The Drug Enforcement Administration is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating illicit drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domestic enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act, sharing concurrent jurisdiction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. However, the DEA has sole responsibility for coordinating and pursuing U.S. drug investigations both domestically and abroad. It was established in 1973 as part of the U.S. government's War on Drugs. The DEA has an intelligence unit that is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community. While the unit is part of the DEA chain-of-command, it also reports to the Director of National Intelligence. The DEA has been criticized for scheduling drugs that have medical uses, and for focusing on operations that allow it to seize money rather than those involving drugs that cause more harm.
In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, state attorney or solicitor is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a local government area, typically a county or a group of counties. The exact name and scope of the office varies by state. Alternative titles for the office include county attorney, solicitor, or county prosecutor. Generally the prosecutor represents the people of the jurisdiction and in many states their authority stems from the state constitution. Unlike similar roles in other common law judicial systems, these are elected, and their holders usually have an allegiance to a political party or faction, rather than being held by a career civil servant appointed on merit in an independent process.
Thomas A. Constantine served as the 6th Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from March 1994 to July 1999.
A law enforcement officer (LEO), or peace officer in North American English, is a public-sector employee whose duties primarily involve the enforcement of laws. The phrase can include campaign disclosure specialists, local police officers, prosecutors, municipal law enforcement officers, health inspectors, SWAT officers, customs officers, lawyers, state troopers, federal agents, secret agents, special investigators, coast guards, border patrol officers, judges, district attorney, bounty hunters, gendarmerie officers, immigration officers, private investigators, court officers, probation officers, parole officers, arson investigators, auxiliary officers, animal control officers, game wardens, park rangers, county sheriff's deputies, constables, marshals, detention officers, correction officers, sworn campus police officers and public safety officers. Security guards are not law enforcement officers, unless they have been granted powers to enforce particular laws, such as those accredited under a community safety accreditation scheme such as a security police officer.
Howard Safir is an American law enforcement professional who served as the 39th New York City Police Commissioner from 1996 to 2000 and the 29th New York City Fire Commissioner from 1994 to 1996, under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Safir currently serves as Chairman of Safir Intelligence and Security.
Kathleen Maura Rice is an American lawyer and politician who served as the United States representative for New York's 4th congressional district from 2015 to 2023. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Before serving in Congress, Rice served as the Nassau County district attorney, and, before that, she served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia and as an assistant district attorney in the Kings County District Attorney's Office in New York City.
Matthew Madonna is a member of the Lucchese crime family who served as acting boss before being imprisoned in 2017.
Gregory Paw served as the Director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice from February 21, 2006 to June 20, 2008. Paw succeeded Vaughn McCoy as Director, and was succeeded as Director by Deborah Gramiccioni, with whom he had worked closely while she was a special assistant to the New Jersey Attorney General. Paw is now a partner in the law firm of Pepper Hamilton, practicing white collar criminal defense and corporate compliance in the firm's Princeton and Philadelphia offices.
Sterling Johnson Jr. was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Before his appointment to the bench in 1991, Johnson was an attorney for 25 years, specializing in drug enforcement and the prosecution of narcotics cases. As Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York, he supervised assistant district attorneys and investigators responsible for the preparation and prosecution of more than 7,000 criminal cases. He has been a guest lecturer at many American universities and law schools, as well as in various countries.
Richard M. Roberts is an American attorney. Roberts was a former law enforcement officer who worked as a detective in the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and Essex County Bureau of Narcotics. After completing law school at Seton Hall University and passing the bar examination, Roberts served as an Assistant Prosecutor in the Essex County Prosecutor's Office.
The United Blood Nation, also known as the East Coast Bloods, is a street and prison gang active primarily in the New York metropolitan area. It is the east coast faction of the California-based Bloods street gang. Their main source of income is the trafficking and sale of illegal drugs.
The Essex County Prosecutor's Office (ECPO) is the largest and busiest county prosecutor's office in the State of New Jersey. It consists of approximately 140 assistant prosecutors (attorneys at law), 160 detectives licensed to carry arms, and 125 support staff.
Law enforcement in New York City is carried out by numerous Federal, State, City and Private agencies. New York City has the highest concentration of Law Enforcement in the United States.
Preetinder Singh Bharara is an Indian-born American lawyer, author, podcaster, and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He is currently a partner at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for five years prior to leading the Southern District. According to The New York Times, Bharara was one of the "nation's most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime" during his tenure.
This article refers to the situation of crime in the U.S. state of New York.
Daniel Michael Donovan Jr. is an American attorney, former prosecutor and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the U.S. representative for New York's 11th congressional district from 2015 to 2019. Donovan served as District Attorney of Richmond County from 2004 to 2015. He was first elected to Congress in a special election following the resignation of Michael Grimm. The district includes all of Staten Island, as well as portions of southwest Brooklyn. Donovan was defeated for reelection in 2018 by Democrat Max Rose.
John Theodore Chisholm is an American prosecutor and politician who has served as Milwaukee County District Attorney since 2007. A career prosecutor, Chisholm specialized in complex conspiracy prosecutions before his election as district attorney in 2006.
The Nine Trey Gangster Bloods or Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods (NTG) are a violent set of the United Blood Nation street gang, which is itself a set of the Bloods gang. The gang operates on the East Coast of the United States.
Russell Coleman is the former United States Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky. On September 22, 2017, following nomination by President Donald Trump and unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Coleman was sworn-in as United States Attorney. He resigned on January 20, 2021. In May 2022, Coleman launched a campaign for Kentucky Attorney General.
Carolyn Pokorny is a career federal prosecutor, currently serving as First Assistant United States Attorney at the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Previously she served as the Inspector General for the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the Office of the MTA Inspector General. She is the first woman to hold that position.
