we're here this afternoon to discuss the arrest of confidential informant that had been used by the penel county sheriff's office for over a year um I'm going to name him his name is Anthony Walker blackmail his date of birth is 9296 after you hear this um I'll leave it up to you all whether you want to publish his name or not according to whatever policies and protocols you use but um I've decided to name him and his arrest and booking photo are available on our who's in jail site uh on the sheriff's office website Walker has an extensive criminal history with over 30 arrests in FLA in Georgia including attempted murder theft robbery and various drug charges as I said you know since I took office I'm going to be candid with you all and tell you about the good things there's a lot of good things that happen and the bad things when the bad things happen and that's the purpose of this today because this is not a good situation although none of our people did anything wrong uh you our Personnel filed all the appropriate protocols uh policies and best practices for using confidential informance but even when you do that uh sometimes things go wrong uh one of the things that is important to keep in mind is when we're talking about confidential informance and the use confidential informance we're talking about dealing with bad guys with bad people um you know I for a long time um work drug cases over 10 years I work drug cases and came to the conclusion that there's only three reasons why people cooperate with law enforcement and want to be confidential informant and one is because they're working off charges themselves and they want some consideration for the charges that they have pending against them the second reason is they want to make money and the third reason is they want to stick it to somebody so Revenge making money or working off charges are the only reasons why people cooperate with law enforcement and when you have that situation um everything they do needs to be under the microscope everything they do has to be scrutinized and everything they do they do has to be as closely supervised as it can possibly be although uh we don't live with them 247 and we can't control everything that they do it's impossible to do that there's a saying that goes this way uh that you can't cast a play in hell with angels and starring roles and that applies to the situation and the use of confidential informance especially in drug cases you can't walk up to somebody's front door and say hey I'm here from the penel county sheriff's office and I'd like to buy two ounces of cocaine from you guess what it doesn't work you can't go out on the street and walk up to somebody and say hey I think you got some crack in your pocket will you sell it to me it doesn't work the only way that people who are involved in drug dealing sell their drugs is the people they know they trust they've got some familiarity with and so we can employ the best the most productive the most experienced undercover detectives and they have limited resources limited availability limited success you have to have somebody that knows the bad guy and has the trust and confidence of the bad guy and that's where the confidential informants come in because they're bad guys they all run in the same circles they know each other so we need people that are going to give us that information so that then they can in a controlled or supervised environment make the buys or they can introduce an undercover agent that they have vouched for so that's how it works and in this situation um Walker came to us in October of 2013 and his motivation for wanting to cooperate was the money motive he he wanted to make some money and he provided information that he knew many people in the St Petersburg area who were selling drugs he wanted to work with law enforcement and again make money for making those introductions or those controlled purchases as I said before all of the protocols and policies were followed by our detectives and members of the Narcotics Division in establishing Walker as a confidential informant between October of 2013 and December of 2014 Walker identified at least 27 people who were selling various drugs including powder cocaine crack cocaine oxycodone and morphine in the St Petersburg area on December 5th of 2014 Walker told the detective that he was working with that a female subject would sell the undercover detective 35 morphine pills for about $1,000 the undercover detective met with a female in an undercover capacity after being introduced by Walker and purchased the drugs as a standard practice after the purchase was made the detective returned to the penis County Sheriff's Office and when he got back to the office he found that the morphine was actually not morphine and it was a muscle relaxant that was a non-narcotic muscle relaxing so in essence uh the detective had been ripped off uh and that happens again people are selling drugs aren't the most scrupulous people in the world and sometimes we find that they sell counterfeit substances um so when he found out that he had been ripped off he made the decision to go back out that night and to arrest this person for the sale of the counterfeit substances so under Florida law you can't sell drugs but you can't also sell counterfeit drugs and what you purport to be something so we run into this where you got people on the street corner that are selling cracked cocaine and when a detective goes out to make the buy it actually turns out to be pieces of soap or something else that are cut up to look like crack and there's a statute that prohibits the sale of these counterfeit substances so he went out to make this arrest and uh when he did he identified himself as a law enforcement officer and he conducted an interview with this person and uh the person said well that's all fine and well and you're saying that what I sold you wasn't the morphine but guess what is is that I don't know anything about that because Walker is the one that gave me the drugs to sell to you so if there's a silver lining in this it's that this Detective and his supervisors did the right thing is they acted appropriately it could have gone in a different direction and in some cases it might have been very easy for the