Madeline Singas is the District Attorney of Nassau County, New York. She is an American attorney and a member of the Democratic Party. Upon taking office as Acting DA in January 2015, Singas became the first Greek-American and the second woman to become the top law enforcement official of Nassau County. She was elected in November of that year and took office for a four-year term in January 2016.
District Attorney of Nassau County
Singas has served as acting Nassau DA since January 2015, assuming the role following Kathleen Rice’s election to Congress. During an interview with Bill Ritter in late 2017, referring to crimes committed by MS-13 gang members, Singas stated: "The crimes that we're talking about are brutal. Their weapon of choice is a machete. We end up seeing people with injuries that I've never seen before. You know, limbs hacked off. And that's what the bodies look like that we're recovering. So they're brutal. They're ruthless, and we're gonna be relentless in our attacks against them." On March 27, 2018, Singas announced the establishment of the Nassau County School & Community Safety Task Force to enhance the security of schools, colleges, places of worship, and public buildings. The Task Force is chaired by Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Community Relations, Joyce Smith. Among the Task Force's goals is to "prepare a training curriculum for educators and mental health practitioners regarding the health and safety exceptions to... privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, are frequently cited by medical professionals and school officials as obstacles to information-sharing regarding potential threats."
Special Prosecutor
In May 2018, in the wake of allegations of sexual assault by then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed Singas as Special Prosecutor to investigate such allegations, as well as any facts "suggesting that the Attorney General staff and office resources may have been used to facilitate alleged abusive liaisons."
On April 3, 2018, Singas appeared at a rally and spoke before an audience of about 200 people at Temple Beth Israel, a synagogue in Port Washington, New York, advocating in favor of what she described as common sense gun legislation. She was quoted as having said: "Why is legislation so difficult to get passed? I don’t know the answer to that question." Singas is the defendant in a federal constitutional case, Maloney v. Singas, in which the plaintiff is seeking a declaration that he has a constitutional right to possess nunchaku, a martial-arts weapon, in his home for peaceful martial-arts practice and home defense. In that case, through counsel, Singas has argued that nunchaku are "dangerous and unusual" weapons that may be banned totally even for such use.
Law career
Before joining the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, Singas was an Assistant District Attorney in the New York City borough of Queens. She began there in 1991, and worked in the Domestic Violence Bureau. After joining the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, she was appointed chief of the newly-created Special Victims Bureau in 2006 by Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice. Singas became Chief Assistant District Attorney in Nassau County in 2011.
