Cleveland's Safety Secrets Revealed: U.S. Attorney Lutzko Speaks Out!
00:00:00 hey what’s up everybody you tuned in to another episode of strategic moves I’m your host Ken da this is the place where we bring art culture politics and business all together and we do it every Sunday right here on this channel but when I’m not shooting this podcast I am the owner of strategic resources and the founder of the African-American men’s Action Network we call it amen we specialize in political campaigns government and public relations we’ve been doing it right here in this city for over 25 years met some interesting people along the way and we want
00:00:32 to make your next move a strategic move so this program gives me an opportunity to do just that I get a chance to bring in some of the people we met around we sit down we talk about some of our life experience some of the things that we went through and maybe it’s something in that you might get out of it that will help you with your business or personal life so if that sound like something you might be interested in all I need you to do is hit the like button hit the Subscribe button and the notification Bell as well so that you would know the next time this program
00:01:00 coming up without further Ado I want to first introduce and tell everybody let’s give a shout out to the best podcast producer in Cleveland we have here today none other than Mr Latif DJ true what’s happening brother what’s going on Ken how you doing everything’s everything man I’m having some trouble getting started today again I was really feeling good the D your stock would have went down not going down what’s really tripping is that I got the guest in today and I was nervous about this one but I shouldn’t be because we didn’t had Top Authority in the house twice Top
00:01:35 Authority was in twice they they the people to get you nervous now this young this lady I have here today this young lady she should shouldn’t have no issues with her and I think we’re gonna have a good thing we’re gonna continue our segment on safety in Cleveland we’ve been bringing in all of the safety head and Big Wigs all across Cleveland and kyoga County to come talk to us about safety about all the crazy things that’s going on in our city and our County and some of the things we can do to prepare ourselves for the summer and get ready to try to make sure we’re being safe out
00:02:06 there strategic moves has did everything in our power to reach out to some of the most powerful people we know in the city in the state yeah to come up with some information and to give us some good information and ask some questions so without further Ado I want to introduce to us today we have the US attorney for Northern Ohio in our office today in our Studios today and her name is none other than Rebecca let’s go let’s go is in the house thank you for having me I appreciate it no problem no problem like I told you we’re doing a little thing on safety and and our goal is to
00:02:40 try to bring in some of the people I was inspired by that because I went to a meeting that um the pastors asked me to come to over at Reverend Harris’s church and that so happened to be a church that I go to and when I got there I saw you there and I saw other members of the FBI team and others there because there was a shooting at the church at a funeral and I think the congresswoman was attending that event as well and Reverend Harris kind of did the same thing I would do he called all the big wigs we walked in there he was like I got a problem I walked in like man he
00:03:14 got everybody in here these all the big guys and so we had the meeting and we sat there talking I said you know what we need to reach out the same way because it this message need to be broader than just the 20 or so people that’s sitting in this room so that got me started thinking we came to this thing and ended up having you come on our show today so again thank you for being here you’re welcome and thank you again for having me all right so we get started we always go down this thing where I get in everybody’s business I gotta get in your business a little bit so give me
00:03:45 give me a two minute spill on Rebecca let’s go and how you started and where you are you from Ohio I am I grew up in Northeast Ohio okay and I went to school out of state but decided to come back home okay and have been here ever since so right law school yeah I clerked for a federal judge and then worked in private practice and then moved to the US attorney’s office so you went at what college did you go to Boston University Boston University okay and graduated top of your class there I did
00:04:15 did pretty well yes pretty well one of the topic we gonna get into this stuff what did you do when you first got out of high school what did you want to do I started in engineering I liked math wasn’t a huge fan of science but really did like math but decided pretty early on in uh my undergrad career that was not the path that I wanted to follow and I had always considered law and in particular considered working in a prosecutor’s office okay but landed majoring in economics and international relations but decided on my junior year that I definitely was gonna pursue
00:04:47 definitely want to go pursue law what was your first experience of working in law oh geez I would say working in yeah working in law not really until law school I have no lawyers in my family it was not a career path that I was familiar with it was just something I was very interested in okay and I started law school I worked for a judge over the summer as well as for a professor I was juggling got to do something that’s paid and something that’s volunteered to make ends meet but I loved it from the day I started and so you did that with the judge for a little while
00:05:24 then you decide now I got to go to law school right no I’m sorry so I had worked for a year with a small financial planner but I knew that I was going to I wanted to take a year off between just ground myself a little bit but then knew that I was going to law school did you go to law school you went full-time or did you work and go to law school I went full-time and I worked so I worked work study jobs those kind of things I’m uh always someone I’ve worked all through undergrad always had a summer job I think I had my first job at age 12 um so you was working always working and
