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.
Monroe County takes misdemeanor crime seriously.
Ward said, “You look around at these other cities and states and how they just don’t take these misdemeanor crimes serious and don’t want to incarcerate people, for instance, San Francisco with shoplifting, New York City, shoplifting, Chicago, businesses have gone out of business there. Misdemeanors are like, it’s like the glue that keeps the community together, people not going crazy and they entail DUIs, batteries, domestic batteries, shoplifting, trespassing, traffic offenses, and it’s like a public order group of laws that try and set parameters for people and how they need to conduct themselves. When you start poo pooing those types of crimes and not taking an interest in them, and not enacting and issuing penalties in these type of situations, you have pretty much a community that’s out of control. You can see it and you read it about in the newspaper, day in and day out, about these cities that don’t take these crimes seriously, and these cities that have these automatic bonding out of jail. You don’t even have to post a bond. They just let you out. So it’s just a short break in the action, and then you’re back out on the street ready to go into your local CVS or Walgreens or Walmart and steal whatever you want to steal. We had a career criminal in Key West that has been convicted of shoplifting a number of times, and we went to trial on him a couple of weeks ago, he had walked into the Home Depot store in Key West and loaded up a cart and just walked out with it, about $1,500 worth of stuff, and he does this stuff all the time. We charged him as a career criminal, career shoplifter, and we went to trial, and the jury was very attentive, and the jury came back and found him guilty, and the judge in the case, I believe, is Judge Wilson, sentences him to seven years in prison. So that’s seven years that the city of Key West will not have to put up with this jackass. People say, well, it’s a victimless crime. Really? Is shoplifting really a victimless crime. Oh, well, it’s big corporations, they’ve got millions and billions of dollars. And who really cares? Well, you need to care, because the prices of things are going to start increasing, and that impacts everybody in their day to day lives. They put their articles behind the lock and key, you can look at it through a glass window, and then stand around and wait for someone in the store to come and open the thing so you can get some aspirin. It’s just what it does to people, but you have these bleeding heart progressive liberals that are out there. Oh, well, they don’t have any money. We should give them this, like this jackass that’s probably going to be the mayor in New York City. He wants to do away with all misdemeanors, all misdemeanors.”
What about the no cash bail? Can people walk without posting bail?
“That’s it,” Ward confirmed. “If you go and talk to the cops who just arrested a guy, and they get back out on their beat or their zone or their district, and riding around and you see this guy, wow, wait a minute, I just arrested this guy. How did he get out? I used to experience that in Dade County, when I was law enforcement officer, and we’d arrest somebody, and then we’d have to transfer them over to the Dade County Jail, and the county gave them free bus rides back. A lot of times they beat us back to the city of Miami Beach. We’d still be doing the paperwork.”
There’s a lot of cooperation between the state’s attorney’s office and law enforcement in Monroe County, which makes a big difference.
Ward said, “It makes a huge difference. I see Paul Renner has announced that he’s going to run for governor, and this was the guy that was doing Governor DeSantis’s bidding because DeSantis wanted to be the president United States, and I guess this guy wanted to be the chief of staff. So who cares what happens to Monroe County? Let’s just consolidate them into Dade County. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what would happen? I mean, it’s just crazy. I look at arrest records of people that we arrest down here in the Florida Keys, and so many of them come from Dade County, and you look at their criminal history, and they’re extensive. You look at them and you see the dispositions dismissed, no action, credit timed served over and over and over again. It’s important that you have laws, and you enact those laws and the penalties are given out. Otherwise you’re going to have chaos. You’re going to have people’s property being stolen. You’re going to experience a whole lot of different circumstances that are going to be directly related to not enforcing these misdemeanor laws.”
The state’s attorney’s office also helped with getting rid of derelict vessels.
