CLEVELAND — Gun violence is up in Cleveland, but in a one-on-one interview with 3News’ Matt Rascon Monday, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the city and its citizens must not accept it.
“People often ask me, what’s the thing that scares me most about gun violence in the United States?” ATF Director and Cleveland native Steven Dettelbach said.
“Is it the incredible number of mass shootings we’re seeing? Is it the fact that…the number one cause of death for our kids is now gun violence? Is it the 34,000 plus people who have died just this year from firearm violence? All of those things are incredibly shocking. But our biggest enemy is apathy.”
In other words, he said, the danger is accepting gun violence as a part of American life.
“I know our partners in the Cleveland Police Department do not accept it and people in the community should not accept it!” Dettelbach said. “They can’t somehow, in their minds, say that this is just the way it’s going to be. It doesn’t have to be this way and we can make it better.”
The ATF worked closely with the Cleveland Division of Police this summer. In one operation, he said they arrested close to 60 accused felons and tracked down hundreds of guns that have been used in crimes, including one firearm that was used in 14 different shootings.
According to CDP, homicides with a firearm are up 14.68% compared to this time last year, robberies with a firearm have jumped 7.58%, and felony assaults with a firearm are up 9.52%.
Dettelbach said the challenges his agency faces in their efforts to curb that violence is “this idea that people are very very aggressive and innovative in the ways they are finding to break the law.”
He pointed to people who make their own untraceable firearms and diversion devices that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun. The ATF has a unit focused on “emerging threats” to try to stay ahead of new technology with firearms.
Tackling the problem, he said, requires identifying offenders and stopping the flow of guns to them. Among more than 140 homicides in Cleveland so far this year, authorities say many are connected to illegal guns.
“The flow of crime guns to those people. How are they being armed? Many of them are felons, people who the law says can’t have weapons yet there finding them anyway.”
Dettelbach says the ATF is working to bring a crime gun intelligence center to Cleveland sometime next year, a place where his agents will work with local law enforcement to follow the gun and go after the worst offenders.
“A new way of operationalizing every day the use of this crime gun intelligence—this data—to identify the worst of the worst,” he said.
The ATF has crime gun intelligence centers at locations across the country, including a recently announced center in Columbus. He said they choose locations where the agency believes they will be able to make a difference.
“Like many cities, Cleveland has had a significant amount of firearm violence. I think the good news is Cleveland has the tools to push back against it,” he said.
Dettelbach acknowledged law enforcement agencies would not be able to arrest their way out of this problem.
“The best crime we ever investigate is the one we prevent,” he said.
3News reached out to Mayor Justin Bibb’s office about the new center and received the following response:
“The City has embraced an all-encompassing approach to address violent crime which includes leveraging regional partnerships and increasing the use of technology – two key components of Mayor Bibb’s RISE Initiative. Our collaboration with ATF and this new center are an extension of that commitment.
"Council recently approved a grant from the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office that will help establish and formalize this center and will also fund an accompanying Investigative Research Specialist. This position will take on various responsibilities which includes routinely conducting reviews of gun-related incidents, ensuring recovered firearms are being test fired and appropriate data is entered into NIBIN, and facilitating information-sharing both internally and externally with other agencies – all in an effort to identify hotspots, repeat offenders, and other trends to better inform our public safety efforts.”
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