ICE Search Warrant Tragedy

[concord160]

Posted on Thu, Aug. 19, 2004


Two BSO deputies shot, one fatally, in Fort Lauderdale

BY JONATHAN ABEL AND WANDA J. DEMARZO

jabel@herald.com


Two Broward Sheriff's Office deputies were shot this morning -- one fatally -- with a high-powered weapon.

Deputy Tony Fatta, shot in the chest through his protective vest, was pronounced dead at North Broward Medical Center. Deputy Angelo Cedeno was shot through the hand and shoulder.

Cedeno was transported to the hospital and was in stable condition, according to Fort Lauderdale Fire-Rescue Division Chief Stephen McInerny.

BSO said the shooter was Kenneth Paul Wilk, 42, of 1950 NE 57th St. in Fort Lauderdale's upscale Colonial Ridge neighborhood just west of U. S. 1, sandwiched between Imperial Point and Coral Ridge.

Wilk was taken into custody at the scene, said Sheriff Ken Jenne, who rushed to North Broward Medical Center.

During an emotional mid-day press briefing at the hospital, Jenne praised the bravery and hard work of his two deputies and of all the law enforcement community.

''Every day, 365 days a year, we remind ourselves of the danger associated with the job that deputies and law enforcement officers do -- and hope that tragedy will not touch us,'' he said, tears welling up in his eyes. ``Unfortunately, today we have once again become all too aware of it.''

Wilk lived in the home with Kelly Ray Jones, a registered sex offender currently in federal prison on child pornography charges.

Cedeno and Fatta, members of BSO's Strategic Investigation Division, went to the home to execute a search warrant seeking more pornography, Jenne said.

The deputies presumably were looking for computers, videotapes and other materials.

The Florida Highway Patrol shut down portions of Interstate 95 to make way for the ambulances carrying the deputies.

A multi-agency task force had just completed an investigation into child pornography at the address of the shooting, according to Jim Leljedal, a BSO spokesman.

Wilk and Jones, a registered sex offender, owned the $300,000 home together, according to the Broward Property Appraiser's Office.

Jones violated his federal probation when he was arrested last month, BSO said.Fort Lauderdale police say they have been to the home many times.

Jones, 39, was arrested last month and accused of sending illicit images of nude children to the same undercover detective who brought a child-pornography case against him three years ago, BSO said.

Jones used the Internet to send several pornographic images of children to an undercover St. Lucie County sheriff's deputy working online in the Law Enforcement Against Child Harm Task Force, the BSO said.

The LEACH detective who received the photos on the computer happened to be the same investigator who arrested Jones in March 2001 on six counts of child pornography, according to the BSO.

At the time, Jones was also charged with soliciting to commit lewd battery. Those charges were filed in connection with Jones' plans to travel to St. Lucie County to have sex with a child, according to the BSO.

LEACH Task Force investigators, working with Fort Lauderdale police and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, also got a search warrant for Jones' home last month and removed evidence then.

His probation agreement also prohibited him from using the Internet.

Neighbors reported hearing several shots on Thursday.

''I heard five shots,'' said Arlene Marcus, who lives near the home. ``It sounded like maybe roofers were using a gun. I wouldn't believe that's what they might have been. This is not the first time. The media was here about a year ago.''

Neighbors said police had notified them that Jones was a registered pedophile.

[governor]

A man who authorities say nursed a bitter attitude toward police, an interest in child pornography and a love of weapons hid in his house Thursday morning and waited until the police officers who had arrived to arrest him came into view.

Kenneth P. Wilk raised his hunting rifle and squeezed the trigger, authorities said, striking Broward Sheriff's Office Detective Todd Fatta in the chest near the heart. Fatta's protective vest was no match.

Wilk shot one other deputy, Sgt. Angelo "Angie" Cedeno, in the hand and shoulder before police took him into custody uninjured, Sheriff Ken Jenne said.

The shootings appear to be the latest, most violent chapter in a long-running confrontation between Wilk, his boyfriend, and several law enforcement agencies. Among the hobbies Wilk once listed on his internet profile: "guns, shoot competitions and hunting cops."

