During the recent West Islip Chamber of Commerce meeting, district attorney Ray Tierney made a special appearance, sharing the initiatives and strides made by the District Attorney’s Office and Suffolk County Police Department to keep our communities safe.

The district attorney shared that a majority of gun violence is often committed by rival gangs fighting for geographic dominance. Rivals will go into another gang’s territory, shoot, then retreat, in “tit-for-tat violence.”

Tierney explained that the former D.A.’s Office would charge drive-by shootings, in which a bullet hits a car or a house, as criminal mischief.

“The problem with that is those are nonviolent crimes, so you cannot ask for bail,” explained Tierney. “When I first got into office, we saw one individual, and he was responsible for 17 of these shootings. Every time he got arrested, he automatically got released.”

To increase public safety, since assuming office, these drive-by-shootings are now charged as criminal possession of a weapon. Officers retrieve the ballistic material from the gun at the scene, prove it is ballistic material that only could have been fired from that weapon, charge them with criminal possession of a weapon, and hold them without bail.

Another initiative implemented by Tierney since assuming office is ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection software, which uses GPS and acoustics to detect gunfire and notify police. The D.A. shared that ShotSpotter has detected that one percent of the land area in Suffolk County was responsible for 50 percent of the gun violence.

Tierney explained that while many doubted that ShotSpotter would get passed, with the support of Islip Town supervisor Angie Carpenter and other public officials, the program was implemented and has since decreased shootings in the county.

Tierney shared statistics to support his assertion that we live in the safest county in the tri-state area. In Suffolk County, per 10,000 residents, our incidents of violent crimes are 89.0, which means that .89 percent of our population are victims of violent crimes. For comparison, Nassau County’s rate is 162.2—almost double ours—Monroe County is 294.5, Albany is 397.2, and Queens is 526.3.

“We lead the region in the time between arrest and indictment. If you are in Suffolk County and you commit a crime, you are going to get indicted faster than anywhere else,” said Tierney. “We lead the state in trial outcomes with a 90 percent conviction rate. If we try the case, we are going to finish it to the end, and hold you accountable.”

The D.A. put the harrowing fentanyl crisis in our area into perspective. In 2022, the county had 30 homicides, 13 vehicular homicides, then 423 opioid overdoses, with 399 of those overdoses being fentanyl overdoses.

“It is not even a drug; it is a poison,” he added.

Earlier that day, Tierney attended the first-ever Fentanyl Summit in Suffolk County with members of law enforcement, families affected by the fentanyl crisis, and the public. The summit provided valuable information about fentanyl and the current situation at the local, state, and federal level regarding the overdose crisis, and gave law enforcement an opportunity to connect with members of our community, especially those who have lost a loved one to fentanyl.

Tierney shared he has been lobbying in Albany to have a death-by-dealer statute passed.

“Unfortunately, there is not, per se, a rule that if you possess fentanyl, that we can ask for bail,” shared Tierney. “Someone would have to possess a certain amount of fentanyl for us to ask for bail, and that is enough fentanyl to kill 114,450 people.”

Tierney stated that while we are lucky in Suffolk County that our towns and legislature support our initiatives, “the problem is Albany.” He concluded by stating that he will continue to lobby to pass the statute, bringing victims’ families upstate to share their stories.