Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly and State Attorney R.J. Larizza this afternoon announced the results of a six-month undercover investigation of suspected drug pushers, many of them habitual offenders. The sweep netted cash, guns, drugs and 18 arrests, eight of them this morning and a ninth taking place even as the sheriff’s press conference was rolling–and as the suspect was watching it.
It appears to be the first time that a local suspect was seized while watching the sheriff tell him and five others not yet caught: “I suggest you turn yourself in, because we’re going to get you. It’s only a matter of time. We’re going to find you. You can continue to walk around, looking over your shoulder for when our SWAT team or our PACE unit or our Fugitive Unit finds you, or SIU people find you. But you’re going to get caught.”
Keith Smith, 51, of White Star Lane in Palm Coast, wanted for selling cocaine within 1,000 feet of a park, did not look over his shoulder in time. He ran when deputies appeared to serve his warrant. When they caught up with him, Staly’s press conference was streaming on Smith’s phone.
Five individuals remain at large. One of the individuals on the list died of an overdose before she was served. Deputies seized 5 kilograms or 11 pounds of drugs–120 grams of meth, 60 grams of fentanyl, and a kilo of cocaine. pounds of illegal drugs. The operation also netted 13 firearms, five vehicles and $22,000, which become part of the sheriff’s assets forfeiture fund.
Staly appeared this afternoon at the Sheriff’s Operations Center in Bunnell alongside Larizza, the sheriff’s Chief of Investigations, Augustin Rodriguez, Chief Deputy Joe Barile, Commander Brian Finn, and members of undercover units (including
the Special Investigations Unit
, or SIU, and
Problem Area Crime Enforcement
, or PACE), all appearing masked, as has become a norm at such press conferences here and elsewhere across the country.
For a giant electronic backdrop, the sheriff’s staff used artificial intelligence to generate the image of a hulking, bulked up sheriff with a goatee, meant to be a likeness of Staly–“doesn’t quite do you justice, but it’s close,” Larizza told the sheriff–surging over a terrified, scruffy little pusher packaging powders and pills. For some reason the scene appears to be in a boxing ring, with red-shirted spectators in the background and a building looming over the scene with, of course, the obligatory punch line: “Green Roof Inn–Vacancy.” The operation was called “Summer Slammer.”
The cartoon was at odds with the grimness and seriousness of what followed, an overdose death not least among the revelations.
The undercover sting operation took place in the first six months of the year, centering on “controlled buys,” meaning drug transactions conducted with informants, or people posing as bogus buyers of drugs. It resulted in 24 arrest warrants, most of them served this morning, some of them with Staly among the deployed deputies from various agency units.
“These 24 drug dealers have 316 prior arrests” between them, Staly said, providing brief street biographies of some of the suspects. Thomas Leto Jr., 53, of Palm Coast, “was the equivalent of an illegal drug pharmaceutical store,” the sheriff said. “Whatever illegal drug you wanted, you could get from him–fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, Suboxone, MDMA, hydrocodone, hydromorphine. He also possessed a firearm by a convicted felon. He’s been to prison before, and he alone has been arrested 31 times.”
Leto has been to prison
three times since 2008
and was released from his last stint, a 10-year sentence, 14 months ago.
“Shannon Foster, age 47, residing in the Mondex area of Flagler County, in the western part of the county, and previously arrested 20 times,” Staly said. He was in state prison from 2003 to 2007. “He was wanted for the sale of methamphetamine, tried hiding in a small camper trailer and refused to come out. Well, he quickly changed his mind when we gassed him in the trailer. In about two or three minutes, he and another individual came out.”
Staly named a few others, including the “winner” of the group, Russell Lassiter, arrested 51 times before, and had three stints in state prison, the last one ending exactly a year ago. He was wanted for cocaine sale.
“Obviously, going to state prison, getting arrested all these times, they still don’t want to change their behavior, so we’re going to continue to arrest them,” Staly said. “But if they won’t change their behavior, then they need to be sentenced heavily by the judge, by the court, to prison time because they’re selling poison in our community.”
In 2017 Staly was not shy about criticizing Circuit Judge Margaret Hudson, who has since retired, when he cited her decision to allow a suspect to go home on house arrest as “a symptom of a problem in the criminal justice system”–easy or low bonds. (See: “
In Rare Move, Sheriff Is Publicly Critical of Judge’s Decision to Let Shooting Suspect Out of Jail
.”) The criticism broke an unspoken firewall between the two sides of the justice system: cops don’t generally so openly second-guess judges. The sheriff had been elected less than a year before.
Today Staly was asked the rather uncouth question of giving Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols, who took over Flagler County’s felony bench last October, a letter grade, if he were to grade her in accordance with his wishes for judges to hand out heavy sentences to repeat offenders.
The sheriff, now in his third term, was more circumspect and gracefully deferential to the totality of the justice system, recognizing his role as just one among many–an indication of his evolution in his role as sheriff over the last nine years.
“Well, I’m not going to go down that path,” the sheriff told the reporter. “The judge has wide latitude on what they can do. I’ve seen some very strong sentences. I’ve seen some sentences that I don’t totally agree with. I’ve seen some bonds that I don’t agree with. But I try to stay in my lane, and my lane is to enforce the law, while the state attorney’s lane is to prosecute the case, the public defender is to defend the defendant, and the judge gets to put all those pieces together. So I’m probably never going to agree with every sentence or every bond that is provided, and it’s not just Judge Nichols. So they have a different role, and I don’t stand in there or walk in their shoes.”
Larizza underscored the prosecutorial approach his assistant state attorneys will take with the suspects. “A lot of these folks, 10 of them, were charged with sale of cocaine within 1000 feet of a park,” he said. “That enhances the penalty to a first-degree felony, or 30 years in prison, and also has a minimum mandatory, I believe, of four years. The sale of Oxy within 1,000 feet of a convenience store doesn’t have the minimum mandatory, but two of those folks are looking at a potential sentence of up to 30 years in prison, and then we have a sale of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a convenience store, again, a first degree felony. So we utilize the enhancements when they’re selling in the vicinity of parks, schools, daycares, other facilities, convenience stores, because of the proximity of kids and the general public.”
A list of the suspects appears below as released by the Sheriff’s Office.
