To the Editor:

I would like to publicly thank St. Lawrence County District Attorney Gary Pasqua for his outstanding leadership in providing special grant funding for an additional police officer for the City of Ogdensburg Police Department.

District Attorney Pasqua deserves a great deal of credit for going above and beyond for the citizens of Ogdensburg by setting aside funds from his own agency’s grant money to help the Maple City during this difficult time.

I hope members of the Ogdensburg City Council, Ogdensburg residents and the city Police Department realize the debt we owe our District Attorney for coming through for our community.

I would also like to thank St. Lawrence County Legislature Chair David Forsythe (who also represents the city of Ogdensburg with me) for his strong support for this innovative measure.

I think it’s also important to thank all the members of the St. Lawrence County Legislature from both parties for coming together to support this measure to help our community.

When District Attorney Pasqua contacted me about his plans to include funding for a police officer for the City of Ogdensburg in one of his grant programs, I told him it would have my full support and expressed my personal gratitude to him for making such an extraordinary effort to help our small city.

Serving as St. Lawrence County’s top prosecutor is no easy task, especially in the largest geographic county in New York State.

It’s especially difficult in these difficult times when we are seeing organized crime groups targeting Ogdensburg and surrounding areas to bring in dangerous drugs like fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and other narcotics.

District Attorney Pasqua understands the difficult job faced by the Ogdensburg Police Department and our other law enforcement agencies as they struggle against these criminal operations that are leaving a trail of violence, addiction, overdoses, broken families and tragedy, not just in Ogdensburg, but across the county. These drug dealers use Ogdensburg and other communities as bases of operation to distribute these poisons to surrounding areas where the problems are seen in the rising number of broken homes and family tragedies.

With the new administration coming into Ogdensburg, it is my hope that we can all work together to make our community a better and safer place for our families, children and our grandchildren.

District Attorney Pasqua deserves our thanks for stepping up and showing his own commitment. I appreciate his efforts and hope the community recognizes it as well.

James E. Reagen
Legislator District 1 (R-Ogdensburg)