00:05:56 two three four jobs sometimes at a time definitely an undergrad it was more difficult to do that in law school just because of the amount of time that you have to spend studying I hear people say that you can’t work you can um but it’s difficult I will say that there were many people that GE I went to Georgetown for law school and they have a night section and that night section was primarily people who worked during the day and then went to law school at night I was not in that night section I was in a day section but occasionally would take classes uh with those people and
00:06:30 they were truly amazing they would run circles around the rest of us because they had to juggle so much that’s I worked in the law library and put books away and did things like that I got enough to get some money to buy food that sort of stuff yeah Basics and so then you graduated yes and you ended up coming here to Baker or before I graduated I worked for the Department of Justice as a it’s called the summer honors program okay and so it was a a position where I was able to work in it was with the federal programs Branch so basically they represent the government
00:07:07 and government agencies in pretty high stakes litigation often on the Civil side and I was able to do that over the summer how did you hear was that a program they still do to they I believe they still do it it was just Word of Mouth talking with our Gunn counselors and so that was something I did right after graduation and before I took the bar again so always working and so I did that and then had to stop I think at the first or second week in July to study hard for the bar okay but that I loved doing and I definitely hadj bug I was gonna ask you what did you like about that
00:07:43 job what did you learn most you took from that what was really interesting and different than my experience in private practice because I had also worked as a summer associate at a law firm is how much responsibility you had as a younger attorney and how you were really responsible for your cases and certainly have supervisors and you check in and run things uh by them but in a law firm context it really is a different structure where the partner really has a responsibility who somebody who has much more senior and you are more of a piece of the puzzle or doing assignments more
00:08:25 than taking responsibility for the entire case interesting so would you say you like doing what you do now better than maybe working private I do I do and I was at bak and hosler for seven years I really enjoyed being there I worked with fantastic people I got to do fantastic work but I knew that I had a public service calling and was always interested in criminal law when I clerked I made an effort to grab every criminal case that I could to be able to work on those I certainly worked on the Civil side as as well and those can be just as interesting but I had a draw toward the
00:09:05 criminal side of the house so what did you do at Baker then when I was there I was fortunate enough to work on a lot of First Amendment cases which is fairly unique in private prac we represented a large number of newspapers or other news outlets and sometimes they were National sometimes they were local but when a national paper say the New York Times might have been sued for defamation typically Baker would who was called so I was forunate to be able to on many of those kind of cases as well as commercial litigation employment litigation patent law um intellectual
00:09:45 property cases a wide range and some I worked with a partner who worked on some white color criminal matters on the defensive side and so I was able to work with him on those you never went to the prosecutors not to the County prosecutor’s office no I went from Baker to the US attorney’s office so where I was a line prosecutor for many years before I ultimately became first became the appell at Chief and then handled appeals or oversaw the appeals for the office and then ultimately this position which I was nominated by the president last June and appointed by the court the very
00:10:23 next day so H how long was you there before you got your first elevation to the pellet so I started in 2005 and I was the and I started in our what called our OSF unit so I did large scale drug trafficking cases would also involve Firearms charges sometimes Healthcare fraud depending on what kind of drug trafficking it was so for instance I prosecuted several cases that involved doctors over prescribing or prescribing not for a legitimate medical purpose and therefore illegally same as drug trafficking if just because you’re authorized to do it you
00:11:03 have to do it in an authorized manner that’s correct and from Prosecuting those types of cases I transitioned to our White Collar criminal unit where I was the deputy chief for about a year and then decided that I wanted to do like more trial work and less management okay so I stepped down from that position yes I want more fighting I don’t want to be doing more paperwork you want to get in the fight and then I did those those sorts of cases for about six or maybe six years and then I became the appell chief at the end of 2016 beginning of 2017 so why did you why what
00:11:42 made you decide that during this whole process that I’d rather be on this side of the law than on the other side of thew of the v um yes I as I said I’ve always had a a calling to um public service right out of undergrad I worked for citizen action and was not on people’s doors talking about National Healthcare reform I was really attracted to the Department of Justice in particular because their mission truly is to do justice not to win but to do what’s right to do the right thing the right way for the right reason and that’s very important to me I also was drawn to the Department
