We have been careful managers of the public’s money throughout the recent difficult economic times, and we will continue on this fiscally prudent course”, added District Attorney Janet DiFiore.
The full report is available in pdf format: Download Westchester County District Attorney’s Office Annual Report 2009.
