good afternoon uh we're here to today to discuss the arrests of 13 individuals on drug trafficing charges after a year-long investigation that began last summer uh this past Friday we served several search warrants and seized a substantial amount of drugs that had arrived here in penis County from a source of Supply in California and since last Friday we have charged 13 people with multiple drug trafficking offenses the investigation has been and Contin years to be ongoing and we anticipate additional arrests as further Evidence is developed over the course of a few hours last Friday morning we seized numerous drugs primarily from a stash house located at an apartment complex in the area of us19 in Roosevelt Boulevard in Largo and last Friday morning the drugs that we seized out of this one apartment included 54 pounds of methampetamine 21 pounds of cocaine two pounds of black tar heroin almost 2 lbs of fentel 11 lb of marijuana three guns and about $57,000 in cash at the same time that the penel County Sheriff's Office executed these search warrants and made these seizures uh began making the arrest the St Petersburg Police Department also began serving search warrants and making arrests in a parallel investigation the overlap between the St Petersburg Police Department investigation and our investigation involved some of the same subjects who were buying and selling drugs the CP Police Department investigation also uncovered a substantial dog fighting ring and chief hallway is here and he'll discuss their investigation in a moment also here with us today is fora Department of Law Enforcement commissioner Mark glass and he'll speak about the state's safe grant funding to local law enforcement which helps produce results like those seen in both of these cases we also had some arrests uh and some enforcement activity over in Tampa that FDLE agents assisted us with so this investigation that I'm going to talk about by the penel County Sheriff's Office began last summer when we received information that a person by the name of DeAngelo Woods was trafficking kilograms of cocaine throughout pelis and Hillsboro counties and the information that we obtained at that time was that Woods was selling up to 20 kilograms of cocaine every two weeks so for context a kilogram of cocaine is about 2.2 lbs of cocaine and the wholesale cost today uh pis County or in the Tampa Bay area for a kilogram of cocaine is about $117,000 so I'm going to just talk about the price of these drugs for a second and it seems like every time that we do one of these press conferences and announce one of these substantial investigations I talk about the cost of the drugs and what I tell you is the cost of drugs is way too low and I'm going to tell you again the cost of the drugs is way too low and that means that we got a failure and the failure is there's too much drugs out there there's too many coming across the border and the supply is so great out there and there's so much that the price is low it's all about supply and demand and you know if you go back you about 10 15 years 20 25 years the cost of a kilogram of cocaine you know back in the 80s these are 1980s prices um and you go into the 90s early 2000s and the prices were up there 3530 4 $40,000 a kilo there's an investigation going on right now in pelis I was talking to somebody else this morning about it where they're buying kilos of kilograms of cocaine for $14,000 that's nuts that's 1980s that's medine cartel prices that's where the stuff was coming in South Florida and by the boatload so it tells us that there's a lot a lot of drugs on the street and when we talk about fenol fenel is going for about $100 a gram about $30,000 a kilo and those prices are going down they're not going up they need to go up and so it shows that we got a really really serious dve problem in this country and what it comes from is there's too many drugs coming in and we know where they're coming from they're coming primarily from the border and so this is a significant issue that we Face uh throughout the country so um as getting back to this investigation uh after we received this information about what Woods was doing we were able to introduce an undercover detective from the pelis county sheriff's office to him and uh during the course of that undercover investigation between February and July of 2024 the undercover detective made purchases directly from Woods hand toand from Woods on nine separate occasions and purchased in total about two kilograms of cocaine and about a pound of methamphetamine and woods was sell in pounds of methamphetamine for about $1,500 each uh through the investigation we determined that Woods had a local source of supply and that local source of Supply is a local no one drug trafficker by the name of Matthew Turner uh Turner which is no shock has an extensive criminal history including arrest for attempted murder threats to a law enforcement officer and battery on a law enforcement officer as the investigation unfolded uh we determined that the Matthew tur was obtaining cocaine methampetamine Fentanyl and heroin from a source of Supply in the Los Angeles California area that source of Supply would send boxes via UPS and X to Tanya Rodriguez at an address in Brandon over in eastern Hillsboro County Turner would obtain the boxes containing the drugs from Rodriguez so they were shipped via U UPS and FedEx from Southern California uh to Rodriguez's home um at one point the Department of Homeland Security HSI uh seized a box and it contain 10 pounds of methampetamine that was destined for Rodriguez home now this California source of Supply in addition to sending the drugs here locally to Rodriguez at