Dennis Ward, state’s attorney for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
A recent traffic stop in Key Largo resulted in a woman being removed from the car because she refused to do so on her own volition.
Ward said, “That’s always my advice to people, do what they tell you to do. There’s a process afterwards. If there’s a situation that you were wrongfully stopped or wrongfully arrested, we deal with that. I mean, of course, this is a federal operation, not a state operation, but my advice to them is, and anyone who gets stopped by law enforcement, comply with what they ask for, and you’ll see things work out pretty easy there. I just think that this woman was looking for some type of situation that she could get herself into, and chose not to roll down her window, chose not to provide her Florida driver’s license, and chose to make it difficult for the law enforcement officers to do their jobs. When that happens, windows get broken, doors get pried open, people get pulled out of cars, and they are usually subject to arrest. I’m surprised they didn’t didn’t arrest her. I understand they let her go at the scene, and of course, she made big headlines. If you read the story, I mean, you’ll see that she didn’t comply with what the Customs and Border Patrol or ICE agents asked her to provide and one thing led to another, and she needed to be dragged out of the car and handcuffed and put in the back of a law enforcement car. Meanwhile, in the search of her car, they found the driver’s license right there. So I think she intentionally did that. That’s my opinion.”
There were a dozen arrests in Key Largo from US Customs and Border Patrol recently.
Ward said, “These people know what they do when they come into the country illegally. I mean, try doing that in Iran, or try doing that in any other country and see what happens to you. Then you get the due process argument, well, the due process argument, does that mean that you get to stay in the country while you argue your due process rights? I think that case, is coming up before the United States Supreme Court, but historically, you wait outside the country until you’re approved to come in. I would think, I would hope, that the same would be true if you enter the country illegally. There’s a process here, but I didn’t see all these people complaining and taking to the streets when they allowed 15 to 20 million illegals to come into the country, many, many, many of which have criminal records that are violent criminals. You still see acts every week in the newspaper. You see something or on the news, here’s another illegal alien that committed a horrific crime, but these people are hell bent on making sure that these people stay in the country, even though they knew what they were doing was wrong when they entered the country, so I have no sympathy for any of those people.”
Keeping drugs out of the country is also a very important mission.
Ward said, “There’s no question about that. Myself and Sheriff Ramsay and Chief Brandenburg teamed up when we saw a number of fentanyl arrests and a number of deaths from fentanyl overdoses, and we focused our investigation on the people selling the fentanyl, and we identified some in a half a dozen cases, and we’ve went ahead and taken those cases to the grand jury and indicted the sellers of that fentanyl for homicide. I think a couple of those cases have pled out. I think we have four left that are working their way to through the court system, and we look forward to putting these people behind bars for a significant amount of years, if not life. I can tell you, we listen to a lot of jail calls, my staff, the sheriff staff, and we consistently hear from these criminals on their jail calls to their friends up in the mainland, don’t come down here and do that stuff, because these guys down here are serious about putting your butt away for doing crimes like this as well as any any crimes. Every once in a while, we go through the rash of lower units being stolen, or depth finders, being stolen. Once we grab these people, and we had a investigation a few years ago, and probably about eight of the 10 went to prison or the local county jail. So we get these jail calls, and we listen to them, and the words getting out and the fentanyl has dropped significantly here, even before President Trump took office and started these attacks on these drug boats, which I think it’s a great idea. I would imagine the Supreme Court is probably going to have to come out with a ruling on that. We’ll see how that comes back. But certainly, you just can’t let these countries import this stuff into the United States and kill close to 100,000 Americans a year. That’s not kosher.”
Resource violations will also not be tolerated in Monroe County.
Ward said, “You saw these people taking loads of lobster and fish and lobster that are undersized, fish that are undersized. We’ve got a case now with 300 plus conch that were taken by a group of people that were down here, and we’ve got warrants, and these warrants have been out for a couple of months now, and I’m wondering why we’re not picking up these people, but I can tell you that we’ve seen a significant reduction in these people coming down here and destroying our environment, and I think the jail component in these charges is having a great impact on this, and I would think that probably, maybe even the immigration policies are having an impact. I’ve got to call the clerk’s office and see what kind of statistics they have, but I was in Marathon for a couple of years prosecuting misdemeanors, and there were so many driver’s license cases down there and up here in Plantation Key as well, driving while license suspended, no valid driver’s license, expired driver’s license, and it was getting to be a problem and we started seeking jail time, and then there were fines and I believe that that has been reduced significantly and one of the big problems for people that are out there advocating for people staying in the country illegally is that they don’t get auto insurance. If you’re not getting auto insurance, when someone that has auto insurance gets into an accident and they don’t have uninsured motorists, they’re stuck with that bill. You’re not going to get anything from these people because they don’t have anything. So the insurance companies have raised people’s uninsured motors rates significantly. You’ll see that on your insurance bills and you’re crazy if you don’t have uninsured motorists out here, because these people are driving around unlicensed and what’s your recourse?”
