History and Overview of Violent Crime and Drug Task Force
ORGANIZED CRIME AND DRUG ENFORCEMENT TASK FORCE(OCDETF): Upon the advice of the heads of all Federal criminal justice agencies, the Attorney General recommended to the President that a multi-agency task force, using full resources of Federal, State, and local governments, be authorized to deal with the problem of drug trafficking in the United States. On October 14, 1982, the President announced a program to attack drug trafficking and organized crime. In December of 1982, concurring with the President, Congress authorized the funds for the OCDETF program.
The OCDETF is a federal drug enforcement program that focuses attention and resources on the disruption and dismantling of major drug trafficking organization. While working fully and effectively with State and local drug enforcement agencies its goal is to identify, investigate, and prosecute members of high-level drug trafficking and related enterprises, and to break down the operations of those organizations.
VIOLENT CRIME TASK FORCE: The District of South Carolina's Violent Crime Task Force was an innovative program organized in October, 1993 and was the first of its type. After announcing her Violent Crime Initiative in March of 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno declared our program as a model for other districts. The lead agency of each task force is the United States Attorney's office. The law enforcement entities detailed to the program consist of local police officers, State prosecutors, and Federal agents who now work in cooperation rather than in competition.
This unique task force was created to target, investigate, indict, prosecute and convict habitual career criminals. With the creation of this multi-jurisdictional program we can now double the allotment of prosecutors, and allow complex conspiracy investigations involving multiple defendants to proceed in both state and federal court. Our goal is to get violent career criminals out of the neighborhoods, off the streets, and into a cell for their crime-producing lives.
We currently have task forces in Columbia, Charleston, Greenville, Florence, Rock Hill, and Orangeburg.