Steven Dettelbach (ohio.gov)
Steven Dettelbach, who was sworn in Monday as Northern Ohio’s new U.S. attorney, says he will put a renewed focus on civil rights enforcement and financial fraud.
“After 9/11, we had to divert a lot of resources to anti-terrorism activities and we need to continue to do that,” Dettelbach said in an interview with WKYC-TV. ”We need to re-focus our efforts on things like fighting economic crime, because people in the community need to understand that a free market also has to be a fair market.”
Dettelbach was one of six U.S. attorneys confirmed by unanimous consent on Sept. 15. He was sworn in at the Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Cleveland today. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) administered the oath of office.
Dettelbach jointed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in 1992 as a trial lawyer. He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Cleveland assigned to the Organized Crime and Corruption Task Force from 2003 until he left for private practice in 2006. Before his selection as U.S. Attorney, Dettelbach was a partner at Baker & Hostetler, splitting time between the firm’s Washington and Cleveland offices.
In another interview, Dettelbach said that that fighting terrorism would remain his top focus, but he would devote resources to other problems as well.
“We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time…we have to keep the level of protection against terrorism at the same place it’s been and, at the same time, we have to get back to the bread-and-butter work of federal investigators because threats don’t just come from terrorists,” said Dettelbach.
Dettelbach’s office is currently prosescuting a huge corruption scandal in Cuyahoga County and a civil rights case involving a white supremacist who mailed a noose to an Ohio chapter of the NAACP.