00:12:20 of Justice because it is super important I can’t even emphasize enough how important it is that our system is a fair one and perceived and beli to be fair by the public the public trust is so important and so crucial and so I wanted to be a part of ensuring that we were doing things the right way and to help keep the public trust in what we’re doing so I got two questions for you so I’m gonna ask the first question then I’m gonna ask the second one all right so for the millions of people that watch my program every week and everybody don’t know everything and
00:12:59 some people don’t explain to everybody what is the deal Jay okay so the Department of Justice is basically the the federal government’s lawyer or entity that covers that most areas of law certainly not everyone but oversees criminal prosecutions um a lot of civil rights matters um but on the Civil size it may be uh environmental environmental sometimes ticks over into the criminal side as well can be National Security matters on the criminal side side civil rights can be civil or criminal and then fraud tax tax issues violent crime drug trafficking
00:13:38 child exploitation Firearms matters back to fraud pretty much any which way you can steal something from somebody which whether it’s a bank robbery or a very complex scheme that represents one thing and is really doing another so huge range so the Department of Justice is in Washington it has numerous different components the FBI is a opponent I I was sitting here while you was putting it together then I say okay the FBI must go out and get it and they bring it to you guys who prosecute it correct okay got but we both we both of us as well as ATF and the depart and uh
00:14:15 DEA and other law enforcement components are all under the umbrella of the Department of Justice we actually do the prosecution we do and so the Department of Justice then has us attorney’s offices that are are located in every state as well as the territories so in Ohio there’s a Northern District of Ohio and the southern district of Ohio which is basically Columbus South so we’re the top 40 counties and they’re the bottom 48 in the state okay we prosecute the vast majority of any criminal criminal conduct and civil cases within our district within those nor
00:14:54 Northern 40 counties that involve federal charges or federal claims sometimes other agencies like the SEC might have a case here or the EPA or other agencies with attorneys that may have suits up here it it’s a huge range which is what I love I’m always learning something new there’s never a dll moment attorneys under you so we have our office including our staff anywhere from 160 to 180 people given ESB and flows of employment in Cleveland we usually have somewhere around 70 usas attorneys that would include the management and then in our Toledo we have a branch office
00:15:33 in Toledo which is the Western Division of the Northern District of Ohio and there are usually in the range of 10 a usas there as well as our support staff our akan Branch usually has five to six a usas and then we have another currently two sometimes three we’ve had as many as four in the Youngstown branch office so it fluctuates and it depends on needs and a lot of different variables but so it does you ever get an opportunity as it relates to you have an office here in Cleveland you have one in too Youngstown yes and where else akan and akan are all of those which is
00:16:12 the busiest area you think right now so oh they all got different things going on Cleveland is the largest office it is certainly the main office and I would say our overall numbers are heaviest in Cleveland but our branch office offes are very busy those a usas frequently have higher per a USA case loads and it does it depends on so many different factors but our Branch offices all have been quite busy for a good amount of time so I I guess by population determines how many attorney generals you will get yes so the I I don’t know the exact formula nobody and I don’t get I don’t
00:16:55 get to influence it but yes the the department has a determines um so in Washington they determine how many full-time employees were allocated in different whether it’s attorneys whether it is our administrative staff whether it’s our other our legal support staff but that is provided to us as well as a budget so sometimes we can employ that fully and sometimes we cannot just depending on what the budget looks like all right so couple of last questions then we gonna get to the real stuff sure you don’t have to be an attorney to work in the Department of Justice right no you don’t in
00:17:31 fact to be an assistant United States Attorney you do have to be an attorney so to actually to be the prosecutor the person that stands up in the courtroom that represents the United States we you have to be an attorney fully barred fully licensed all that good stuff but we have numerous employees who do not have law degrees we have paralegals we have legal assistants we have an IT staff we have an administrative staff that handles HR matters and building matters and our buildings and facilities tech support litigation support for our trials as you can imagine over
00:18:07 time our public which would be our jury our juries get used to seeing things visually everybody we become more of a visual Society correct and so they want to see a PowerPoint or they want to see the video or they want to see the recordings of things more so than maybe 20 years ago okay the attorneys don’t know we don’t do a great job at putting that together at least without some help from Our IT staff so they help us with all of that and also if you wanted to be a if you wanted to do internship or something like that how can a person go about doing that so they should absolutely
00:18:42 apply most of the interns that we have are law students certainly that they’re often first or second year law students we have interns though over the summer as well as during the school year each semester we those obviously would be local um schools so we have interns from Case Western or from Cleveland State sometimes from akan akan Law School Toledo and I don’t think we’ve had any in Youngstown recently okay but certainly those are opportunities we also sometimes employ students in paid positions who do things like copying and scanning and those things that an office needs to
