Dennis Ward, Florida State’s Attorney from Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM to talk about what’s going on in the county.
With hurricane season in full swing — and a storm possibly coming this way over the weekend — there could be some unsavory characters trying to take advantage of people.
Ward explained, “I guess their legal term is unlicensed contractors. But in reality, they’re thieves and fraudsters. I guess now’s a good time to start talking about this. Whenever we have an event like a hurricane, or severe weather, and people’s roofs get torn up, we have these band of gypsies that come in, and people are looking for roofers to repair their roofs, and there’s not a lot of them to go around. They come from all over the place. We try and ask people to use the names that they’ve seen in the community for a number of years and to make sure that when they deal with these contractors, whether they’re licensed and insured, and you can check that on the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, before you give anybody any money. These guys come in and they’ll sell you, whatever you want to hear and they’ll take a significant down payment and the work won’t get done or it’ll be so slow and it’s a very tormenting thing for people to go through. Now it’s even worse, because you’ve invested a significant part of your savings into restoring your roof and you’ve got the weather coming in and it’s very aggravating. It’s very trying to go through something like this. Meanwhile, you’re trying to contact this guy that came by and took 15,000 or $20,000 of your hard earned money, and then you’re not getting any response. Then the calls go into the sheriff’s office, and my office and I dispatch my investigators, the sheriff’s office does a really good job with these types of things. Throughout the year, we get different unlicensed contractor reports and we do follow up investigations on them. We make a lot of arrests. But these these people, they go wherever there’s tragedy of this type, and it’s their opportunity to make big scores. Well, I like to dirty them up before they go to the next community. I like to charge them with everything I can charge them with and make sure that they get found guilty. Try and get restitution for people, it’s very difficult because these people have already spent the money on various things. So the likelihood of you getting your money back, your deposit back is slim. But we can work and convict these people and get them some jail time and prison time and make sure they have a record that indicates that they’re nothing but a bunch of scam artists, thieves and fraudsters. So when they go into the next community, and law enforcement gets called about them, and they run them on the FCIC, NCIC, their name and their records will come back and they’ll know exactly who they’re dealing with and what what type of character these people are.”
What is the NCIC?
Ward said, “That’s the National Crime computer network. There’s a Florida crime computer network that basically house people’s criminal records, amongst other things, then the David system has their driver’s license records and we all take classes to ensure that the use of these resources are done within the letter of the law. You just can’t use them to find out somebody’s address and just if they’ve ever been arrested before, or you want to have an idea who you’re dealing with, with some type of event. It’s not for the general public. It’s for law enforcement use and it helps us in our investigations to determine who we’re dealing with, whether or not someone has a criminal history or past, whether or not somebody has warrants out for them, whether or not they have a history of dealing in drugs. I think this arrest yesterday of this unknown County Sheriff’s deputy was the result of some very good investigative work by the sheriff’s office and Sheriff Ramsay’s people in determining that this deputy was utilizing the NCIC, FCIC and the other records based computer systems to help her boyfriend who is a suspected drug dealer, to help him in his endeavors to ply his trade throughout the county here and up into Miami Dade County as well and even to the point I read she was gaining confidence of some of the deputies in the Stock Island area where she was a deputy and would go so far as to tip off these drug purveyors on whether or not there was going to be a search conducted at their homes and their businesses to try and stop them and put them out of business from selling drugs in the Stock Island area.”
Bail was set at $1.9 million. There were 19 felony counts.
Ward said, “That’s Judge Kelly and Judge Kelly read the affidavit that comes in with a warrant and I’m sure that he was astonished that a law enforcement officer would conduct herself in that way and he responded significantly. I know that the defendant has hired a local attorney, who was I guess, complaining that the bond is extremely high, way too high, and I would imagine we’ll see a motion for a bond reduction. We’ll see. I mean, this deputy has children that she’s responsible for. Hopefully she’s got family members that will take care of her children while she’s incarcerated in Sheriff Ramsey’s jail. I mean, that’s probably where she belongs and we’ll see her down the road in the court rooms, and we’ll deal with her and her situation appropriately.”
Drug cases have also been coming up on the docket recently.
Ward said, “Over the past few days we’ve had a couple of unattended deaths that are suspicious that the medical examiner has three bodies down there now and we’re waiting to talk to him today. Our great medical examiner, does a great job, is in the United States Army Reserve serving our country, just an outstanding person. The doctor will conduct his autopsies, and our interest is going to be in the toxicology reports to see what they return. Toxicology reports take a little bit more time than the actual autopsy. They have to be sent to the lab and evaluated and the lab we send ours to it gets backed up from the amount of business that they have and sometimes it will take a few months. So I hope none of these are fentanyl related because if they are I mean, Sheriff Ramsay and I have a program where we try and hunt down the dealer that provided these illegal illegal drugs to the decedent. I think we’ve got four or five we’ve done that with and that are charged with first degree murder. So I mean, that’s what I’m looking for and if there’s that drug in play or any drug that caused the overdose, then we’re gonna pursue what we can to bring in the seller of that drug and hold him or her accountable.”
Lobster mini season wrapped up recently.
Ward said, “I think Captain Dipre is looking at proposing some type of restriction from diving around bridges during the seasons to try and make it safer for people to go out. We’ll see how that goes. I think it’s pretty good idea. I was in court Monday and I sent one person to jail for 30 days for a violation of the regulations regarding snook, speared out of season undersized, snook and then another gentleman, those from the Miami area for spearing an undersized, grouper.”
How does Ward feel about Vice President Kamala Harris being nominated for president, especially since she was a prosecutor?
He said, “I would imagine she’s going to use her past as a prosecutor to tout her as being tough on crime. But as you look around the country and you see women and children being raped and murdered by the illegal aliens that she has allowed to come into this country, you’ve got to say, wait a minute, you’re this big prosecutor and you’re tough on crime and one of the biggest problems we have is the border issue. That was your task, and you completely failed at that and because you failed at that, and you allowed these people in the country, I think you’re directly responsible for their rapes and their murders. I mean, the poor college kid in Georgia, just out on the walking path that trail, kidnapped, raped and murdered, another mother of three children in Maryland, murdered. I mean, there’s just so many more. So for her to play the prosecutor card. I mean, she should be ashamed of herself. I mean, I wouldn’t tell anybody I was a prosecutor, if I allowed that to happen to so many people. I would never say that. Whatever they want to portray her as that’s what the mainstream media is trying to do. They’re trying to reinvent her. Forget about all these other things. Forget about when she ran for president, forget about all those things, all the things she said. She wants to do away with the bail. I mean, how’s that working out for New York City and all these other places where they did that? More people getting slaughtered on the street. The price of life for the people of the United States of America, under people like Kamala Harris and Joe, the loser, Biden is pretty cheap. I mean, they don’t care about your family. They don’t care about your life. Don’t you think they should make groceries affordable again? They talk about abortion and everything. Well, you don’t have to worry about that because people, they can’t afford to have children because they can’t afford to feed them and clothe them. Another another tragic, tragic situation that Kamala Harris and the president have allowed to happen. It’s just disgusting.”