The Sheriff’s Office announced 61 arrests last month, following a six-month undercover investigation of illegal narcotic sales in Orange County.

Orange and Chatham District Attorney Jim Woodall says his office should have no problem handling the volume of cases.

“These are cases that we know how to work through; we do it as just part of our job,” says Woodall. “If these were some other type of crime, these could really cause us difficulty because of staffing, but because they are controlled substance cases we can work them through the system a little bit easier and a little bit quicker.”

The same can’t be said for the state lab where the seized substances are tested.

“Unfortunately the state lab is so backed up that it will take them well over a year to get all the controlled substances analyzed, unless we find money to go to a private lab for analysis, so that actually gives us time to work through the cases.”

In many cases involving controlled substances, Woodall says defendants don’t wait for the official lab report before agreeing to a plea deal.

“Probably a majority of the cases will be disposed of prior to getting a lab back from the state laboratory,” says Woodall. “There will be some of the cases where the actual charges are dependent on the weight, so in those cases we’ll probably have to wait for the lab. Occasionally we have used outside labs and that may be a possibility in some of these cases.”

Sheriff’s deputies in June issued a total of 343 charges against 62 suspects. The charges range from drug possession to drug trafficking to selling narcotics near a school.

The operation netted more than 7,000 grams of cocaine, 693 doses of heroin, 110 pounds of marijuana and multiple prescription drugs as well as several firearms.

Narcotics officers say they’ve already launched a second round of investigations that will likely culminate in more arrests this fall.

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