GOSHEN – Operation Slow Motion, a nine-month undercover operation that targeted 17 high-level drug dealers, has been put out of business.
Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler announced on Friday that an investigation that began in Middletown spread its tentacles across the Hudson Valley, New York and New Jersey.
Seized were $258,600 in cash, 15 kilograms of cocaine, 16 firearms, including a sawed-off shotgun, nearly one kilo of fentanyl, 200 grams of liquid PCP, several hundred ecstasy pills, four vehicles, over $250,000 in jewelry bling. That amount of fentanyl is enough to wipe out the entire 400,000 residents of Orange County, the DA said.
Hoovler said this was large-scale, a profit driven drug operation.
“Because of this investigtion, massive quantities of drugs will never hit our streets, armed traffickers have been removed from our neighborhoods, and most importantly, as I have stressed over the last six years, when we do a drug case in Orange County, we take out the supply chain. We don’t focus on the low, we focus low to high and we take it all out.
Hoovler said the operation was not about drugs, but lives saved.
Middletown Police Chief John Ewanciw said his narcotics unit investigators learned of a suspect who was believed to be more than the average street dealer. That’s when Mayor Joseph DeStefano and he went to the DA and local, state and federal investigators.
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