1.6 million doses of fentanyl "off the streets" after operation targeting Pittsburgh's eastern suburbs

Felons, guns and drugs are off the streets after a huge law enforcement operation in Pittsburgh's eastern suburbs nine months in the making.

"More than 50 cases were opened as part of this initiative, and as I mentioned, we have made 45 arrests and seized 54 guns," Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said on Monday.

Sunday said the Eastern Allegheny Initiative focused on the eastern suburbs in Allegheny County like Penn Hills, Monroeville and Turtle Creek.  

"We took over 1.6 million doses of fentanyl off the streets of eastern Allegheny County," Sunday said. "That's enough fentanyl for the population of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties combined."

For local chiefs like Monroeville Chief Doug Cole, getting these alleged gun and drug traffickers off the streets makes an impact on everyday people.

"It does affect the street level that we see in our day-to-day neighbors and residents of our community," Cole said. "It affects their welfare and their feeling of safety, which is also so very important." 

The FBI's Christopher Giordano says while the statistics appear impressive, success isn't measured by arrests or drugs.

"The true measure of our success is the harm we prevent, the overdose that may never occur, the family that may be spared a devastating loss, the child who may grow up in a safer home and the neighborhood that becomes safer because a violent trafficker is no longer operating there," Giordano said. 

This operation also got six Glock switches off the streets, which are used to turn semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic weapons. Sunday says their only purpose is to cause mass destruction and killings.