00:19:20 have done to function so so do you have to have can you be a a student coming right after you get pass the bar hey I got my thing I’m in can you go work for the DJ or you got to have some experience before you get there so in theory you can and actually the department has what’s called the honors program so as I mentioned to you before I worked in the Summers summer honors program people who have taken the bar can apply through those honors programs and sometimes those honors programs then send the people to different offices in our office historically we have had
00:19:55 here and there some AAS who have come through those programs and who then are right out of law school but the vast majority of times people come with a good amount of experience whether it’s from a law firm which was my path or and we have several people who have come to the US attorney’s from law us attorney’s office having worked in law firms previously and not worked in prosecutors offices and we also have numerous AAS who worked in various County prosecutor’s office or sometimes City Prosecuting offices as well so those are the two primary paths and we have a pretty good range
00:20:32 of both all right Miss let go yes sir we about to let go now now we gonna get down to the real nitty-gritty everybody we know who she is we know how she got there got a good sense of what she’s doing and we got a good understanding about the office itself so now we gonna talk a little bit about how that relates to what’s going on with us here okay in Cleveland and some of the crimes that are going on and everything so let’s talk a little bit about that from from your perspective you mentioned earlier about trust and one of the things that I talked with the gentleman Nelson
00:21:07 from the FBI and others nson yes about all the the just in past history of these agencies and the ability to work with especially the black community as it relates to that and Trust what is your agency doing to try to help build more Community Trust with people in our community so one thing that I have tried to do myself since taking this position is to do Outreach with different Community organizations and Community leaders as you mentioned where we met Pastor Harris had invited us to the Mount Pleasant pastors association meeting and so that we could
00:21:47 get to know some of the pastors that was actually it was a lot of fun I’ve been to mosques I’ve been to Temples I’ve met with different organizations from different religious affiliations and that probably one of the the most fun things that I get to do is just go and meet people and and talk with people but as far as our office is concerned something that we have done for a long time that I have worked hard to reinvigorate is called stance so stance was started in our office in 2006 it means Stand Together against neighborhood crime every day okay I think I’ve
00:22:23 got that right crime yeah neighborhood crime every day that is a group that involves law enforcement it involves re-entry professionals it involves prevention in professionals from both government law enforcement agencies Community groups a lot of community groups actually um the um some of them are private some of them are public a huge range and that is largely focused in it’s focused in the county but really with a heavy emphasis in in Cleveland we meet regularly on a bonly basis and then there are subcommittee meetings to talk about different issues that the city is facing with
00:23:05 respect to Crime there’s definitely a focus on violent crime and violent crime prevention as well as re-entry and we try to coordinate in order to best address the current problems that we’re we’re facing so that is something that was started by a predecessor of mine attorney who hired me Greg white and has been maintained over the years and there’s definitely been es and flows but I found that to me it’s something that’s very important so I have spent a lot of time working with various partners that participate in that organization so what would you say strategies do you think you
00:23:43 want to plan to tackle some of that can you give us some of the strategies you think you guys want to do this summer so one of the things we’ve been working on is I’ve worked for several months now with the city of Cleveland to identify particular areas based on data right not just based on rumors or that’s a terrible neighborhood or or whatever but based on where we’re seeing violent crime and then I have been working with Partners from stance to narrow those down and come up with some areas
00:24:16 with which to focus our efforts over the summer but we not only want to increase law enforcement presence there because while that is important we’re never going to arrest our way out of any build arres you want to fill a vacuum when you arrest people you want to people options you want people to make better choices correct and we have been developing a community call-in program okay where we are uh identifying high-risk offenders people who have previously committed crimes have returned to the community but for whatever reason remain at high risk to continue down a negative
00:24:58 path and to try and intervene there and and ultimately it’s up to them they have to make a decision but to help give some options also to work with the community at the larger community in that area and hear from them what it is that what they’re seeing experiencing what would be useful Etc because I don’t live there you do so tell me what the problems are so it’s a work in progress for sure do you guys have a a line now that people can call in if they wanted to give you information so the FBI of course has as far as reporting crimes so we don’t have a
00:25:38 line that’s specific to what I’m talking about but the FBI and I know you’re going to ask me what it is so I don’t I got number they’ve been here I’m gonna tell you what I had prosecutor Ali in here and I asked him the same question and he said he didn’t and I’m gonna just give you guys a theory is coming from the hood uhhuh I think y’all ought to have a line okay I think it should be a line directly to you guys because ultimately people trust you more than they trust the FBI and they trust the police unfortunately right now I’m not I don’t have an opinion on that and that’s not us to
