all right thank everybody for uh coming today I know we didn't tell you a lot of information but I think you'll uh be pleased that uh your uh directors and producers allowed you uh to come so today we are announcing the 11th month-long undercover operation known as operation Santa's naughty little sellers uh there definitely won't won't be on uh Santa's good list uh this operation started in January 2022 and culminated today as we are rounding up these poison Peddlers they resulted in 24 search warrants seizure of street value of 5.7 million dollars in illegal drugs we have arrested so far 18 out of 35 we are still looking for the others we have seized enough heroin and Fentanyl in this operation that has the potential to kill 2.3 million people based on the dea's Fatal dose amount uh we have seized in this operation not only heroin and Fentanyl but cocaine synthetic cathenoons also known on the street is MDMA morphine Suboxone steroids psycobelon cycloben or other or mushrooms Dilaudid and Other Drugs including TCH or THC in cannabis methamphetamine we seized 13 firearms in this investigation seven of which were rifles and six were handguns and we seized just under 42 thousand dollars in cash taking the profits away from these drug dealers uh these dealers have sold their poison near schools in some cases it was a family affair where we arrested the 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 this investigation is ongoing and many of these suspects will face additional charges either because they had drugs on them when they were arrested or because we are still conducting further investigations in fact 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 and then he finally came to a stop and we found trafficking amounts of fentanyl inside his vehicle so when you get your press release you won't have that information on it but we will get it to you so I think a total of three additional charges of the people that we went after today were found with drugs on their I want to commend our undercover team our special investigations unit our SWAT team our Patrol teams our Pace evidence CSI and our detention and booking teams this was truly an agency-wide effort to make our community safer from these poison Peddlers and I especially want to thank our community 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 and sometimes it takes 11 months to make the cases but today they get to see the results of those tips and the ability that the agency has to investigate it and see their tip come into fruition so my message to the community if you have a poison Peddler that you think is living near you give us a call send us a tip call Crime Stoppers we will actively uh search investigate it and then the next round that we do hopefully we'll get your poison Peddler at that point and clean up your neighborhood uh too uh the one thing I also want to mention you know with um 5.7 million dollars in street value of drugs enough fentanyl that potentially could kill 2.3 million people um how many lives this operation saved and how many overdoses will not occur because of the drugs that were seized during this operation we'll never know the answer to that but I think it's important to mention that to the poison Peddlers that we haven't arrested yet or found I suggest that if your name is on his board and it doesn't say arrested under their name you have two choices you can call us we'll come pick you up you can turn yourself in at The Green Roof Inn 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 got you yet because it's only a matter of time that you're going to go to The Green Roof Inn is our Christmas present for you and for the illegal activities that you have been doing and this should also be a warning to drug dealers that if you're not listed on this board because we know that there's other drug dealers out here and there's likely going to be people that will take their place I suggest you move out of Flagler County go somewhere else because we have a community that's engaged with us they know that we take these tips seriously and so we will investigate you and by God if you kill someone with that fatal dose of poison we're going to do everything we can to investigate you for murder and put you in prison for as long as the state will do it we have a number of cases that we're investigating as homicides for the Fatal dose and and some of these people actually may be part of an investigation that's ongoing and so they may be facing some very serious charges in the future so that's my my comments prepared about this operation again I want to commend our special investigations unit they're the ones that really built these cases and worked hard almost around the clock to make these cases and I was out with them some this morning and in some other raids and search warrants that we did leading up to today and they worked very hard for this community to keep this courage out of our community so with that I'll be glad to answer any questions sheriff is this uh would this be an in Flagler operation being were they selling outside or creating it making it selling it outside of the series more uh right here in our in our event in the woods in his neighbor so it was mostly the sellers that we arrested are all Flagler County uh residents now they'll sell to anybody that brings them the cash okay and the uh the drugs are not necessarily they're coming from somewhere right so there are connections that we are continuing to investigate I wish I could uh talk about an operation that we had you probably got wind of that was involving multiple agencies just a few months ago but we're embargoed on that information uh by the federal agencies and once they uh finished their prosecution they've told us that they will allow us to tell you about that operation but we can't do it now so uh this but this particular case was all local drug well Sellers and by virtue of these arrests how much of a dent do you think you put in Flagler County's narcotics problem well you know you're not going to really put a major Dent until we have a combination of Enforcement Education and treatment 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 and I 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 um because people are going to be afraid to sell for a little while and uh in a lot of the dealers are now going to jail um but we know that you know this is an ongoing problem so you know we we do the best that we can in the law enforcement side but you really need the support of all of those components to have a true true impact group all of them or some of them I wouldn't I wouldn't call this group like an organized uh group of uh dealers but they are Loosely connected is I think is what I would say and I think the operation that we did with federal agencies would show a little bit more of the connection but I can't discuss it or is there well I I would defer that to my special investigation sergeant if if he would like to weigh in on that what I can tell you is we know that there are families that that do it like I mentioned there's a father and his two sons we have uh arrest warrants for and then two brothers and then so I wouldn't say Kingpin per se I wouldn't want to give them that title but obviously they know where to go get their drugs and and so do we and we're working our way up the ladder as best as we can sure have any idea where these sellers are getting their drugs where they're coming from a lot of it's coming out of Orlando platka and Daytona quite frankly and I'll say other states any any other questions all right again thank you so much for coming today I appreciate it and uh helping us get the word out to the community and and to the drug dealers so thank you