her home in Brandon would also uh send a Woman by the name of Jasmine Silva who lives in Southern California who she has identified or talked about as being her brother we don't know if it's really her brother or not but this is the person who was sending her here and she would fly in and she would rent uh airbnbs uh throughout the pelis county area so she would check in if you will to the airbnbs and next thing you know you see these UPS trucks and FedEx trucks showing up so she was getting deliveries from The Source when she arrived here like Rodriguez was getting and all those boxes contained the drugs and Henry Smith is another person who we identified and Turner along with Henry Smith and Henry Smith this Turner's right-hand man uh they would get the drugs out of these in the case of Silva the Airbnb places in the case of Rodriguez her home in Brandon and them to a stash house and primarily the stash house that we had identified at that apartment complex in the area of us19 and Roosevelt Boulevard where they would process the drugs into smaller amounts and sell them uh throughout pelis County uh via various Distributors so in addition to woods and Smith we identified the following individuals as drug Distributors for Turner there are Marvin Baxter Gerald betel Steve horn javarian Keaton mad SED Michael Turner and John Wallace and I'll show you a slide here in a minute with these people on it and most all of these people again it's not a shock same thing we see all the time they have very very extensive criminal histories so as is the case with people that are engaged in drug trafficking activities they don't limit themselves to one source of Supply they often have multiple sources of Supply so when one's out to they go to the other and they flip back and forth and that's what was happening in this case is it related to Woods remember Woods is under Turner Turner is the guy that's getting it out of California Woods is getting it from Turner and then Woods is putting it on the street here but we also identified that Woods had a source of Supply uh by the name of KZ Caldwell and you're going to hear more about Caldwell from Chief hway in a moment so from August of 23 to July of 24 uh again summer to Summer the evidence shows over this year period multiple deliveries were made to locations in pelis County as well as Rodriguez Hol and Brandon from this California source of supply and at this pelis County based drug trafficking organization obtained and distributed here in pelis County about 220 kilograms of cocaine 660 pounds of methamphetamine 25 kg of fentanyl 5.5 kg of black tar heroin and 14 kgr of MDMA so to put some numbers to that it's about $3.7 Million worth of cocaine wholesale that's at the kilo level that's that's not when they take it and they cut it and they ounce it out and they gram it out and they put it in eight balls and they're distributed it out there um and about $750,000 worth of Fentanyl and I don't have to tell you I think everybody's well familiar now with how deadly fentanyl is and when you're talking about that amount of fentanyl getting on the streets of pelis County it's staggering and as I said you with the prices being down and the amount of drugs that are out there should give everybody a lot of pause and a lot of concern um I want to show you some photos now um and we can go through these before I turn it over to Chief hallway go ahead and and these are the people uh and we'll give you all copies of this for the media these are the people that were part of the investigation arrested these are photographs of the kilograms of cocaine that we seized from that Stash House at us9 in East Bay last Friday morning go ahead to the next one um this is photographs of the pounds of methan amphetamine so what we saw uh last Thursday night into Friday morning we saw Rodriguez she left her house over there in Brandon and she came over here to the Airbnb where Silva was staying it's just to the west of us over here in lgo and you can see that box up there in the upper right hand corner and they got a little as we would call it hanked up they got a little suspicious they thought we might have been on to them but nonetheless they had all these drugs and they were trying to get it out on the street so Rodriguez uh getting kind of cautious is that she we got her going to a store over in Brandon and she brought uh wrapping paper uh for a kid's birthday and so she took the box that she received earlier in the day her house and she wrapped it in that wrapping paper and took it Uber from her house over to this Airbnb and delivered it to Silva and then that's when somebody went over and picked it up so they were uh going to some pretty Great Lengths here this is this came out of the boxes you can see the pry bar that's there because they had the uh wooden boxes and it had a lot of wax and all kinds of other material in it and then all those when they're shipping FedEx and UPS they were double crated in there and they were double boxed uh as they were as they were shipping and so we had to pry those boxes open go ahead to the next one um again just pictures of more of the drugs the Fentanyl and the meth go ahead and we also SE these three guns as you can see here an AR-15 and a couple handguns that were taken out of the Stash House the Stash House had a lot of what we call cutting material which would expand the drugs and you take those kilos and then they turn them into smaller amounts and ounces and grams and had a lot of processing material in there so that they could also if they wanted to and they look like they were they were kind of rewrapping the kilos because that's how they make more money because they put uh