Fort Lauderdale medics sped both deputies from the house in the 1900 block of Northeast 57th Street to North Broward Medical Center under a police escort. Fatta, 33, died shortly after arrival. Doctors rushed Cedeno, 36, who suffered wounds to the hand and shoulder, into surgery. He was in serious condition Thursday night but was expected to recover.

The deputies were members of the LEACH -- or Law Enforcement Against Child Harm -- Task Force, a multi-agency group that combats child pornography, and were attempting to serve a search warrant at Wilk's home Thursday morning.

Wilk's lover, Kelly Ray Jones, a registered sex offender, was arrested last month on child-pornography charges. He had just been released from prison in June after serving time for a 2001 child pornography arrest. The same undercover officer who busted Jones in 2001, St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office Detective Neil Spector, worked the case that led to Jones' most recent arrest.

Jenne said Thursday that investigators knew Wilk, 42, had been bragging that when detectives arrested Jones in June, they didn't get all of the child pornography in the house. Thursday's warrant was meant to find the rest of the illegal porn, and arrest Wilk.

Shortly after speaking with the deputies' families, an emotionally distraught Jenne reminded people how dangerous law enforcement is.

"Every day, we fail to realize that whether it's the LEACH Task Force, or warrants, or anything that goes on, these police officers and deputies and federal agents put their lives at jeopardy," he said. "It's a hard thing calling their parents" when one of them dies in the line of duty.

It is unclear why the LEACH Task Force members did not ask for assistance from a SWAT team in serving the warrant. They knew Wilk had high-powered weapons in the house and had made vicious threats against law enforcement in the past.

"Our people were confident they had an adequate number of [officers]," Sheriff's Office spokesman Jim Leljedal said.

The team consisted of about 12 officers from Fort Lauderdale, Wilton Manors, the Sheriff's Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"These are all experienced law enforcement officers," Leljedal said. "They have worked together before to serve warrants in LEACH cases. Again, if we had anticipated this level of resistance, we certainly would have had more people involved ... This was not at the level where we believed the SWAT team was necessary."

In Palm Beach County, the sheriff's Emergency Response Team, similar to SWAT, typically hands out LEACH's search warrants, said Palm Beach County Sheriff's Lt. Michael Reardon, a member of the same child porn task force.

When investigators were preparing the search warrant in July, Jones' federal probation officer told them Jones and Wilk had "weapons at the home [rifles] which are to be in a locked gun box," according to court records. Those weapons were not seized in the July 15 raid, according to the search warrant inventory.

In addition, Wilk had a history of making threats against law enforcement officials, according to St. Lucie County court records. Spector accused Wilk of making online threats to him in September 2001 after Jones was arrested.

The detective said he was online using one of his undercover screen names when he got messages from someone he thought to be Wilk, according to court records.

The messages read: "I hope you can live with yourself, I will hunt you down the rest of my life." When the detective asked who he was, the suspect replied: "The last person you will see on earth ... Promise." When the detective asked how that would happen, the suspect replied: "You figure it out Spector."

Spector checked the member profile for the messenger's screen name. It identified the person as "an exposer of Florida police undercover cops" and listed his hobbies as "working out, boxing, horseback riding, acting, guns, shoot competitions, and hunting cops."

A subpoena revealed the screen name was billed to Kenneth Wilk at his and Jones' home.

In July 2001, a female FBI agent reported that Wilk threatened to beat her up as she walked by him in court at a hearing in Jones' case.

Spector wrote that he felt "Wilk is a danger to the law enforcement community." Wilk was charged with retaliation against a witness and making a written threat to kill or do bodily injury, but the case was dropped in 2003.

Wilk filed a complaint with Fort Lauderdale police in September 2001 accusing Spector of threatening him online, according to the court records.

Thursday wasn't the first time law enforcement officers had encountered violence at Jones and Wilk's home.

