CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Recently installed U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman said he has dismantled the office's civil rights unit and has established a new division that will focus on prosecuting violent crime.

The civil rights unit served as the crown jewel of the office under former top prosecutors Steve Dettelbach and Carole Rendon and handled some of the most high-profile criminal prosecutions under those administrations. Herdman said such cases will still be prosecuted, though by different units in the office. Herdman's violent crime unit will use the power of the federal government to build bigger conspiracy cases and target gangs.

The realignment appears to track what U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions set in motion as his priorities for the Justice Department under the Trump Administration, though Herdman, in his first interview as U.S. attorney since taking over in August, said Tuesday afternoon that his restructuring was mostly shaped by his assessment of the office and feedback from local law enforcement.

"We have a demonstrable violent crime issue in our largest cities," said Herdman, a Republican who previously worked at the office and at the Jones Day law firm. "It aligned with what the national priorities of the DOJ are stated to be. In that sense, independently, we're coming at conclusions about how our office needs to be structured. It makes sense to align those with our national priorities as well."

Herdman's restructuring is not unexpected, as any new boss likes to do things his or her own way. Inadvertent or not, the move gives a glimpse of what his tenure in the office might look like.

There is "some symbolic value into how you decide to break your lawyers up," said John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham University School of Law that specializes in criminal law. "I think it is very much a reflection of the priorities of this administration."

Civil rights

Herdman has been U.S. attorney for six weeks. He said his decisions to reshape the office came after a review, in which he looked at several factors, including how many cases certain units handle.

The civil rights unit consisted of three assistant U.S. attorneys and a supervisor who also prosecuted criminal cases. Two of the attorneys in the unit handled civil cases, which included the investigation into and eventual settlement with the city of Cleveland to reform the police department.

Herdman said the prosecutors didn't have a big enough workload to justify the unit's existence. In addition to civil cases, the unit prosecuted criminal cases involving sex trafficking, labor trafficking and allegations of excessive force by police.

Some of these cases were quite notable. They included the prosecution of four people involved with smuggling poor Guatemalans into the United States and forcing them to work on central Ohio egg farm.

It also included the case of Westlake police officer Robert Toth, who was accused and later acquitted of beating and choking a suspect during questioning.

Herdman said his office would still look at and, if need be, charge similar cases. They would just be handled by prosecutors in other units, he said.

Bridget Brennan, who supervised the civil rights unit, has been promoted to the U.S. Attorney's Office's criminal chief and will still handle the intake for all potential civil rights prosecutions.

The U.S. attorney also said the office has no plans to pull back from participating in enforcing the settlement, known as a consent decree, with the city of Cleveland.

The office's continued participation has been a topic of discussion since the election of President Donald Trump and his installation of Sessions. Both have shown less of a proclivity for investigating police departments for potential wrongdoing, something Barack Obama's Justice Department favored.

"As long as there's a table to sit at, our office is going to be at the table," Herdman said of the consent decree. "We're not going away from this."

Violent crime

In addition to reviewing the office's inner workings, Herdman said he spent the last few weeks talking to law enforcement agencies and politicians. They said they needed help fighting opioid abuse and violent crime, and thus the new unit was born, Herdman said.

While opioid cases will continue to be investigated by the office's drug unit, Herdman said he has created a new violent crime unit. It is supervised by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Patton, who has worked at the office for 11 years, most recently prosecuting white-collar crimes. The unit will have four prosecutors, including Patton, Herdman said.

Prosecutors under Dettelbach and Rendon pursued the types of cases Herdman envisions bringing with the new unit. These include racketeering and conspiracy cases against gangs.

Herdman, who said it is common for U.S. Attorney's Offices across the country to have a violent crime or gang unit, said he wants to see more of those long-term investigations, which often include tapping phones, surveillance and making deals with lower-level criminals in order to bring down leaders.

"We're talking about more extensive networks of organized individuals, loosely organized individuals but all of whom are engaged in violent crime, shootings, firearms trafficking and a lot of incidents," Herdman said.

Such cases are a direct reaction to an increase in homicides not only in Cleveland, but in Akron and Toledo, Herdman said.

With those cases could come harsher sentences if a firearm was used to commit a crime. Herdman said the goal is to be more proactive, bringing more large-scale cases than, say, charging a defendant with being a felon in possession of a firearm. While bringing the lower-level charges serves a purpose, which Herdman deemed "homicide prevention," the longer-term investigations could have a bigger effect.

In line with Sessions

Herdman said the new violent crime unit and the dismantling of the civil rights unit were "not dictated or mandated by anyone in (Washington,) D.C." Still, the office's new focus appears to be in line with what the Justice Department and Sessions want out of each state's federal prosecutors.

The attorney general sent a memo to federal prosecutors in May, before Trump nominated Herdman, that says prosecutors should charge and pursue "the most serious, readily provable offense." This includes charges that carry long sentences and mandatory minimum prison stints.

Such tactics were a hallmark during the War on Drugs, which included strict enforcement as a means to combat violent crime and the crack-cocaine epidemic, and its effectiveness has come under considerable scrutiny from both political parties in recent years as the nation's prison population swelled.

Pfaff said Sessions has made it clear he wants the federal government to fight violent crime. At the same time, he said the federal government's capacity to fight crime has always been much smaller than state and local courts.

Still, "the evidence is pretty unambiguous that the threat of longer prison sentences ... does not have that big of a deterrent effect," Pfaff said. He said the threats of longer prison sentences in the federal system may give state prosecutors more leverage when they try to coax pleas out of defendants.

Herdman said it's not his aim to "fill a quota" on criminal charges.

Instead, he reiterated that the restructuring was done in order to provide a better way for the office to run and to address the issues in northern Ohio, particularly in the large cities.

"It was very obvious that there was a need for us to focus more specifically on addressing violent crime problems," Herdman said.

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