additives or cut into the drugs to extend them out um so go ahead I think that's good um these these pictures here um are of some of the main players uh this is Matthew Turner again as I said he has an extensive criminal history you can see what's there um we have a list here of all of the charges that these people were charged with this is the plethora and they're charged with everything from AR trafficking all the way down to use of a communication device but all of them are charged with multiple counts uh go ahead and this is Henry Smith again that's Matthew Turner's right-hand man uh he was primarily responsible for managing the distribution uh to the lower level people go ahead and that's Tanya Rodriguez she's the one that was living over in Brandon she's the one that would receive the shipments from the source of Supply in California via UPS and FedEx and then uh Smith and or Turner would pick up the drugs from her take them to the stash house and then the last photo here is of Silva um and she again lived now she's living at the pelis county jail but she lived in Southern California in Los Angeles and she would fly in here um rent the Airbnb get the drugs give them to Smith and Turner pick up money and take it back to Southern California so to do these types of cases it takes uh a team effort a lot of people uh that are involved in making these cases successful and I also want to recognize the partnership with the fora Department of Law Enforcement the St P police department but also the state attorney's office and state attorney Bruce Bart and his team were uh instrumental uh and also being able to to get uh search warrants and all kinds of other court orders we needed and particularly uh Chris bellings and Eric Lipton who are assistant State Attorneys and they were out there with us uh all night uh throughout this investigation and we instrumental in bringing these cases to a successful conclusion so it really is a big team effort we got a lot of drugs off the street a lot of bad guys off the street and as you can see from these charges they're looking at uh significant minimum mandatory sentences and hopefully for a lot of them they'll go away for um not their lives a substantial portion of it and get them off the street but we got to figure something out because as these prices show there's a lot of drugs out there there's a lot of people selling dope so I'm going to turn it over to Chief hway uh and then you'll hear from commissioner glass thank you sheriff and I just want to Echo exactly what Sheriff guter was talking about is the partnership here in penelo County not only with the state attorney's office but also with commissioner glasses word I want to say before we get started is you want to bring your drugs to penel County you want to sell here it's just a matter of time and we got time on our side and what I mean by that is we may not get you today we may I get you tomorrow but sooner or later we're going to come knocking on your door we're going to flashbang your door and we're going to take you out of penelo County because we do not want that in our area so the first thing I'm going to talk about is really about our part of case where we worked along with the sheriff's office in FDLE first thing I want to say is dog fighting is brutal inhumane practice that inflict immense pain as suffering on innocent animals and that's what we start looking at what these guys and what these men and women were doing to the animals in our area so back in November of 23 our narcotic unit start working with FDLE because we knew a subject by the name of Mr small it was a known fit andol and cocaine trafficker in our area and he had several Associates the detective did a great job they started following Mr small around in his associate and they were able to identify numerous locations but the issue was M Mr small moved from day to day because he was afraid that he was going to get caught but the detectives did a great job and continue to follow small around during that investigation they found out not only was Mr small selling uh narcotics but there was a drug operation going you're going to hear more about that in a few minutes about Mr cwell that was involved in it so in April of 2024 of this year we begin a long-term investigation not only looking at Mr Mr small for the narcotics but we also started looking at the dog fighting operation and that's where we're able to identify cwell as the person that was leading on this dog fighting now it was not only here in Hillsboro uh in penel County they were doing dog fighting in Hillsboro County manate app appalachicola uh County and also in Georgia they were moving these dogs all about so I'm going to show you a video right now to show you exactly how they had it set up so last week on July 18th we did a raid these were the animals that we found there as you can see in the backyard they had kennel set up kennel set up for this operation we recovered more than $111 dogs 111 dogs that we used for this dog fighting the apparatus you see there that was the apparatus they used for breeding the dogs the other apparatus you see are treadmills where they would train the dogs so the dogs have long and be able to fight for a long period of time want you to take a look at this picture I want you to remember this picture right here this is what a dog look like in 2023 and look at this dog Rec now so as the sheriff was saying earlier these narcotics are more than just about narcotics it has to deal with human trafficking it has to deal with our shootings it has to deal with just about any crime that you can predict in penel County it goes back to this drugs because like the sheriff is saying drugs