GOSHEN – One day after the Newburgh City Council adopted a 2020 budget that cuts 19 police positions, Orange County’s top law enforcement officials are watching the situation and looking at ways to assist cash-strapped city.
While District Attorney David Hoovler said he is “severely against cuts to public safe,” he is a realist.
The police department will have to triage its cases on those based on solvability with violent crimes receiving top priority.
“We are going to assist them with narcotics prosecutions as much as possible and we are going to continue to use the Gun Violence Reduction Program, the GIVE grant and program as much as possible to assist them,” he said. “I say that understanding that we can’t do that forever in the DA’s office because simply, the burden is too much, but in the short term, we have offered all of our resources to the police chief to assist them in any way we can.”
The Orange County Sheriff’s office special narcotics teams have been assisting Newburgh Police all along and Sheriff Carl DuBois said he will explore other assistances options.
“Hopefully we can partner up with the State Police and maybe the Town of Newburgh and Town of New Windsor and some adjoining municipalities in a mutual aid-type system if they had some catastrophic event over there,” he said. “When the bell rings the cavalry comes; it doesn’t matter what.” As far as supplementing daily police operations, DuBois said he would have to talk to the county legislature and county executive.
Newburgh City Manager Joseph Donat said the city is two catastrophic events away from bankruptcy and had no other choice but to lay off police officers and firefighters.
