Dennis Ward, State’s Attorney for the 16th Judicial Circuit of Florida, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
We are very fortunate that the consolidation of judicial circuits did not happen.
Ward said, “Thank you for your help in that and the community helping that. It’s very important to have access to your justice system down here and not be plagued by long trips. Now it seems like the governor again, wants to take control of the state attorneys, which are basically district attorneys. We call them state attorneys here in Florida, and he wants to take control of them again. This is like his third attempt, and he had a lawmaker from up around the Jacksonville area file a bill that would give the attorney general the authority to take any cases that the attorney general would want, or that the governor would want the attorney general to take bring to Tallahassee so they can play their political games with them. You hear this governor, running around, talking about weaponizing the justice system, and complaining about that. Yet he’s doing the same thing here in Florida. It’s getting a little ridiculous. Now we’ve got to fight another battle again, and it’s just crazy stuff, because what he perceived from a couple of prosecutors, one in Tampa that he removed because he said he wasn’t going to prosecute a fortunes and that was stupid for that state attorney to say that. The other one in Orlando he removed because there were some issues with the sheriff’s office and her alleged lack of prosecution of cases. But I think the Orlando newspaper up there did an in depth study and found that a lot of those cases weren’t prosecuted because of inefficiency in that particular sheriff’s office. We don’t have that here, because we’ve got a great sheriff, and Sheriff Ramsey does a great job, and his people do a great job, and he’s plagued by the inability to hire and retain deputy sheriffs and people just like I am, in spite of what one of my employees may have said to you last month. I guess she forgets that I’m still in a Marathon. This is two years now, and maybe she’s not aware of the fact that we’ve lost three prosecutors here in the last three months, and we’ve only had one hired. Another fight with the governor, and he appointed a new attorney general. His chief of staff, a 37 year old guy with no experience, I don’t think he’s ever walked into a courtroom, and now he wants to take control the state attorney’s cases, and that’s just outrageous.”
Does James Uthmeier have the experience to be Florida’s attorney general?
Ward said, “He’s a political hack. He seems to be a bright guy, but they have their agendas up there and now DeSantis is promoting his wife to be the next governor. I would imagine there’s going to be a lot of things like this. He wants to discontinue the property tax as well. You finally pay off your property but you still have to pay property taxes. Well, there’s services out there that you enjoy, police and fire service, the school systems, even though a lot of people don’t have kids going to school. Is there a benefit there for paying for kids to go to school? Sure there is. I don’t know where he’s going with that. I think it’s an attempt, on this part, to be relevant. The only area, I think, where you can make up the loss of those tax dollars is probably increasing your sales tax or creating a personal income tax in the state of Florida, which we’ve never had here, but that’s going to be among the items that will be discussed to replace a property tax that people pay. I think maybe he wants to start with home insurance, a blockbuster article in the Miami Herald two Sundays ago about the governor and his office of insurance regulation withholding information from the legislature when they had a special session to deal with the insurance crisis, and the legislators were never told that these insurance companies had created affiliate companies to basically launder the money and get it back to the parent corporation. They were losing money, and insurance companies had to close because they were pulling all the money out of these affiliates. One of them had, like, 14 affiliates, nine affiliates, and they would come in and do the billing and the day to day work of the insurance companies and up the prices. So here’s taxpayers suffering because of that. Yet, has he said, anything about that? The only thing he’s come out and said, well, we’re going to keep the legislation we passed last year where we made it more difficult for individual homeowners to sue insurance companies. So what are we doing for the taxpayers there? If we’re so concerned about people and the taxes and the burdens they face these days, what is he doing about that? Now he wants to be a DOGE. We’re going to do local and state government. Well, not even the state government. We’re going to do local government and educational institution, colleges, universities. How about the bloated agencies in Tallahassee that he appoints the department heads to? How about his office? There’s a lot of fat that can be cut.”
What about the US Attorney General Pam Bondi?