detective to Discount what this person was saying and to blow it off and not give it any credibility at all but to this detective's credit and to the supervisor's credit is they did the right thing they listened and they conducted further investigation and as a result of that further investigation uh they were able to determine that Walker had in fact on several occasions made people into drug dealers who weren't so that he could make a profit and he set up these really fake drug deals in one case um in addition to the one I just told you about on July 16th of 2014 detectives bought what was purported to be 53 grams of cocaine it's a trafficking amount of cocaine carries a minimum mandat Cory sentence in State Prison from a suspect for $2,600 so about an ounce and a half of cocaine for about $2,600 on July 25th of 2014 um about nine days later detectives again purchased another 49 grams of what was purported to be cocaine from the same person this time for $2,000 it turned out that cocaine really wasn't cocaine but was a fake substance and as it turned turns out Walker provided that fake substance to the suspect to sell to the undercover detective of the $4,600 in penel County Sheriff's Office funds that were paid to the quote suspect for the cocaine Walker pocketed 3900 of that and gave the madeup drug dealer $700 in another case on October 22nd of 2014 Walker introduced uced an undercover detective to a person and that person agreed to sell 35 morphine pills it turned out the person received the morphine from Walker to sell to the undercover detective the same thing happened again on November 6th of 2014 and again on November 19th of 2014 with morphine and diloted so Walker gets the morphine into audit he goes to somebody and says hey I know somebody who wants to buy this morphine into audit who's the undercover detective these working with as a confidential informant gives this person the drugs and makes up some story as to why he wants this other person to actually sell the drugs and do the hand-to-hand transaction as opposed to do it it himself calls the undercover detective and says hey I got somebody that wants to sell drugs and come with me and they hook up and so Walker hooking up the undercover with this unknown person this unwedding person and is selling the drugs that Walker provided to him and then after the person collects the money from the undercover he gives them a couple bucks for doing the deal and Pockets what the undercover paid on Wednesday night walker was arrested on three counts of drug trafficking for supplying the drugs that were sold to the undercover agent in the morphine and deed transactions he's currently being held in the penel county jail his bond is $90,000 Walker actually had valid prescriptions for morphine and deloted as well as the muscle relaxing which was the fake substance in the first transaction I mentioned to you he admitted uh after his arrest that he had set up these fake drug deals by providing the drugs to the suspects uh that they sold to the undercover detectives in all there were 16 cases where detectives used Walker to buy drugs including cocaine crack cocaine morphine and other Pharmaceuticals where we have pending charges against individuals fortunately in those 16 cases none of those people have ever been arrested the charges were pending and of course they won't be arrested and those cases and investigations will be closed we don't know uh if in those 16 cases what happened in the three that I described to you happened in East 16 but similar circumstances similar situations Walker denies that it happened in those 16 cases um but we see what his credibility is which is zero so um those cases of course will be closed there are um nine cases where arrests were made in prosecution is pending I talked to State Attorney Bernie mcab uh today made him aware of the situation we're going to provide the state attorney's office with the list of those cases and I'm confident that the right thing will be done by the state attorney and that those cases will be dismissed there's an additional case and those of you that may have covered it if you remember a couple months ago now we announced the arrest of Robert Robert we on human trafficking charges actually Rico charges at the the Statewide prosecutor's office filed and as part of that case there was also a drug buy that was made from Robert we and it was for 56 grams of cocaine and um Walker was the informant who made that drug buy against Robert White the state white prosecutor's office likewise has been made aware of this situation involving walker uh there is nothing that should affect the human trafficking charges um but the trafficking and cocaine aspect of it of course um is problematic because of Walker's involvement there's also one case involving a defendant by the name of Daryl Watkins where Walker Walker purchased or arranged for an undercover uh law enforcement officer to purchase trafficking amounts of cracked cocaine the Watkins case was a joint investigation between the penel County Sheriff's Office and the FBI and Pro prosecution of Watkins is pending in federal court walk Watkins has entered into a plea agreement with the United States attorney's office but he has not been sentenced by the federal judge um I spoke today with Lee Bentley the United States Attorney uh made him aware of the situation um and they are reviewing the matter and we'll take the action that they deem appropriate during the time that Walker was an informant for the penel county sheriff's office he was paid a total of $726 uh in addition to what he profited from setting up the the bogus drug deals like the 3900 he stole during the cocaine deal that I mentioned previously so again these things happen uh when you're dealing with informant you're dealing with bad people and they do bad things uh we um were able to detect this uh ourselves uh we listened to what we were being told uh by the person who claimed that Walker had done this it wasn't discounted uh we investigated it thoroughly uh and have taken the appropriate action by charging Walker and notifying the proper Prosecuting authorities uh regarding the other cases and I'm sure that they will U take the necessary action to see that those cases are uh dismissed