00:26:16 make an opinion which way but if you want to know that’s what people trust they won’t call the FBI they gonna swear even if you told me I can call there and leave it Anonymous y’all going to tap my phone y’ got me we didn’t watched enough mov on TV that we know I’ll tell you it’s hard to get a wire tap there’s a lot of process I tell my wife that all the time but she swear up and down all they and sometimes you can’t help but wonder when you say something you fall look up I just said that somebody’s like apple Google say that’s Google listening to you right it’s
00:26:47 that kind of thing to my point I think that people when you in trouble like you say some of the crime things have to take place before you even kick in mean f bi other folks got to initiate things so it gets to you but when it gets to you then you kick in right now when you kick in that’s when we like finally right we’re about to get some justice right that’s Department of Justice right leading up to that they still skeptical you’re still a police officer you’re still this you’re still I’m skeptical because that’s just how it is just a little advice I think that you guys
00:27:22 ought to have a line directly so that I don’t know if legal it can because of whatever but I told Michael the same way said Mike people will call you The Neighbor Next Door who saw the crime happen may not want to call the police may not want to get involved maybe thinking all of that but if she knew she can call you directly and it was anoun and I talk to the prosecutor they would call there and so in your case same way so thank you for that I will say that we do um have people sometimes sometimes it’s emails sometimes they’re writing letters sometimes there are calls and we
00:27:56 definitely do refer goes to the investigating agency very frequently it’s the FBI but not always it might be DEA it might be ATF but if they went to you first they always got a security that I talked to you and they told me to go there that absolutely and we do take those calls and we refer them again because we’re the prosecutors we can’t do the actual investigation and make ourselves yes we can’t make ourselves a witness like when our agents who investigate frequently are the people that we are putting up on the witness stand to testify about the conversations they had what
00:28:36 they uncover the financial records They went through the ballistics Etc so we cannot become that or then we get boun out of the case that’s what’s happening I was wondering like why because but I understand that if that could happen that I think you will get much better results but we do not just ignore the calls that come in we we certainly send them to the investigative agencies we also in our office in particular meaning that on the federal side of prosecution in particular our AAS are very actively involved in prior to indicting cases with the agents directing
00:29:14 strategy having discussions about the best way to develop evidence or Which Way a case should go or whether it should be closed whether there’s simply not enough so that it they do play an active role in that but the role has to not be as the primary investigator so let’s talk about what’s happening here in Cleveland and everything what’s the biggest crimes that we should be aware of that people may need to be aware of that’s going on that we don’t maybe that’s going under the radar now I wouldn’t say that it’s under the radar but I would say that one of the highest risk things that
00:29:48 we see that people of all walks of life all more our elderly Community but it is not exclusively our elderly Community fra that’s out there that is based on emails like a spam email what’s called fishing where they the frauder will tell somebody that hey your account has been compromised or they might say hey we um you know we’re from Amazon and we see that we charged you too much and we need to refund it can you give us our bank account information or can you sometimes they in intercede and then say we’re going to put you in touch with this FBI agent or this police officer or something
00:30:31 along those lines and they’re very sophisticated but they quite regularly unfortunately convince people to give them access to their bank accounts or to give them cash to buy Bitcoin to buy gold bars to buy all sorts of things so I would caution people to be very Vigilant when you’re getting those unsolicited emails and a very easy thing to do to check when you get an email is take your mouse your cursor and hover it over the email address and if the person is claiming to be say from Amazon or 18 or or Home Depot and the email extension says at gmail.com or at yahoo.com
00:31:14 or it doesn’t say at Home Depot that’s a real easy one and so I start there because people lose their life savings or they lose everything that they’ve ever worked for because the criminals perpetrating these kind of frauds are very sophisticated they’re very convincing the people who are victims are not victims because they’re dumb it just it’s so persuasive corre and so it really is that that’s something unfortunately we’re seeing a lot of we also though in Cleveland continue to have a very significant violent crime problem when you get into violent crime what you let’s break it
00:31:51 down a little bit what you call it violent crime I’ll say what I call violent crime and then more on what we focus on certainly murders of course a surprise but assaults things that involve Firearms most frequently a fonus assault involves a firearm not exclusively but it may also be domestic violence we have car jacking robber how does that make it to the DJ um so the domestic violence side of things we don’t prosecute typically a domestic violence case but we may have a Firearms related case that involves domestic violence for instance having domestic violence conviction
