Madeline Singas

Singas served as acting Nassau DA starting in January 2015, assuming the role following Rice's election to Congress. Upon taking office, 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 2015 and took office for a four-year term in January 2016.[7]

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."[8] 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 (HIPAA) and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), [which] are frequently cited by medical professionals and school officials as obstacles to information-sharing regarding potential threats."[9]

In May 2018, in the wake of allegations of sexual assault by then-attorney general Eric Schneiderman, New York 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."[10]

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."[11]

Singas was the defendant in a federal constitutional case, Maloney v. Singas (formerly Maloney v. Rice[12]), 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"[13] weapons that may be banned totally even for such use.[14]