are too cheap and people will do anything to make sure they can sell it on our street so on July the 18th we executed six search warrants and again like I said we recovered 111 dogs uh dog fighting paraphernalia and evidence and narcotics doing the search warrant and six subjects were charged with animal baiting and fighting they were also charged with uh conspiracy do gambling because it was also part of a huge gambling operation small primary resident that we hit the night before was a 3,800 39 block of 12th Avenue North there were 11 subjects inside that home of those 11 subject six people were rescued for human trafficking the other five were charged with trafficking and narcotics Fentanyl and what happened was when we hit the house we could we found some narcotics in the home and then as we continue to do our search what they did was they buried the fanol and the cocaine in the backyard and we able to recover the narcotics from there and you see that list over there the partnership is great here in penelas county and I only can speak for penel County and like I said earlier you want to come in our city our County and deal we're going to get you like I said maybe not today and like the sheriff said it's cheap so we got to put more officers out there so detectives out there so we can do the job because we're going to try our best to eradicate this problem out of our area and in reference to the dogs those are voiceless those detectives did a great job because just think we were at 111 dogs that were being killed or being mutilated every day because they were using that money from fit and all to do to do dog fighting to do human trafficking anything you want to name you can name it to that and part of the reason why we're able to do this is thanks to commissioner glass and FDLE for Operation Safe Grant because we can afford to do that and through his organization we were able to do grant funding were we able to pay our detectives and also be able to pay uh purchase narcotics so with that commissioner glass I'm FD El commissioner Mark glass and if that doesn't choke you up I don't know what will fentol is killing our people in the state and I'm honored to be on stage here with Chief Holloway and sheriff gter with the fine leadership you have here in pellis county and the partnership we have as you see here we got the three seals here that's happening all across our state primarily because of the safe Grant it's probably one of the best criminal justice tools that we've had in a long time and I want to thank Governor Ronda Sanchez for the Statewide assistance in fentanyl eradication and the lawmakers Who provided support in this great great program like he said we're able to provide investigative techniques equipment overtime where normally one agency they would be tapped out early and you just would have to take the low hanging fruit on the bust no more or Governor Dan santis or cabinet and our legislators they are protecting your community and we are protecting your community together and you have strong leadership here in this County and I want to say great work your officers great work for your deputies and our agents jumping in and the analysts that are tirelessly working all night long to ensure that they can track down these horrific people that do these things and when we do these type of Investigations it's just not one thing that we do it's this drug that's coming in and we know it's here you heard the numbers I mean it's cheap I mean supply and demand right so it lead to other criminal activities such you're seeing here with the dogs dog fighting I mean that's just inhumane I it just it gets down to the Brass taxs of it's inhumane but when you are pushing this type of narcotic around such as fentanyl lacing it with all the other drugs they got in this bust I'm just going to give you a number and I was here with attorney general not too long ago 7 to n gram or sorry 7 to n grains of salt pull them out on your table at your house get your magnifying glass and a sharp knife and kind of separate s to nine that's what kills you so when he's talking about the weight they're pushing here think about how many individuals that kills we talked about Airbnb they're using airbnbs that you would use to go visit family go do things right do you want that Remnant laying around in the Airbnb no you don't we had that happen last year with the young baby crawling around on the flooor and 79 grams touching the skin and getting ingested into that child that child lost his life to fentol ladies and gentlemen fentol is here and these great men and women work in law enforcement community and are other entities that help such as we resources to take down extensive criminal organizations such as the task forces you have in this area which is one of the human trafficking strike teams that come into play providing services to the Chief and the sheriff when they need it for these victims and these other things that happened and working with the Attorney General's office in the strike teams has been amazing but let's not be kidding ourselves this is something we all as a community it affects it's just not one segment of the community it's just not somebody on the other side of the tracks it's affecting you you've heard where the sheriff said they were doing buys at or where they were doing the sales and they were doing the the transport do you ride into Uber I do sometimes so you see how the movement is happening it is aect it will affect everything about us as a community and we will be remiss as Citizens if we do not try to do something to help stop this problem in our community and again I want to say the lawmakers and Governor Dan santis and