Dennis Ward, state’s attorney for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
Could the new Donald Trump administration taking office in January be more receptive to law enforcement and prosecution?
Ward said, “I think the appointment and hopefully the confirmation of Pam Bondi as the United States Attorney will have a huge impact on what happens here, not only the country, but in the Southern District of Florida, which we’re a part of, and we’ve talked about some of the frustrations we’ve gone through with trying to get the United States Attorney’s Office to prosecute some of the big cases we have down here. There was one with a bunch of child pornography and some child abuse that we asked the United States Attorney’s Office to play a role in, and they told us they didn’t have jurisdiction. It was because some of the things we were trying to get were up in Minnesota or Illinois, somewhere up there and for the United States Attorney’s Office to tell us that they don’t have jurisdiction, I mean, they have jurisdiction in the United States all over the place, so that was a little frustrating. Then we had a boatload of cocaine, a huge amount, and we asked them to participate or take that case, and they refused to do that. Then we had the Ecuadorians and Chinese that came in on a boat, and they were picked up by vans in the Upper Keys and captured by customs and border patrol in Miami and we asked them to help us prosecute that, or at least take a role in it in some way, shape or form. They refused to, and I think Sheriff Ramsey even appeared on the Fox News Channel expressing his frustrations. So it’s going to take, it usually takes a couple of years to have the incoming administration replace the various United States attorneys around the country. So we may be stuck with this guy for a couple of years. It’s kind of embarrassing, because he’s a marine like I am, and to take this type of attitude towards these serious offenses, it’s unfathomable. I know that the sheriff and I have been frustrated about those type of things, and I know that I can pick up the phone and call, hopefully, General Bondi and express any concerns that we have, and she’ll be receptive. I first met her my first term when we had pill mills going on in the state of Florida, and they were supplying a lot of the southern states with illicit pills. She called me to ask me if I would come to Tallahassee and do a press conference with her and Governor Scott to announce a new offensive on the pill mills as they existed in the state of Florida. So I did that, and she’s a go getter, so I’m very happy with that choice, and I hope that the Senate confirms her and Sheriff Ramsay’s right. Things are looking up.”
Could things be changing in the FBI as well?
Ward said, “You see what’s going on in the FBI, and that’s a problem in leadership and the administration, because when you talk to the agents on the street that are actually out there pounding the pavement and doing the investigative work and bringing these cases before the courts and charging the various defendants, those men and women do an outstanding job. It’s a shame that these administrators, over the past, oh, probably about eight years, have looked for ways to feather their own nests, instead of looking out for the reputation and the integrity of the FBI. So hopefully there’ll be some changes coming there, and we’ll see what happens there.”
The assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in the streets of New York in broad daylight on Wednesday morning was a shock.
Ward said, “You’re looking at something that is some disgruntled, probably client of the insurance company, or somebody that has a big problem, obviously, with insurance and the way it’s being administered, just based on those shell casings. The New York City police are doing a good job. They obviously, have video of this guy in a Starbucks, so I think they probably did a trash pull where he discarded his cup that he was drinking coffee out of. So there’s a good possibility that they’ll come up with some DNA there. I think they may have found a water bottle, and I’m sure that they’re pulling cameras all around Central Park. Everybody’s got some type of recording device on their businesses or residences, cars. They’re going through all that. This guy’s got a cell phone, maybe they’ll ping that and pick it up in the area. There’s all kinds of things they have to do, and it’s going to take a few days for them to go through all that stuff, but I think they’re going to come out and probably arrest somebody here, probably in a couple of weeks, and we’ll see how that goes.”
There was a plea to the robbery charge in the tree house case in Monroe County that has been in the news for a couple of years.
Ward said, “He pled no contest to a robbery charge, and he had credit time served with a number of days in there. So that part of the saga is finished. I’m sure that once he gets to wherever he’s going, he was on a bus and we got him out of Monroe County, got him out of the state of Florida, I hope and he’ll start on his social media thing, and he’ll claim how he was falsely arrested, and the investigation didn’t reveal it was him, and we tried, it was a hung jury, and we looked at the benefits of going forward, and sat with all the interested parties and came to the conclusion that allowing him to plead no contest to that and be sentenced by the court and get this thing past us, that was the best approach to take, but I’m sure we’ll hear something on the civil front. I’m sure he’ll probably try to sue the sheriff’s office and myself and anybody else he can think of, and we’ll see how that goes.”
Drug offenders are also diligently prosecuted, including one with fentanyl recently.
Ward said, “We’re going to file that, because there was a death in that. We’re going to get the grand jury in here, probably after the holidays, and present that, and they’ll probably up file that to a first degree murder charge, and then the penalties become a little more strengthened with that. With the first degree murder charge, you have life sentences coming into play. So we’re working on that, and hopefully we’ll get a green light from the grand jury. This is a new grand jury that we selected in October, and that’ll be their first order of business, I believe.”
Sometimes domestic abuse cases can be on the rise through the holidays. The domestic abuse shelter in Marathon is looking to a rebuild after Hurricane Irma.
Ward said, “They’ve been trying to raise money to rebuild the domestic abuse shelter in Marathon, and it’s been a number of years now, so I’m going to put on our plea offers at least $100 contribution to the domestic abuse shelters up and down in these domestic abuse cases, and probably some of the alcohol cases, because I’ve never seen a domestic battery that didn’t involve alcohol. So we’ll tack that on there and start raising some money to help them reach their goal. It’s important to have these shelters, because you need a safe and secure place for the victims of domestic batteries to be able to feel safe and secure, whether it’s them and their children or just themselves individually. We need to have that, and we need to have the treatment that’s available for a number of these people that go through these situations, who’ve been terribly traumatized. So we’re going to go into full gear here and see if we can help them get that thing built again.”
Recruitment with the attorney’s office is always underway.
Ward said, “We’re down four prosecutors and now we’re pretty much just about out of money to pay somebody even if they came here. We had a couple applicants, but I don’t think they would have been a good fit. So we had to move on. But I think that the other Florida Prosecuting Attorneys conference up in Ponte Vedra next week, and we’re going to probably go and ask them for some additional funding, so we’ll see how that goes. We need about about a half a million dollars here to get through the rest of this year and then into next year, and have some money to hire someone, if we can land somebody that can afford to live here.”