JOHNSON CITY, N.Y. (WBNG) — The Johnson City Village Board reviewed a resolution Tuesday night that would allow the police department to accept more than $10,000 in federal drug seizure funds from a 2024 narcotics investigation.
Resolution 9 of 2026 creates new revenue and expenditure lines to accept $10,290.97 in Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) drug seizure funds through a process known as equitable sharing.
The money comes from a larger narcotics investigation carried out by the Broome County Special Investigations Unit Task Force.
On June 14, 2024, investigators executed search warrants at 47 St. Charles Street in Johnson City and at a financial institution. During those searches, investigators recovered 25 grams of cocaine, packaging materials, scales, cutting agents and approximately $89,000 in cash.
The DEA adopted the case for federal prosecution because of its size. Now that the case has been adjudicated, a portion of the seized money is being returned to local agencies.
“We can spend that on equipment. We can spend it on training, or anything to help future narcotics investigations,” said Johnson City Police Chief Brent Dodge.
Before the money can be used, it must be placed into a designated budget line approved by the village board.
“So the money has to go into a designated budget line so it can be tracked and accounted for, the spending of it. So that’s why we had the resolution on the village board agenda last night to approve creating that new budget line for this money,” Dodge said.
Federal guidelines prohibit “supplanting” — using seized funds to replace items already paid for in the department’s budget.
“Supplanting is if we were to use that money to spend on an item that has already been included in our budget. So we’re not allowed to do that with this funding,” Dodge said.
The funds must go toward new or previously unbudgeted needs.
“This saves taxpayer dollars. You know, if there’s a piece of equipment we need and we don’t have the money in the budget, we don’t have to dip into taxpayer funds to buy that. We can just utilize these drug funds that have been taken away from a drug dealer and put that to good to help fight crime in other areas,” Dodge said.
Dodge said this is the first time during his tenure that Johnson City police have received DEA funds through equitable sharing, even though the DEA was not involved in the initial seizure. No specific plan exists for how the money will be spent.