Environmental Prosecution Increases in Northern California

Date: January 10, 2002

Source: News Room

Federal prosecutors in Northern California are cracking down on salmon snatchers, illegal trail cutters, oil dumpers and other polluters. The U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco has gone from being the worst in the country for prosecuting environmental crimes to one of the best at a time when the Justice Department is pursuing more pollution prosecutions than ever. In no area has the increase been more dramatic than Northern California. The office has steadily increased its environmental criminal caseload in recent years, from filing six cases in 1998 to more than 36 last year, according to the records obtained by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That is a major increase from 1986 through 1997, when only four cases were filed in the region. Nationally, federal prosecutions of environmental crimes increased three-fold from 1998 through 2001, from around 300 a year to more than 900 cases last year. More information: www.usdoj.gov.

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