00:32:28 even if misdemeanors will prohibit you in Ohio from possessing a firearm and so that then is a federal crime to have a prohibiting conviction and yet you’re possessing a firearm even though you’re yes that can be Federal now a lot of those possession crimes that we prosecute are felons who illegally possess a firearm and then we have to make a decision in our office because we have concurrent jurisdiction with the state on whether that person merits Federal prosecution or whether that’s one that we would be better prosecuted at the state and there I would say roughly
00:33:05 we’re very frequently looking at backgrounds what is this person’s how have they used that gun before in a different setting have are they someone who’s pulling a trigger are they someone who’s committing a felonious assault but for the grace of God so th those are factors that go in how about juveniles do they fit in there Cleveland not unlike numerous other cities in our country has seen a large increase in the number of juveniles involved in violent crime we do not frequently prosecute them on the federal side um those they typically go state but it’s not
00:33:41 impossible and in the right set of circumstances given if it were significant enough it might be something that we pursue we see a lot of car jackings and certainly prosecute a number of car jackings what I will say on a negative note is Cleveland’s statistics for the last three four five years have been really high as certainly as far as the number of murders the number of felonius assaults carjackings those sorts of things I think in the last few or the first few months of the this year they have been lower than they were at the same time last year the year
00:34:17 before Etc I think there’s a lot of factors that play into that one thing I would note is that last summer our office and the ATF along with numerous other federal law enfor federal and state and local law enforcement agencies made a concerted effort to investigate and then prosecute Firearms trafficking okay and guns that were involved in criminal Behavior whether that’s a fonus assault or murder and so they did make a very concerted effort we bought I think and it took about 240 guns off the street many of which had been tied through ballistics information to previous
00:34:58 crimes some of these guns were nasty they were machine gun oh yeah yeah things that don’t even look like they really work yeah unfortunately they military type weapons a lot of machine gun conversion devices unfortunately there which is a very small the switch they the switch exactly thing that takes a semi-automatic and makes it so it can shoot automatic automatically and it just makes your likelihood of dying from a firearm injury much higher just because of the number of bulls that was one effort and also the Ohio State Patrol partnered with the Cleveland division of
00:35:34 police and up the patrols here so I’m sure that also was a factor there are lots of different investigations that whether it’s a federal agency or local all all of which I think has contributed to that but the summer months are always months of concern and but we’re hoping on the federal side to on some very significant prosecutions that we had stemming from our initiative last summer exactly yeah so we I think we prosecuted close to 70 individuals federally in connection with that we just had a couple of sentencings uh a week or two ago relating to Firearms trafficking
00:36:11 one individual illegally sold I think it was 35 weapons to undercover officers out of the back of his car all in like in retail locations in the Parks yes more recently we just had an investigation near the cedar Estates area I think we indicted 15 individuals many of whom associated with the fully blooded felons who were basically operating in open air drug Market in that area also engaged in violence a lot of guns involved in that as well how do you stay informed and up to date with evolving Landscapes and law enforcement your collaboration I would imagine
00:36:49 yeah we have um a lot of regular meetings so um again one of the things about the US attorney’s office whether it’s in our uh District or elsewhere is the power to convene so to bring in agencies that might not otherwise communicate regularly or work together to sit down and make sure that communication is going on um so we have meetings with the eight largest certainly eight significantly large cities in our district every couple of months where either the chiefs of police from those cities or their designes come and talk about things that are going on share information
00:37:28 share strategies for how to address them we also have our project safe neighborhood meetings where they work on piloting different programs to address crime in a particular area to see if that’s something that works for them and if so to then expand it within their own agency but also to share that information so say that’s something that happen in akan so akan shares that with Cleveland this is what worked here in to share ideas do you think the prosecutor should play a significant role in reforming criminal justice I think they absolutely play is it the
00:38:06 sole role or do they occupy the sole role I would say no okay but something that this Administration in particular has taken quite seriously is making sure that the prosecution decisions are thoughtful and that we’re not uh simply charging the maximum thing you can charge without thinking through whether that’s appropriate in a given situation so attorney general Merrick Garland has released the end of 2022 what we all refer to is referred to as the the Garland memos okay those are public facing documents so I’m not telling some secret it’s something you can find on
00:38:47 the internet but it what it does is walks through the sort of bigger picture higher level criteria and things that it directs the prosecutor and in our office to be thinking about when you’re making charging decisions uh because there are lots and lots of mandatory minimum sentences in Federal in the federal criminal laws many of which are in our drug laws but also in things like aggravated identity in child exploitation cases corre and so when and Firearms offenses as well and so when you’re deciding to charge a mandatory minimum what you’re doing is the prosecutor is really
