Monroe County State’s Attorney Dennis Ward joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
How has recruitment been going for the State’s Attorney’s office?
Ward said, “We’ve picked up a few new attorneys, and then the bar exam was given last week, I believe, last week or the week before, and we have one intern that’s anxiously awaiting her results, and I think she’ll do fine, and she’ll have a spot in our Plantation Key office. We hired two new guys in Marathon over the last couple of months. They’re learning the ropes of prosecuting. One was a prosecutor here back in the 90s, and then went to California and then came back. The other one was a civil attorney, and he’s learning the ropes. So that and legal assistants, trying to find legal assistants is taxing these days. We picked up a couple of those, and everything is on the job training. People talk about working from home, but the way we train our people is by the people that were trained by the people before them. So you learn on the job, and then we send people off to various seminars and trainings to hone their skills, but when the attorneys learn from one another, and ideally, we like to have legal assistants around too because eventually these attorneys are going to leave, and then the legal assistants actually end up training the attorneys as they come in. Sometimes it’s amusing, because these attorneys coming out of law school think they know everything about the law, but they haven’t been exposed to the nuts and bolts, and the legal assistants do that.”
How did cutbacks affect the office?
Ward said, “We started off in a concerning way for us, because they wanted to make significant cuts. But in the end, there are certain State Attorneys Offices in southern Florida that are experiencing high cost of living, and it’s difficult to hire, and finally, the state legislature recognized that, and they gave some stipends to the employees of the State Attorney’s Office I think here, Dade County, Broward County, Fort Myers, I think Palm Beach. And there may be one other one, $5,000 a year for attorney, and I think close to about $1,800 for the other staff. The law enforcement officers throughout the state got a significant pay raise depending on the amount of years they have in. I have five investigators, and they got a pretty good pay raise. So all in all, the Speaker of the House, did a great job. Jim Mooney, our representative, and Anna Maria did a great job and gave us a little bit of breathing room there, as far as being able to live affordably here and pay off student loans.”
Is the new Attorney General James Uthmeier showing support?
Ward said, “Yesterday we spoke, and I think we’re arranging a trip to alligator Alcatraz for me and a couple of my staff members. We also discussed the situation in Key West as far as 287g and the concerns that the Attorney General had when the City Commission took their initial steps, and he was quite satisfied with the outcome when they reversed that. Of course, there are a lot of legal scholars that were down there that opined on the situation, but we got through it. He was also concerned about Islamorada. I guess there was one Commissioner there that brought a resolution up, but that died for a lack of second. We touched briefly on paintings in intersections, and think that’s going to be the next level of controversy. I think it’s already started in Key West. But, these guys, the legislature has passed laws, and those laws are going to be enforced. So I guess I saw a couple items on the Key West agenda, City Commission agenda to address that issue, not in the sense that they’re going to remove it yet, but they will have to eventually.”
Yesterday saw a unanimous vote from the Key West City Commission to try to preserve the rainbow crosswalk.
Ward said, “I also talked to him about some of these people stalking the Customs and Border Patrol agents and ICE agents. There’s a big amount of concern regarding that. There was a new law passed, I guess, this past legislative session, that requires these protesters to stay back 25 feet while the law enforcement agents perform their duties, otherwise they can be arrested. Certainly, if there’s stalking going on, we have laws on the books for that already.”
There were some resource violations during lobster mini season.