Ward explained, “I read this thing about the abandoned vessels and derelict vessels. That was a great move by the county and the chair of the Fish and Wildlife Commission, to get that program going and they’re touting the fact that they removed all these vessels. Well, what they’re leaving out is one component there, and that component was my office and what I did when this problem came to the forefront was I told my prosecutors, when you go into court on these derelict and abandoned vessels, and the FWC has worked up a case, and it takes them a while to work up a case, and they warn these people, and they tell these people, and eventually they arrest them. So our policy was 180 days in the Monroe County Jail. And I’ve got to tell you, what a success that was. So many times, just me in misdemeanor court alone, in Marathon. I probably handled at least 100 of them, and these people would come in, well, of course, there was outrage and disgust from the public defender’s office and the progressives. Oh my God, that’s where they live. What are you doing to these people? You’re taking away their homes. Now you’re going to put them in jail. Oh, my God. No, they’re not paupers. This is not Great Britain. Blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, people are in jeopardy. They are running into these boats. The boats are sinking. They’re navigational hazards. They’re a threat to the environment, and just sitting out there with no lights on, just waiting for a family to be coming in on a boat at night, crashing into them and get killed. I said 180 days, and we stuck to that policy. And it was amazing how many people came in and found a way to pay for their boat either to be restored or taken out and destroyed.”
Is the Florida Attorney General’s Office supportive of Monroe County under the new leadership?
Ward said, “Well, it’s still early. I mean, the jury’s still out on that. I’ve had a conversation with the Attorney General, and he’s running for office now. Now this guy that they put in as lieutenant governor, it looks like he looks like he’s running for office. I mean, they fly a private plane out to California to pick up this guy that made an illegal U turn, and three people were killed in the process. A private jet. I saw this little private jet. I’m going like, wow, they sent a private jet out there to arrest this guy and bring him back. During that period of time, the guy had already waived extradition, so he said, yeah, I’ll come back. Generally, what we do is the sheriff has a pickup service, and when we have people that have warrants and they’re arrested in other states, that pickup service goes and picks somebody up, and California is a long ride. In the summertime, it’s pretty hot in the back of that van, and they’re shackled to the van, and they drive until they get to a sheriff’s office, and they put those people in that jail while the drivers get some sleep, and they pick them up and they drive them all the way back. And that’s the way it runs. And that’s the way the state attorney up in Fort Pierce runs his shop, the same way I run my shop, but we needed to fly this private jet out there and have a lieutenant governor grab a guy by the back of the neck and march him down off a plane onto the tarmac and say, yeah, we’re going to get rid of these thugs. I mean, this guy is not a thug. He’s going to work. He’s providing for a family. Apparently, Washington and California gave him a driver’s license. But these guys, they’re running for office, so they fly this jet back to Tallahassee. They don’t even fly it to Fort Pierce. So that’s the jail the guy’s going to be in. Oh, by the way, we’ll put him in a van and send him down to you guys once we’re done with our photos. That’s why the Florida Department of Law Enforcement took over certification of law enforcement officers, because these sheriffs would hire their nephews and their brothers in laws, and they’d give them a badge and a gun. These guys would go out and terrorize the community. They have no idea how to be a law enforcement officer, but they’re out there, so they put criminal justice Standards and Training to require all law enforcement officers to be that way. I mean, that’s what my views are on those guys doing that. Run for office, but, I mean, don’t cost the taxpayers. And they’ll say, well, Joe Smith gave us that plane to fly out there, and it didn’t cost us anything. Really? I mean, let’s do the procedures the way we always do the procedures. That was a little disheartening. Did this guy make a mistake turning that truck around in the middle of the highway at an official use only turn, sure he did, sure he did and he’s going to pay the penalty for that. I don’t know that we needed these guys to jump in and all of a sudden, they become bounty hunters and we’ll get out there in that cute little jet and come back and, yeah, we’re going to take care of these thugs. This guy’s not a thug.”
How is US Attorney General Pam Bondi doing?