Ward said, “Back when the opioid crisis was going pretty strong and Governor Scott was governor, Attorney General Bondi for the state of Florida, I wanted to shut down these pill mills that we had operating in the state of Florida. People were coming from Kentucky, a couple other states, and buying the pills here and taking them back up and they were suffering serious overdoses up there. I was a first term state attorney, and she called me up and asked me if I could come to Tallahassee so we could lobby the governor to enact and push for legislation to shut these pill mills down. She was successful in her efforts. She did a great job. I would see her at Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association meetings and have some nice discussions with her, and she’s the real deal. So I’m kind of happy that she’s in that position, and she always has a spot in her heart for Florida. I think if we have issues down here that the federal government can help us with, I think she’ll be happy to hear what we want, what we want to bring to her.”
Ashley Moody moved up as a Senator.
Ward said, “It’s a shame when you have people in law enforcement that become political hacks, but that’s, I guess, that’s part of the game, but you still have to keep in mind that you want to keep your judicial system in a state where people have faith in it and people aren’t treated differently because of what political party they’re in, or who they know or where they want to advance their career. I mean, if you want to do that, run for the City Commission or something. Don’t get involved in something that deals with the justice system.”
Fentanyl is also an issue nationwide.
Ward said, “Close to 100,000 Americans are dying from overdoses every year. President Trump and his efforts to shut those things down, especially with Mexico and Canada, with the borders and people running around and bad mouthing the president for enacting these tariffs, I mean, China is a producer of the fentanyl and the United States government has asked China, hey, can you please stop this? They’ve asked Mexico, can you please stop this? They’ve asked Canada, can you please stop this? They’re not getting the desired response. So you’ve got to wake them up somehow and what a better way to wake them up than tariffs? Maybe the American taxpayers are going to have to pay some money here for a little while, but hopefully we’ll get the desired response. Mexico seems to be cooperating with us. I think we have some drones flying around over there that the DEA and maybe the military have to try and reduce this crisis. I think it’s very noble of the President as our leader and Congress following up on this serious drug that’s being distributed and killing Americans to a big degree. I salute that. We were on the first lines with our sheriff’s office to prosecute people for homicide when we make the link between the sale of the drug and the cause of death, and I think we’ve got four or five ready to go to trial. One took a plea the other day to I think, 10 years. So we’re looking forward to prosecuting the other ones, and looking forward to continue to send a message that the sheriff’s office and I continue to send out here. Don’t come down here and sell your dangerous drugs. Don’t sell that poison. Don’t come down here and commit a crime. Come down here and enjoy yourself.”
A grand jury heard a case of two individuals who were charged with sexual battery against youth.
Ward said, “We did it last Thursday. The Florida State Legislature passed a law last year that individuals that sexually batter and assault minors 12 and under are now subject to the death penalty. In order for us to keep the death penalty in place, we have to go to the grand jury and get an indictment from the grand jury. But Thursday, we went before the grand jury, and we put two cases in front of one with a step brother that sexually assaulted his 12 year old stepsister. We were successful in that indictment, and there’s a warrant out for his arrest. It’s my understanding he’s in ICE custody right now. I don’t know if we’re going to get an opportunity to take a shot at this guy, but there’ll be a warrant out for him when he tries to come back across the border. So the other one is a father who sexually assaulted his three year old daughter, and the presentation of that case to the Grand Jurors was very emotional. They listened to the evidence. There’s 80 photographs of various stages of undress of this three year old and her father, and at the end of the day, the grand jury indicted him and indicted the other individual. I think probably next week, we’ll come out and ask that we’re going to pursue the death penalty in that particular case for the three year old. The other one, we’re going to put on hold till we find out where this guy is. But it’s just really a nasty case.”
Michael Stapleford of KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM noted, “We are indebted to you and your office for all of your diligence in keeping us safe and keeping criminals at bay as best we can.”
Ward said, “I just want to thank you for recognizing the law enforcement officer the month. These men and women are out there, and they’re facing a dangerous job. We had another law enforcement officer assaulted last week, and from what Sheriff Ramsey told me, one of the firearms was torn off the officer’s belt by this idiot that committed these batteries and assaults on the police officer. So he’ll be going to jail for a little while.”
Stapleford said we “have tremendous respect and admiration for those officers who go out and put themselves on the line each and every day, and as we talk with the sheriff often, they just never know what they’re going to face with each call, as you do know from your law enforcement background too.”
“Yes, sir,” Ward said. “Thank you.”