the cabinet are truly truly working for law enforcement Community they want to see this stuff stopped and I'm honored to be here with these great leaders here that you have in your county and I will support you sheriff and Chief and all the other Chiefs in here in this pelis County if we got and I know we got more cases running so I just want to say there's more to come more to follow and you'll see that all across the state this remaining year so thank you sh all right so if anybody has any questions for me or chief hallway or commissioner glad Happ to take them but when you say the price is too low right now it means to me that either the demand is low or the supply is too high and so are drug partel producing too much drugs and how is that down into the local sales Mar yeah so the supply is too high it means there's too much the demand is high but the supply is even higher okay and greater so there's so much of it out there and you know it's just like anything else when you see the price go up it means that is scarce or scarcer and it's harder to get and there's much more competition out there for it but you're just seeing floods of it uh and it it is we're talking today about kilograms of cocaine the way we used to talk about ounces and you know again think about it it's about 35 ounces in a kilo 2.2 pounds in a kilo whatever you however you want to convert the metric to us but it's a lot a lot a lot of drugs and so as we're doing these investigations well we used to see people talking about you can get an ounce of cocaine for you know $1,500 or something and that was you get a couple of those that's a good case today it's all about kilos so it shows how the weights are up and and really what it comes down to as well is it comes down to supply but also the other part of that equation we're talking about is demand and why is there so much demand and there's so much demand because there's so much addiction and that's a whole other part of the discussion is you have so many people out there and you know they're hurting people co-occurring disorders of Behavioral Health mental health addiction substance abuse and those co-occurring disorders because people are are wanting it and especially with fentanyl and the reason why we've talked about this so many times the reason why fentanyl is in such demand is because it's cheap and it's a very very good clean high and so people want it and that's why there's a demand for it but there's so much of it and it's because it's coming in you know it's all coming in through Mexico it's coming coming in through the Border yes some of it is coming directly with a fentel from Southeast Asia but most of it's coming into Central America South America and coming up that way and you know you can call whatever you want people can say whatever they want but the fact is when you have this open border to the extent we do it is causing an open market and we are seeing the effects of it across the country including here in pelis county in the streets of St Petersburg streets streets of clear water streets of Argo and there's way too much dope out there and again when you have the demand and you have the supply and is cheap you know and if we get into the number of Overdose calls that we respond to on a daily basis the number of Overdose deaths on a daily basis the number of Naran administrations on a daily basis it's staggering absolutely staggering so it it's it's a major issue Sheriff um when when it comes to the size these arrests there's so many of them do you expect that there will be over the next couple of weeks and months a decrease in the amount of illegal activity and other drugs that are going on other words how much of the market were these these people responsible they're moving a lot of drugs but there's a lot of people out there that are doing the exact same thing you know it's what they do um you know go get a job stop killing people but they don't operate that way I mean look at the few I put up here and look at their criminal histories you know these are people that you know they're they're bad guys they're criminals they've been doing this this is what they do so we put them away and they get 15E minimum mandatories 20 year minimum mandatories 25 year and you know way too many times even with that they get out and they go right back to it again so you know it it it really is a cycle and as far as you know I wish I could tell you that as a result of this you're going to see the price of cocaine fentanyl heroin go up you're not because this is really just a it's a good case they're great cases and as commissioner glass said we got a lot of them going on but you know since the last time we were here and and we had one like this as a result of a multi- agency and substantial investigation the price then of fentanyl was more than it is today so it's it's you know we're going to keep doing it and we're going to keep holding people accountable and if you know they want to get caught and spend 15 20 25 years 30 years on minimum mandatories remember in Florida you got to do 85% of your time so you're going away you're going to spend that time and we're going to put you away but to answer your question is a lot of people out there doing it this isn't going to change the market for a long time it seems to me that this is one of the larger bus that I can recall in recent time you're saying that just it is it's substantial there's no question about it but there's a lot of it out there and a lot of people doing it Chief I just wanted to ask about the dog fighting um who was participating in this were they getting BR people from the community in or was it just amongst the people you arrested how did