August 20, 2018 – In Breaking News – NY Post
It’s a typical late afternoon in Chelsea: Revelers stumble from one trendy bar to the next, sightseers flock to the High Line, gourmands peruse the shelves at Chelsea Market — and four stories above the bustle, members of the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force are plotting the downfall of a suspected serial killer.
From its nondescript headquarters in one of New York’s hottest neighborhoods, the RFTF’s city-based detachment — a crack squad of US marshals and some of the NYPD’s brightest investigative minds — has closed thousands of cases since its founding in 2002.
They are a team of modern-day minutemen, willing to stop everything when they have a lead on a suspect and pursue their quarry to the farthest ends of the country at the drop of a dime.
The law enforcement squad’s target on this particular summer afternoon is suspected “Dating-App Strangler” Danueal Drayton, wanted for murdering one woman in Queens and raping another online suitor in Brooklyn in a matter of hours.
After days of sleuthing, they come to the conclusion that Drayton may be hiding out clear across the country, in Hollywood.
“ ‘Listen, if your wives will let you, get on the next plane, get on the red-eye,’ ” NYPD Lt. Paul Weeks told his task-force partners.
“Within about three and a half hours, [members] went home and got their bags and were wheels up.”
(The man accused of killing a Queens nurse was arrested before he allegedly attempted to murder another victim, officials said, and detectives are investigating the suspect’s claims that he was involved in seven other murders. Courtesy of Eyewitness News ABC7NY and YouTube. Posted on Jul 28, 2018.)
One of the lone splashes of character — color, even — in the group’s Chelsea hideaway is a floor-to-ceiling rendering of a windswept American flag, the stars painted along one wall of the main room, the bars curling at a corner onto part of another.
The mural is a constant reminder of both the places the task force is willing to go and the modern patriotic time during which it was founded.
“It was basically after 9/11 [when] the federal government started to say, ‘We want to start sharing information, and we don’t want to have any more of these turf wars,’ ” said US Marshals Service Deputy Cmdr. Edward McMahon, who has been with the NY/NJ RFTF since its inception.
“The goal was [for federal marshals to] . . . start teaming up with your state and local partners . . . to capture the worst of the worst fugitives around the country.’’
That goal has been met — and then some.
Continue reading… https://nypost.com/2018/08/20/meet-the-elite-task-force-helping-crack-the-citys-deadliest-cases/
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(See a brief introduction to the United States Marshals Service narrated by John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted. Courtesy of Shane T. McCoy and YouTube.)
Additional information about the U.S. Marshals Service can be found at http://www.usmarshals.gov.
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