00:39:28 tying the judge’s hands as far as what sentence that judge can give they can go up but they can’t go below they can’t go below now there are other factors that play into that so that’s a little bit of an oversimplification but as a prosecutor you have a significant power and so you have a significant responsibility that that corresponds and so when you’re making those decisions you should be able to articulate and and that’s what those memos require you to be able to articulate why the person that you’re charging with something that involves a mandatory minimum actually merits
00:40:05 such a charge what’s your fundamental um challenge what do you let me put it this way what can you share an experience that fundamentally shapes your approach to law enforcement I don’t I don’t know about a single experience what’s coming to mind and response to that question is I grew up in Northeast Ohio my parents were divorced when I was young my mom was fabulous and but work night shift my dad didn’t pay child support I didn’t have a lot of extra money I didn’t have lawyers and doctors off individuals in my family as role models and I always just really worked hard to get
00:40:45 to where I wanted to go but getting a fair shake and a fair shot at everything and having an even playing field has always been very important for me Merit I guess at the end of the day matters and think to answer your question that really bleeds into what I think about our justice system again it should be a fair playing field um people should have um confidence in the system that their side will be heard they’ll be decided by a jury of their peers that there’s not a thumb on the scale either either way the Department of Justice and as a prosecutor we do have significant tools
00:41:24 a significant ability to investigate and bring people who have committed crimes to Justice and vindicate the rights of our victims and protect Society at large but it’s really important that we do it the right way and that we follow the rules that we abide by the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment and all the other constitutional amendments in the Bill of Rights that govern the criminal justice system and I I think that just my upbringing in life I would say really makes me tick as far as grounded yeah it grounded exactly thank you so I’m gonna give you my last two
00:42:01 questions first one is this one I can’t go without asking this question because I had Tim and tamama woods you know them they were on my show they had her son who died of sextortion case here in Cleveland out in Streetsboro he was James Woods and then there’s another young lady that’s pulling on my heartstrings every time I see her on TV she’s been on there looking for her son it’s just really breaking my heart every time I see her she hasn’t gave up she’s out there looking for him and all of that so I know they’re two separate issues one is extortion and I know
00:42:37 that’s something big I want you to speak to that a little bit and any if any hopes or anything that you can give anybody on that end of what the doj may be working towards strives and as it relates to that and then the other one is there is a lot of missing people it seem like going on in this Greater Cleveland area for some reason and I just don’t know every time we turn around there people are just coming up missing and and people are looking for them and that kind of thing so I just want you to just speak to those two things if you don’t mind so we’ve spent a good amount of
00:43:15 time talking about fraud talking about violent crime talking about Firearms offenses drug trafficking all of that our office does actually prosecute a lot of child exploitation cases as well the Federal Criminal law and jurisdiction is is very Broad in scope and that is something that U we do a lot of unfortunately we do a lot of we have seen numerous sextortion cases um production of uh child pornography and distribution of child pornography also situations where we have people who travel from other states to come to our jurisdiction with a
00:43:54 plan of engaging in sexual acts with minor and it really is a very significant problem and it’s something that work very hard to address so on the sextortion piece though I guess what I would say is that particularly for a victim telling your mom telling your dad telling your best friend telling somebody what’s going on is always going to be the better option than certainly doing harm to yourself as awful as it might seem at the time that you’ve sent a picture you’ve agreed to have a trist or meet with somebody or whatever and as embarrassing as
00:44:34 you think it’s going to be people will understand people get backed into kind of situations or LED into those situations and the perpetrators can be again quite persuasive and and walk you down that path until you’re in a situation where you you can’t believe you got there and you don’t know how you got there and all you think about is that if Mom finds out if Dad finds out my life is over and it’s not your parents are going to understand or your teacher is going to understand or a friend is going to understand and be able to help you address it and hopefully and report it and
00:45:14 there are numerous just tons and tons of really dedicated law enforcement officers at the local level at the state level at the federal level who devote their careers to investigating these kind of crimes and bringing Justice to those victims so I I I think I would emphasize the there’s hope there’s a light it might be uncomfortable for a little while but you’re G to come out okay and I’d encourage you to have the courage right to to tell somebody and that’s the way you’re going to make it better so what’s your role in it though so our role is and so in those types of cases we
00:45:52 prosecute those cases we have our AAS work with the agents work with Law Enforcement Officers to make sure that we’ve developed sufficient evidence better evidence beyond that or might go back into Financial records or into internet going getting the historical information to support that as a Prosecuting Office that is our primary function do y’all go out of the country we have had cases that involved either perpetrators from out of the country or that we’ve had information from law enforcement outside of the country I’m thinking of one recently where we had leads from the
