8 December 2021: A Profile of Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple

Meet the sheriff who wants to put Andrew Cuomo behind bars

This report gives a profile of Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, whose office filed criminal misdeanor charges against Andrew M. Cuomo related to his alleged sexual harassment of New York state government employee Brittany Commisso. Here's an excerpt:

Apple, 54, runs a department of roughly 700 deputies, correction officers, dispatchers, fire investigators and medical responders.

Raised in Bethlehem, a town just south of Albany, Apple joined the department in 1987, just two years out of high school. He has been a near-constant presence in the local press ever since — regaling reporters with tales of high-speed chases, a prolific jewel thief, miscreant teenagers, and even the torture of a snapping turtle.

Tall, rugged and known for his love of cigars, the sheriff also enjoys widespread community support for his many attention-grabbing efforts in matters slightly peripheral to his work.

Matthew Miller, a Democratic county legislator and high school biology teacher in Selkirk, not far from where Apple grew up, recalled how the sheriff responded to the 2014 strangulation death of 5-year-old Kenneth White by a teenage cousin in their home in Knox, New York, part of the Hilltowns community in rural northwestern Albany County.

The sheriff showed up quickly, organized a vigil, and befriended the boy’s two surviving sisters, who were placed in the care of Child Protective Services. On the spring day in 2019 when a new family adopted the girls, he gave them a ride from family court in a squad car with flashing lights and a siren.

“I would say even Andrew Cuomo when he was on top of his game would find it difficult to discredit our sheriff,” Miller said. “He has a reservoir of goodwill.”

The report also details much of the dirt that Andrew M. Cuomo's legal and PR teams are trying to throw at Apple as they try to keep their patron from facing legal consequences for his actions, much of which we've covered in other timeline entries. Nearly all of the new information we've seen in this article relates to Apple's background, which is why we're featuring it as a profile of the sheriff.