When investigators arrived to arrest Jones on federal child pornography charges in June 2001, "Jones tried to shut the front door and instantly spun around the corner and ran to a laptop computer in the north bedroom," according to an FBI report obtained by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Two Fort Lauderdale officers were injured during a tussle with Jones. They said they fought to get handcuffs on him as he struggled to delete information from his computer. The investigators said Jones was engaged in several online chats, including one that dealt with "sex with babies and child pornography."

Jones argued in court documents that the officers slammed his head against a solid oak desk, but the officers said he hurt himself by jumping up in handcuffs and banging his head on his laptop computer.

Bobby Alpert, the owner of the now-defunct Acting Studio in Miami, said Wilk took classes there several years ago in exchange for helping with set construction and other work to put on theatrical productions.

"He was a very nice guy," Alpert said. "But we could see how frustrated he was" over Jones' legal troubles. "He was p----- off because the cops were going after his boyfriend."

Alpert said Wilk would brag about going into the same chat rooms frequented by Jones to warn other people that police were monitoring and, in Wilk's words, "entrapping" unsuspecting computer users. Wilk claimed the cop who set Jones up never claimed to be underage.

Alpert also said Wilk was upset about the financial toll Jones' legal troubles was taking on him. "He lost everything," Alpert said.

Wilk is being held at the federal detention center in downtown Miami, where he will appear before a federal magistrate today to answer a criminal complaint charging him with conspiring to possess child pornography and trying to obstruct justice by corrupting, harassing or intimidating a witness. Charges against Wilk for the death of Detective Fatta and the shooting of Sgt. Cedeno are pending, a Sheriff's Office spokesman said.

Investigators described Wilk as "indifferent and unconcerned" Thursday night.

Arlene Marcus, a neighbor who saw deputies walk Wilk out of his house Thursday morning, said he wore an ugly smirk on his face. He looked, she said, "like he was very proud of what he'd just done."

Staff Writers Rafael Olmeda, Jaime Hernandez, Akilah Johnson and Ann W. O'Neill and Staff Researchers William Lucey and Tracy Ahringer contributed to this report.

[ahunter]

I'm sure there will be lessons to be learned, but it is a sad day in South Florida.

http://www.local10.com/news/3669496/detail.html

[JDK]

The lesson is that you can't be too careful. A few years back, in central Texas, a trooper was shot and killed on a seat belt traffic stop. Turns out that the OLD man that he stopped had told LE officials that he would kill the next cop that stopped him for that. He did just as he said. No one had bothered to share the info. We, in the LE community, MUST NOT get complacent. We must research everything when we have the chance. You can't plan for everything, such as traffic stops and the like, but warrant service? When the chance is there, there's no excuse. I wasn't there, so please don't think that I saying "they screwed up". But these events, all too common, show us that we must plan our activities like engineers building a bridge. May God be with his family and freinds. Take care.

[tacguy]

I would like to see the Threat Assessment prior to the service of the warrant.

Stay safe.

[BigLew72]

What is tough about this is that warrants are seved every day with level II vests and pistoleros. In hindsight (and possibly in planning phases) it is obvious that heavy plate body armor was needed and SWAT/SRT should have completed the task. Very tough day and now the second guessing will begin. My heart goes out to the family.

- BigLew :cool:

[JimSpoor]

My thoughts go out to the slain deputy and his team members, as well as to his family friends and the BCSO.

I realize that it says child pornography and that it says task force but NO federal agency was mentioned. Are you sure that ICE is represented on the TF? Just trying to clarify.

[ahunter]

It was an ICE search warrant.... half of my ICE office is out completing the task today

[pegaman]

Correct me if I am reading this wrong, but Jones was on federal supervision when he got arrested about a month ago and Wilk (his....boyfriend) is the one that shot the deputies.

Many of the USPOs that go out to see people like this don't even bother to carry and, for that matter, in some districts can't carry, let alone wear vests during home visits. I realize that the deputy's vest did nothing for him, but it's incidents like these that I think would open the eyes of the judiciary and force all federal POs to carry or let federal POs carry in districts where they can't carry firearms. ;)

I can't stand to see when there is a new thread to be read in this part of the forum.

[universible]

:( Very sad to hear, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the injured and murdered deputies.

Ted