00:46:28 Australian National Police or law enforcement agency in Australia that was instrumental to assisting in identifying a perpetrator they sex extortion rings and that kind of stuff well they can be difficult but again when you’re in a chat room there is a digital Trail and we have lots of tools to be able to identify that and are those tools perfect of course not but that doesn’t mean that we can’t track it down and even if the end of the day if you’re a victim of sextortion you can and even if there ultimately isn’t a prosecution just removing yourself from that situation and
00:47:09 you’ll be able to move on certainly better than burying it and trying to deal with it yourself you know how many cases you guys prosecuted last year I don’t off the top of my head I just thought about I and it’s you know it’s as we bring versus close you know U we prosecute many fewer than the County Prosecutors do because we tend to do longer term investigations we tend to address things that cross state lines or cross count lines different jurisdictions we’re not the prosecutor of Last Resort so we pick our cases which we have the luxury but again the responsibility associated
00:47:47 with that y’ got the budgets too right yeah don’t even get me started talking about the budget that that unfortunately gets controlled by people in Washington who they don’t ask me me well here goes my last question for you so your mom’s still alive she is she is alive you mentioned earlier on that you said you were sworn in by the president I was nominated by the president I was sworn in by the judge gone of our district court and the day after I was nominated the day after you was nominated and all of that so I just wanted to ask you just personal question what was going
00:48:18 through your mind with that all the journey you went through like you talked about your mom and all the stuff you went through and you finally did this all that college working all those jobs everything went so what was going through your mind when you putting your hand on that Bible and you taking this swear to say damn I finally got here and this is going to be my shot what was you thinking it’s funny because I was very excited for the opportunity and humbled by the fact that the president nominated me I had the support of our Senators but the very next day the judges of
00:48:50 our court swore me in as the US attorney so I got to start the very next day it was very humbling and exciting like I said a wonderful opportunity but it also was like flip a switch right one day I was the appell chief and the next day I was the US attorney the fire hose in my face that goes along with that has receded it still comes on frequently but in short bursts instead of that constant stream it’s amazing because I’ve been in the office for over 18 years and yet doing this job is very different than the other positions that I had and sitting down with our agency partners
00:49:27 at a different level and getting to know them and developing those working relationships and a lot more community outreach and getting to know other people has been the challenge it’s a different part of my brain different skill sets but I’m I very much enjoyed it and we have tremendous people tremendous hardworking dedicated people that work in our office and I get to see their work both on the Civil side a lot more than I did previously as well as the criminal side and I am constantly impressed by the quality of work they do their thoughtfulness their dedication have you ever
00:50:04 had a case where you felt like the US attorney’s office got it wrong and how did you or how would you handle that good question L it is a good question but I will say that we try very hard not to get it wrong on the front end we do a lot of vetting of our cases again and why why we don’t have as many cases as the County prosecutor’s offices because the police report comes in they take it to Grand Jury they adict it on they go and we instead have a a slower process very frequently where we have a lead we’re working with our agents and we’re working to develop that evidence to make
00:50:46 sure that we do not wrongfully indict now does it ever happen you I’m not going to say that that has never happened I have we have had had cases where we’ve dismissed charges for various reasons that might have to do with a suppression it might have to do with something else but we try very hard to get it right on the front end so that we don’t have to go back because again it’s very serious I I fully recognize that what we do changes people’s lives and when we indict somebody that means something and when they’re hauled into federal court that means something very significant and
00:51:23 if they’re convicted then we’re taking their Liberty we’re taking their sometimes their money we’re taking a lifetime in some situations and certainly a portion of their lifetime and so it is very important that we get it right how can they reach you so our main number and our office is 216 622 3600 that goes to our main switchboard and our receptionists can direct the call from there we also have a website we have a Twitter SL X page however I have hired somebody who is and so we’re working on that exell our website though has probably the bulk of the information EXC all
00:52:07 the information that you would need in order to get in touch with Miss let’s go is going to be in the description on our website so when you go in and look in the description we’re going to leave how you can get in contact with the office how you can get in contact on the website and all that information there and again we want to thank you Miss letco for coming on our program we’re going to continue our safety month and we’re gonna finish it off hopefully with our next guest next week not gonna say who it is in case they don’t make it so we got one coming next week which gonna
00:52:37 be really exciting and we look forward to that so everybody peace and we’ll see y’all next week