A recent arrest in Key Largo came from a man dumping more than 6,000 pounds of trash on Monroe County property.
Ward said, “That’s going to be a jail case, I surmise, because this guy is not going to be able to reimburse the county on what it cost the county to clean all that stuff up. We’ll figure out what the proper penalty is, and he’ll be going to Sheriff Ramsay’s hotel there.”
An update from Key West City Manager Brian Barroso showed 84% of the items on the grand jury’s recommendation list are marked as complete, whie 16% are pending. There was also the passage of a whistleblower ordinance in the city of Key West, which came out of those discussions.
Ward said, “Brian’s doing a pretty good job in implementing the grand jurors request. He stays in touch with us, and he gives us an update, and he’s moving forward as fast as he can. There are some of these issues that have to go before the City Commission and have to be approved by the City Commission, so that’s not his fault, but those issues aren’t moving forward. It would be wrong to assign a blame to him when it’s got to come from the Commission. There was even a little controversy with the whistleblowers ordinance, and we’ll see how that works. I believe the state has a whistleblower ordinance as well. We’ve always protected whistleblowers, I mean, and usually you’re going to have to go through a couple years worth of aggravation, maybe even losing your job, but you fight it in the courts, and in the end, these governmental agencies have to pay out big bucks for lawyer’s fees and of course, that doesn’t help you get through the two years or three years it takes to go through the court system. But nothing’s perfect, but the big thing is to not even get involved in situations or create situations where whistleblowing is needed. I think they have a hotline they’re implementing. Very interested to see who’s going to handle those calls and who’s going to pass those complaints along. Although I’m happy with the progress that they’re making, and we filed another charge or two against the former building official, Raj Ramsingh and another contractor who the investigators worked up some information on, and we’ll see how that progresses. But eventually, these things are going to have to come to court, come to trial, and we’ll see how that goes.”
Three individuals who were performing various lewd acts in the grocery store parking lot in Marathon, and then in the parking lot at Winn Dixie, are going to face charges.
Ward said, “I’m going to call the prosecutors today and charge of those cases and tell them that these guys need to spend a year in Sheriff Ramsay’s jail.”
A man from Miami Beach was involved in a road range incident in Stock Island where he threatened to kill three people with a knife on December 1. He drove around a slow moving vehicle, followed the victim to the residence, approached the victim, yelled and head butted him and a fight ensued. The suspect pulled a small machete and made verbal threats to kill all three people.
Ward said, “I think we just got the paperwork here maybe yesterday. I think that guy’s got some serious issues, and he’s probably going to find out what his penalties are going to be. Of course, it’ll drag out for a year or two, but we’ll see him down the road here.”
It looks like some help could be coming from the feds.
Ward said, “The sheriff and I had lunch with the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida one day and we spoke with him and his chief assistant, and spent some time with them and discussed issues down here and some past problems we had with the feds and their lack of interest in cases in the Florida Keys, some human smuggling and some serious child pornography cases that we asked for their assistance in. We’re not going to have those problems anymore, according to this United States attorney. He’s very astute on the problems and I guess his jurisdiction runs from the Marquesas all the way up to Fort Pierce. So he’s got a big area there that he’s responsible for with his prosecutors. We had a very nice conversation. Later on we got the mayor of the county, Michelle Lincoln, and she presented him an honorary conch certificate. It’s great. We want to make the state of Florida and the Southern District of Florida the safest jurisdiction in the country, and certainly the United States Attorney has a big job, the Attorney General has a big job, and we’re just a small portion, but we work hard to make sure that the Florida Keys and Monroe County, the 16th Judicial Circuit, is the safest circuit in the state of Florida.”