U.S. attorney general commends Independence police for drug enforcement work

by John Benson

Independence Police Chief Michael Kilbane was invited on Aug. 22 to meet U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Cleveland Federal Court House to be recognized for his department’s continued war on drugs.

The city was complimented for its partnership with the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, as well as its collaboration with the DEA’s Opiate Strike Force.

“Sessions was in Cleveland to reinforce the Justice Department’s commitment to fighting both opioids and violent crime,” Kilbane said. “Those are the two main focuses federal agencies have been working on. Sessions wanted to recognize some of the local law enforcement chiefs.”

Justin Herdman, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, also attended the ceremony.

“We talked about some of the specific issues and some of the initiatives that the feds are doing to support the local problem, because the opioid crisis is hitting us hard, and so are violent crimes.” Kilbane said.

Independence police have been working with HIDTA, created by Congress in 1988, for more than a decade. Kilbane said the relationship between local law enforcement and federal agencies has been positive and remains strong.

“We made tremendous progress over the years to the point where we’re working together on task forces, we’re sharing intelligence and we’re combining our strengths,” he said. “That all starts at the top. We’ve got a really strong U.S. attorney here in Cleveland.”

Added Independence Mayor Anthony Togliatti, “Our partnership with HIDTA brings federal, state and local agencies together in Northeast Ohio to help remove drugs from the streets. HIDTA provides intelligence, training and tools that Independence police officers would otherwise not have access to, with the end goal of removing deadly drugs from our streets.”

Ohio’s HIDTA program includes roughly 15 different task forces. Its focus is on drug interdiction as a collaboration between federal agencies such as the FBI, DEA, Homeland Security, ATF, Secret Service, Postal Inspectors and the U.S. Marshals Service. Also involved are the Ohio State Highway Patrol, local sheriff’s departments and municipal police departments.

“Here in Independence, we have a detective assigned to one of the HIDTA task forces that specializes in hotel interdiction for the crimes that occur in and around hotels throughout the area,” Kilbane said.

“The beauty of these task forces is when push comes to shove, nobody knows the local atmosphere, local bad guys, local businesses as well as the local cops. So you get that specialized local knowledge and combine it with the intelligence resources and the prosecutorial ability of the federal court system. It’s a real powerful tool.”

One example of how HIDTA assisted Independence involved what Kilbane said was a “horrible assault” a couple of years ago at a local hotel. The suspect was a known gang member from Cleveland.

“He knew we were looking for him, and he was in the wind,” he said. “Our detectives couldn’t track him down. So we contacted the U.S. Marshals. They gave it [the case] to their fugitive task force and within 24 hours, this guy was sitting in one of our jail cells.”

Kilbane said HIDTA’s actual reach is often beyond measure.

“The one thing I always tell people is you never know the amount of crime that you’re preventing,” he said. “There’s no way to measure the number of bad guys who say, ‘I’m not going to do it in Independence because I’m more likely to get caught there.’”

Photo caption: US Attorney General Jeff Sessions (r) meets with Independence Police Chief Michael Kilbane at Cleveland’s federal court house.