Thank you, Justin for that kind introduction and thank you
for your leadership as United States Attorney.
This office is doing remarkable work that is being noticed at Main
Justice and throughout the law enforcement community.
I want to thank:
Mayor Jackson,
Cleveland Police
Chief Calvin Williams,
DEA Special Agent
in Charge Tim Plancon,
FBI Special Agent in Charge Steve Anthony,
Homeland Security
Investigations Special Agent in Charge Steve Francis, and
Cuyahoga County
Prosecutor Michael O’Malley.
Thank you for being here and for all of your hard work to
protect the people of Northeast Ohio from dangerous drugs.
Nationwide, 72,000 Americans lost their lives to drug
overdoses in 2017 – the highest drug death toll in American history.
That is the equivalent of the population of Canton, Ohio
dead in one year just from overdoses.
This is a national crisis.
And there is no question that Ohio has suffered from this epidemic more
than most states. Ohio is second in the nation in overdose deaths, with a rate
more than double the national average. From 2014 to 2016, drug deaths in Ohio
increased by 60 percent. For opioids it was 73 percent. Fentanyl deaths
tripled.
In Cleveland last year 128 people were murdered. That was
enough to put Cleveland in the top five in the nation for murder rate.
But drugs killed more than five times as many Clevelanders
as homicides.
And that’s in addition to those who overdosed and survived.
Last year, first responders in Cleveland reversed more than 1,300 overdoses
that otherwise might have been fatal.
And according to one estimate from Ohio University and the
University of Toledo, more than 500,000 years of life expectancy have been lost
because of drug overdoses—in Ohio alone.
This is a daunting situation. That is why, under President
Trump, the Department of Justice has taken historic new steps to end the drug
crisis.
This summer, Attorney General Sessions sent three more
prosecutors to this office to focus on violent criminals like the gangs who
sell drugs.
Just a few weeks later, Attorney General Sessions began
Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge, or Operation S.O.S. He sent prosecutors to 10 districts in
America—including both Northern and Southern Ohio—and ordered those districts
to prosecute every single synthetic opioid trafficking case they can. As the Attorney General pointed out, these
drugs are so powerful that there really is no such thing as a small fentanyl
case.
In August, the Attorney General stood at this very spot and
announced the arrest of three defendants we believe were the number one and
number three most prolific online fentanyl dealers in North America. He also spoke about the guilty plea of the
Euclid, Ohio fentanyl dealer who sold fentanyl online just down the street from
a Catholic school.
Justin and his team are doing remarkable work. Some of the most important drug cases in the
country are being investigated and prosecuted right here in this district and
by people who are in this room.
This office indicted 959 defendants over the last 12
months—a 50 percent increase over the previous year and the most in 12
years. That includes 393 defendants
charged with narcotics offenses—a 69 percent increase over the previous year
and the most in 13 years.
Over the same timeframe, this office increased violent crime
prosecutions by 53 percent and charged the most violent criminals in 14 years.
As a career prosecutor myself, I know good work when I see
it. And this is certainly excellent
work.
We are working every day at Main Justice to make you more
effective—and I believe that we have successfully done that over this past year
and a half.
Today I am announcing our next step to do that. I am announcing that Cleveland will soon be
the home of an Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force—or OCDETF.
As the officers in this room well know, OCDETF brings
together a broad law enforcement coalition:
Assistant U.S.
Attorneys,
Drug Enforcement
Administration,
Federal Bureau of
Investigation,
Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives,
Immigration and
Customs Enforcement,
Homeland Security
Investigations,
Internal Revenue
Service,
Department of
Labor Inspector General,
Postal Service
Inspectors,
Secret Service,
Marshals Service,
and
Coast Guard.
These agencies have diverse capabilities and
jurisdictions—but they all have one mission: to go after drug traffickers and
criminal organizations at the highest levels.
OCDETF brings together just about every federal law
enforcement agency there is. Attorney
General Sessions has called it “the Swiss Army knife of law enforcement.” It has everything you need to put a drug
trafficker behind bars.
If you want to investigate tax crimes, with OCDETF you have
the IRS. If you want to investigate counterfeiting, you have the Secret
Service. For mail fraud, you have the
postal inspectors. And so on. Whatever
is needed to find the kingpins and the cartel leaders, OCDETF has it.
The idea behind the Strike Force is as straightforward as it
is simple. More than 100 agents from the federal alphabet soup – FBI, DEA, HSI,
IRS, ATF, Postal Inspectors, the Marshals and Border Patrol – will be in one
open office with dozens of Cleveland police officers, task force officers from
HIDTA, Ohio State troopers and prosecutors from our office and Cuyahoga County.
Additionally, several suburban departments have agreed to
participate in the Strike Force.
It is our hope and belief that each agency will bring their
own particular area of expertise to the table, combining the best of technology
and equipment with street-level intelligence, crime analytics and sharing of
data and information.
Areas of emphasis include:
Violent crime,
particularly gang violence, retaliatory shootings, carjackings and commercial
robberies
All drug trafficking,
including opioids, everyone knows has hit this region like few others. That
will include everything from responding to overdose scenes and trying to work a
case back up to the dealer to interdicting packages of drugs coming in the mail
from overseas to disrupting dealers who use the Dark Web to sell drugs to
anyone with a cell phone and bitcoin.
The Department of Justice is committed to giving the Strike
Force the resources needed to meet its mission, including offices with the
capacity for multiple wire rooms to be running at the same time.
Last week, the Attorney General appointed new leadership at
OCDETF. At the national level, it will
be led by Adam Cohen. Adam has served in
our Criminal Division at Main Justice for a decade, most recently as Chief of
the Special Operations Unit’s Office of Enforcement Operations. He has also served as an Assistant United
States Attorney for five years and as a state prosecutor for seven years. He led the National Gang Targeting
Enforcement and Coordination Center for nearly three years and has served as
Deputy Chief of the Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section.
The Attorney General and I are confident that Adam is going
to make OCDETF even more effective than ever.
That will benefit the people of Cleveland, and the nation.
The Cleveland OCDETF Strike Force will feature a prosecutor
with a team of law enforcement agents.
The Strike Force will not be housed in this building but in
a building of its own. Officers from
over two dozen different agencies and departments will be under one roof and in
one open space, constantly sharing information and working together.
OCDETF’s primary purpose is to go after drug
traffickers. But any prosecutor will
tell you that violent crime follows drug.
This new Strike Force will also provide federal, state, and local law
enforcement with critical information that will help us prosecute violent
criminals as well.
With today’s announcement law enforcement in Greater
Cleveland will now be better equipped than ever to take drug traffickers off
our streets.
Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice will
continue to arm our prosecutors and our officers with resources and the tools
they need to give the people of Cleveland—and every American city—safety and
peace of mind.
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