this all work so that's a great question let me add on one thing to the sheriff uh want to add what you asked about men and women you see here in this room is getting getting crazy that's the best way of putting it the sheriff and I both have a lot of years on and this is the first time I can tell you in over 36 years we executed 20 surf warrants in one day 20 you you've been to a press conference he does one I do two 20 in one day this dog fighting ring uh it was everywhere I told you the four counties that we're aware of it wasn't just the people that were selling drugs you know talking to our experts here it cost you 200 bucks to go watch a dog fight that's what you pay to go see this dog fight they set up a meeting we're going to have it today in Hillsboro County bring your dog there the fight take place you saw what happen to that beautiful puppy for one year then they throw that puppy away and get another dog so just this fit and all this drug thing it affects everything because they're training dog because they're making money off the drugs and then they're going out getting involved in other stuff so it's not just the people we got up on this board for arrest is people out there in the community there are wealthy people that are paying to go watch these dog fights being people's back yards and all the parks the dogs were in the backyards of these home but it's they can they can say meet me at Park B tomorrow bring your dog and that's where it's going to happen I don't understand the connection here between the the drug bust and the the dog what is the commonality of threat fit and all they were selling the drugs and then they're using the drugs to buy the dogs to raise the dogs to make more money off of it so my team's doing it uh something his team doing something it comes all the way back in the fit all we talked about C calwell he was doing both he actually ran the dog fighting ring but he was also Distributing narcotics the people that were working for him were selling drugs and doing dog fighting were people who are attending these events I hate that word but people who are going to these dog fights were they then drug users as well that what was you know so couple ways the dog fighting can happen you and I can do it over money we can do it over cocaine we can do it over fit andol is whatever you're willing to pay so you bring your dog I bring my dog okay why two dog go at it so the price of that match is maybe a pound of cocaine cheap for the 111 dogs what's next for them are they going to be up for adoption are they being at the moment so we got a great partner here what's going to happen is uh they'll be up for adoption some of our detectives want to adopt these dogs if you saw in that picture they are people friendly they just they will fight other dogs so we're hoping that we can take those 111 dogs and give them to good family so you can get a good home for Sher he said you started this investigation about a year ago was it a tip that came through where these folks were just on your radar when you began your investigation yeah we received information uh from somebody that um indicated that Woods was selling drugs that's how it started you know and that's generally how these investigations start is we receive information about something that somebody's doing much money was a safe gra month the piece operation well commissioner I think I think the amount Statewide is about $20 million is available now how much you know he can commissioner GL ask can speak to it I about you know there's hundreds of thousands so uh the first year that the governor put this in action it was 25 million and it didn't really get started off till that was authorized in July of last year yeah so a year ago so that was July of last year but it didn't really start kicking off in the cases until about October so we encumbered over almost 15 million by theend June now the legislators appropriated another 12 million for that this year and we R and reappropriated the rest of the to go along to this physical year I also want to go back to your question um how do you judge if you're making a difference if you look at my press conference with Attorney General on the medical examiner report if you look at the six-month death rate of people died of fentanyl in 2021 to 22 and then you look at it compared to 2020 uh I'm sorry 2022-23 same six months that was as 550 people less died so there was only 2 200 people only I'm saying that only 2500 people primary cause of death was fentel primary so and that was a 500 I say 35 or 540 difference in in deaths over since the previous year now I just told you that because the fentel program really getting kicked off in October 2023 so now next year I'd love to see what the stats are between all the great work these men and women are doing in these in the law enforcement Community from the same time January 1 to June 30th and I guarantee we're probably going to have a drastic reduction in fentanyl deaths so as a primary cause so hopefully that helps y yeah yeah we're going to keep doing it and you know to the people that are out there that are engaged in this look over your shoulder because we got many investigations that just like this that are in the pipeline and as I said this investigation is ongoing uh I do anticipate that there'll be um additional arrests and we're going to keep at it um and we will keep chipping away at it and hopefully as the commissioner said we'll start seeing some of the decreases in in the desk but um you know we got to do something to stop the supply coming into this country at the same time anybody have anything else any other questions some all right thanks everybody appreciate it