Ward said, “Hats off to Sheriff Ramsay and his organization. They really stepped up their vigilance and being on the lookout for these people that are violating these laws. It’s a shame, because one of the cases they had there was like 50 lobster, I think, up here in the Islamorada area, and so many of them were undersized. They never even had the chance to breed, to reproduce. There’s some statistics out, and I forget what they are on the loss of lobster by these people just doing this. The night of the opening of lobster season, Ramsay and his guys said, hey, let’s put some boats out on the water tonight and see what happens. Sure enough, they stopped this guy and his wife that were pulling traps. The fishermen still haven’t had been able to pull their traps, because the season didn’t open till 12:01, on the sixth. So Ramsay put a couple guys out there, and they had some night vision equipment and they saw a boat with no running lights on. That’s pretty suspicious. They cruised up and got next to the boat and lit the boat up, and sure enough, there’s a lobster trap sitting on the boat that had been recently pulled and a bunch of lobster in a cooler. Ramsay’s deputies told the guy to freeze. He chose to pick up the lobster trap and throw it back into the water. They told him to freeze. He took the cooler and he dumped about 35 lobster into the water. He was with his wife, who I understand is pregnant, on the boat. He was arrested. The boat was towed. I think there’s a lien on it. We’ll see how much the lien is and he was charged with one count of tampering with evidence and possession of lobster out of season. I would think that we’re going to take a look and see if we can charge his wife and proceed forward with that. But what a great foresight on the sheriff’s part to be proactive in this thing and catch a guy that’s pulling the lobsterman’s trap even before the lobsterman had an opportunity to pull his own trap.”
A federal judge will be hearing arguments over whether to stop further construction of alligator Alcatraz, because of environmental laws.
Ward said, “I don’t think it has much hope of being successful in the removal, I mean, depends on who appointed the federal district court judge that’s going to make a decision on that, where that goes, but then it’ll get up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, where, if that judge rules that way, he’ll get smacked down. It’s amazing how many of these cases that we’ve been getting that involve illegal aliens, some of our most heinous child abuse, sexual child abuse and molestation by these illegal aliens, as well as drug trafficking and some frauds and some thefts. I think it’s unbelievable. I was prosecuting misdemeanors for a couple years in Marathon, and the docket was filled with a lot of traffic violations, mainly no valid driver’s license, driving while license suspended, driver’s license expired, and it was illegal aliens. I mean, they can’t get a driver’s license. I’m going to take a look at the at the dockets here, probably near the end of the year, and just see how many traffic cases are on there now, because I’m sure they’ve been reduced significantly. It’s a problem, and one of the ways it impacts us is if you want to purchase uninsured motorist coverage, I mean, it’s huge, the amount that people have to pay for uninsured motorists is just crazy. This is just one of the aspects of these people driving around without valid driver’s licenses. There’s a number of different things that take place and these people out there on the street holding their signs and yeah, we need to keep these people here. The president, believe me, understands that we have to have some labor from other countries, but there’s a process to go through. I talked to a construction company owner the other day, and he took his employees down to renew their paperwork. Not a problem. Went right through it. I talked to a couple of restaurants, no problem. So it seems like what’s not getting reported is the good things that Kristi Noem’s doing, and the president is doing with immigration. They realize that we need to have workers in here, but we need to get a grip on this thing. We need to get control of it. I think once that happens, then we can start implementing the things for immigration the way it used to be with Visas. First of all, if you’re here illegally, you’re here illegally, right? But the vast, huge amount of cases that I deal with are arrests and people that are arrested that aren’t here legally, and ICE holds are put on them, and they’re deported. We’ve got a murderer that got deported. We’ve got these child molesters, these drug dealers, rapists that either have been deported, or there are ICE holds on them, or they’re sitting in a state prison, when they finish their sentence, they’ll be transported to wherever the hell they came from.”
If someone is wrongfully detained, is there a way to help?
Ward said, “Not in an expedited fashion that they would wish. It’s going to take some time. Millions upon millions upon millions of people were allowed just to come across our borders without being vetted and a lot of them have criminal records in their own countries, but nobody stopped them at the border to say, hey, where are you guys coming from? What’s your background? Let’s take a look at you guys. So all those people were allowed in here, and now they want to point the finger at President Trump and ICE and border patrol. Once we get good control on this thing, I think things will be okay. There’s people who are getting their paperwork renewed. I mean, we’re not hearing about those people. It’s all the headline grabbing episodes that these news media people want to take and spotlight and that enrages people. I guess it sells more newspapers. I don’t know what the hell it does, but the reality is, there’s a lot of people getting their papers reinstated. There’s people that are getting their Visas and their work permits stamped for further work abilities here in the United States, and none of that information is being disseminated.”