Feds seek summer crime blitz in Youngstown

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Photo

Steve Dettelbach

Steven Dettelbach, U.S. attorney for Ohio’s Northern District, won’t make any promises but said he wants federal agents in Youngstown this summer fighting crime.

“We’re going to try to make something happen,” Dettelbach told The Vindicator on Tuesday.

He says he’ll meet with city and Mahoning County officials in addition to the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

“I think you’ll be seeing some targeted enforcement in Youngstown,” Dettelbach said. It’s just a matter of where, when and how, he said.

“There is a very significant violent crime [problem] in Youngstown,” he said.

The city, county and the federal organizations, along with the Ohio State Highway Patrol, teamed up in summer 2003 for the Gun Reduction Interdiction Project. The agencies arrested nearly 400 people between late June and early September 2003. There was only one murder in the city during that time.

Youngstown and Cleveland are the top two priorities of the U.S. Department of Justice in the state’s Northern District, Dettelbach said, “because of the amount of crime. ... There is a particular uncomfortable flavor to the violence that’s going on here.”

Youngstown police and the highway patrol will begin saturation patrols in the city next month, Mayor Jay Williams said last week.