Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly this afternoon announced the results of the latest round-up of local drug dealers, some of them operating as family units, and the removal of a range of potentially lethal drugs from the streets. But he also cautioned that round-ups can only go so far without education and treatment.
The 11-month undercover operation started in January, culminating today with 24 search warrants and the seizure of drugs with a street value of $5.7 million. The round-up netted 18 arrests at the time of the sheriff’s announcement, out of 35 people sought. Heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, morphine, methamphetamines, marijuana and other drugs were among those seized, along with 13 firearms–seven of them rifles.
“These dealers have sold their poison near schools in some cases,” Staly said. “It was a family affair where we arrested two sons slash brothers and a father that were selling poison. In another family business, it was two brothers selling poison, and the list goes on.”
The sheriff said it’ll never be known how many lives were saved or spared overdoses, with the volume of drugs removed from circulation, but he said lives were saved.
The street-level sellers are all Flagler County residents. The drugs are not home-grown, but rather streaming in from Orlando, Palatka and Daytona Beach, and other states, according to the sheriff. Those arrested are “loosely” connected, the sheriff said, but not in an organizational way. There were no such dealers as “kingpins,” for example.
All but three of the suspects face a dealing charge in one way or another, including possession with intent to sell. The three others were arrested for possession only. Thirteen face charges that include possession or sale of fentanyl, the extremely potent drug causing an ongoing surge in overdose deaths. According to the Florida Medical Examiner Commission’s interim report for 2021, total drug-related deaths increased by 7 percent last year, including 4,140 opioid-related deaths, 3,235 of which were directly attributable to opioids.
The most frequently occurring drugs among those who died is fentanyl (3,210), exceeding those who died because of alcohol poisoning (3,132). Those numbers reflect the presence of the drug in the decedent, not necessarily the cause of death. When the cause can be attributed to a specific drug, those who died of fentanyl overdose totaled 2,920. For cocaine, it was 1,305, for meth, 962, for alcohol, 718.
The investigations are ongoing, with additional charges expected for some of the suspects, in some cases based on developments today. “Today as we were trying to apprehend one of the the suspects he fled from us in his vehicle, throwing drugs out of the vehicle,” Staly said, “and then he finally came to a stop and we found trafficking amounts of fentanyl inside his vehicle.”
Sheriff’s units involved included the undercover unit, the SWAT team, often used when serving warrants, the road patrol, Crime Scene Investigations, and detention and booking teams.
“I especially want to thank our community,” the sheriff said. “Many of the tips that we received came in from the community, because community neighbors, people living on streets, they know when something’s wrong in their neighborhood, and they call us with that information under our See Something, Say Something program. Sometimes it takes 11 months to make the cases, but today they get to see the results of those tips.”
The sheriff spoke with poster boards at his sides showing the suspects in grids (see below), and the word “arrested” below most of the mugshots. In a video shot before the news conference and issued after it, Staly is seen in the initial intake area for suspects, pasting an “arrested” sticker below the image of a particular individual. That 32-year-old Bunnell man was actually scheduled for docket sounding before County Judge Melissa Distler, on a misdemeanor charge of possessing drug paraphernalia. He now faces a felony charge of selling meth.
“I suggest that if your name is on this board, and it doesn’t say arrested under their name, you have two choices,” the sheriff said. You can call, us we’ll come pick you up. You can turn yourself in it the green roof inn,” the nickname he gives the county jail, “and I guess there is a third choice. You can continue to walk around looking over your shoulder and wondering when the deputy sheriff is going to snatch you off the street and put you in jail. So I would encourage you to turn yourself in if we haven’t gotten you yet.”
He reiterated a recurring warning: that all overdose deaths are initially investigated as homicides and can result in murder charges. Several such cases have resulted in convictions, almost always by plea deals.
Today’s announcement, in a press conference at the county courthouse, was the latest in such periodic roundups, going back decades. The sheriff dubbed it “Operation Santa’s Naughty Lil Sellers.” For all the tough talk, each such press conference is an implicit concession that the goal is still out of reach, that police and the judicial system are more in containment than victory mode, in a drug war that dates back almost 60 years, and with jails and prisons still filling with its prisoners.
“You’re not going to really put a major dent until we have a combination of enforcement, education and treatment,” Staly said. “And so that’s why we have the programs in our jail to try to treat people so that they don’t go back to this lifestyle. But we’re moving in the right direction. But it takes all three pieces for that to work. So probably right now it’s going to be a little bit harder to find your drugs if you’re a user, because people are going to be afraid to sell for a little while, and a lot of the dealers are now going to jail. But we know that this is an ongoing problem. We do the best that we can in the law enforcement side. But you really need to support all of those components to have a true to impact.”
In the past year Flagler County has, relative to previous year, seen a sharp infusion of addiction-treatment dollars and resources, including options for medically assisted treatment, but still no in-patient treatment in the county, with one, limited exception for young mothers. The jail, too, successfully landed a federal grant to expand its own drug-rehab program, which has been the only de facto in-patient program to date.
Operation Santa's Naughty lil Sellers suspect board
