CINCINNATI — In her first few months in office, a county prosecutor who made history is now facing a string of high-profile cases with less staff to worth through them.

What You Need To Know

  • Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich made history when she became the first woman to be elected to that office 

  • In her first 100 days, she's handled high-profile cases with less staff to work through them 

  • She plans to get more training for her staff, update policies and audit the work they do 

When Connie Pillich, the current Hamilton County prosecutor, took office at the beginning of the year, she made history and became the first woman to ever elected to that office. 

“It's been an incredible honor to get to do this job, but even so, it's been very, very busy," said Pillich. 

In her first 100 days on the job, she’s already had some high-profile cases, including the break in at Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow's home. It's a case where she said gang members targeted his house.

“Right now, we're waiting for trial to happen. It's going to be a little while that sometimes the wheels of justice move very slowly, but when you have a serious case like this, you got to make sure you do everything correctly so that we can achieve justice," said Pillich.

She said she and her team are also working through a targeted hate crime from when a neo-Nazi group took to a bridge.

“When we saw the Nazis have a little stand up routine on the bridge over Evandale, and we saw them run away as soon as local residents showed up to complain, we had dozens of body worn camera videos to review. I think there were nine at least, and that can take hours and hours and hours," said Pillich. 

But she said as soon as she became prosecutor, she had a smaller team to handle those cases. She said more than 30 people on her staff left and created what she says is the biggest challenge, staffing, but she said she has a solution.

“Number one is to train our lawyers, update our internal policies, audit our work double down on ethics," said Pillich. 

She detailed those solutions and goals during a special luncheon Thursday, and she said she hopes to get through some of those goals this year.

“My goal is to make sure innocent people don't go to jail and to make sure guilty people don't go free but I can't do that unless I'm putting bringing both equity and justice together to serve with integrity," said Pillich.