Ward said, “I think she’s doing great. I mean, she does a great job. I knew Pam when she was the attorney general, as a matter of fact, she called me up and said, hey, look, we need to get these pill mills shut down. And Governor Scott was the governor, and she wanted to impress upon him what the problem was. I mean, we were supplying all the southeast with these pills out of the pill mills in Florida, and got together with her and Governor Scott at the time, and a number of law enforcement officials, and we enacted some laws there and sent them to the legislature, and they did that in a quick fashion, and we shut these things down. And talking about shutting things down, I mean, the policy that Sheriff Ramsay and I put together about these people bringing the fentanyl into our county and killing people, we’ve got three or four people still sitting there that we’ve indicted for first degree murder, and they’re facing the death penalty. We got one that pled out the other day, I think 12 years or 15 years and the other ones, they’re still in jail, and we’re waiting to go to trial on those people. But that fentanyl use has gone down significantly, and we’re not seeing it as a bigger factor than any other drug right now. And as matter of fact, I think it’s been reduced.”
What about using the National Guard to clean up Washington, DC?
Ward said, “I think it’s a great idea. I think anytime you can supplement law enforcement and help them with their daily jobs at keeping cities and communities safe, I think it’s always beneficial. My question is, what happens when they leave? I mean, now National Guard guys aren’t making arrests. Hopefully it’s the law enforcement officers that are making the arrest, because then you run into problems when it comes time to prosecute these people because you’ve got to get the witnesses and you’ve got to get the arresting officers, and traditionally, it’s always been a little difficult for us to get federal officials, federal law enforcement officers, the Coast Guard, border patrol, and those type of people that are witnesses in our cases, it’s difficult to get them to cooperate with us in court proceedings, and then you have to go through the United States Attorney’s Office and get permission from them, and there’s just a lot of red tape when it comes to Coast Guard and FWC and DEA, so FWC is out there with a Coast Guard making drug arrests, or even lobster and fish arrest or Coast Guard people stopping people for these issues. I mean, the prior United States Attorney didn’t prosecute a number of our big cases down here, and we’re prosecuting them ourselves, which I don’t mind, as a matter of fact, I’d rather, but it’s a problem getting those people into the court system so you can prosecute the case, and defense attorneys know that. So it should be interesting to see how that plays out in DC and Chicago, if it goes to Chicago. But you look at DC, what’s happened up there with the crime rates, they’re not going to be there all the time, and while they’re there, it’s a great opportunity for the law enforcement agency running that jurisdiction to maybe take a step back and say, look, how do we attack this when the National Guard is not here anymore? It’s like shoveling sand against the tide. I mean, how do we build up a barrier from that crime coming back and attacking us again?”
The Keys Common Sense Conservatives is a new New Political Action Committee that filed with the Florida Division of elections
Ward said, “A number of us were, and some of them still are, members of the REC which has been taken over by a different group of people with different viewpoints, and ours is a common sense viewpoint on a number of issues, and we decided to start our own organization, mainly because of that, and also because there’s no one out there presenting the other side. You see these people doing marches protesting against the president or the governor, and there’s just no response. I mean, people down in Key West, with ICE issues and crosswalk issues, and there’s really no response coming from the Republican executive committee’s organization to respond to these things. And it’s just like, oh, just let these people do whatever they want. But there’s a big majority out here in Monroe County that feel quite differently than some of those people down in Key West feel about the issues that impact Monroe County. So we’ve taken a step to start an organization that’s going to be responsive, and it’s going to be pro conservative. On September 20, we’re going to have a First Responder’s Day. We’re going to honor them. We’re going to invite some people from ICE and the Border Patrol and customs and local law enforcement and fire departments and the Coast Guard and tell them, hey, what a great job you’re doing, and there’s people out here that support what you’re doing, and that’s the vast majority of us. So we’re going to take that opportunity to do that September 20 at the American Legion in the big parking lot out there in Marathon and we’re going to have a fish fry, so free fish sandwiches, and hopefully we’ll get a nice turn out there.”