Florida Keys deputy sentenced for giving boyfriend information on drug operations
A Monroe County judge sentenced a Florida Keys deputy on Monday to three years in prison for using the sheriff’s office computer database to provide her boyfriend with information about ongoing narcotics enforcement operations.
Detectives say Jennifer Ketcham, 41, while an acting shift supervisor, gave her boyfriend intelligence on where her colleagues were conducting narcotics details and also ran license plates for him when he asked if certain unmarked cars were undercover vehicles, according to court documents.
Judge Sharon Hamilton sentenced Ketcham after she pleaded no contest to a total of 40 third-degree felony counts of unauthorized use of confidential law enforcement databases and misuse of public office, improper use of communications systems for non-official purposes.
Ketcham’s agency arrested her on July 31, 2024, following an investigation that began after detectives found her boyfriend’s phone while serving a warrant earlier that month at his mother’s house in Key West. The phone contained incriminating text messages between Ketcham and the boyfriend, according to her arrest warrant.
READ MORE: Florida Keys deputy accused of running interference for drug dealing boyfriend
Upon reviewing 11,845 text messages between the couple, investigators discovered that in November 2024 the boyfriend asked Ketcham to send a photograph of a detective who was casing a house on Roberta Street in Key West. Ketcham found a picture of the cop on Facebook and sent it to him, her arrest warrant states.
“Every time she leaked patrol locations, warned about planned warrants, or shared restricted case data, she knowingly increased the danger to deputies and officers on the street and compromised investigations others had worked tirelessly to build,” said Major Case Prosecutor Assistant State Attorney Colleen Dunne in a statement Monday. “This was not confusion or carelessness. This was deliberate misconduct by someone who fully understood the law and chose to violate it anyway.”
Ketcham began seeing her then boyfriend in the summer of 2023 when he was 17 years old, according to the warrant. In text messages with a colleague, she referred to him as “#1” and said she moved him into her apartment at the Sunset Marina in Key West, the warrant shows.
The Herald is not naming the man since he was not charged in the case and is not currently in jail or prison on any other charges.
Ketcham was hired in June 2021 and her annual salary when she was arrested in July 2024 was $66,646, according to the sheriff’s office.
In text conversations with a colleague about the boyfriend, Ketcham tells of how she knew he dealt drugs, and they discuss his trips to the Redland agriculture district in southwest Miami-Dade where he picked up his supply, the warrant states.
Ketcham was an acting supervisor while she was dating the man, and a colleague told investigators that her squad “knew to stay away from certain avenues on Stock Island due to their relationship,” Detective David Fernandez wrote in the warrant.
Ketcham was so smitten with her boyfriend that she arrested his mother at his request on June 11, 2023, the warrant states. She detailed the arrest in a text message to her friend.
“He called me and told me where she would be and what car she would be driving. I served a warrant and she got a false name charge,” Ketcham texted, according to the warrant. “That’s literally between he and I.”
Detectives got the boyfriend’s phone after serving a joint search warrant with Key West police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations and the IRS on his mother’s house on Seidenburg Avenue in Key West in July 2024.
That device is where they found several conversations in which Ketcham appeared to be running interference for her boyfriend by accessing the sheriff’s office database.
“This wasn’t just a betrayal of public trust — these actions put officers’ lives in danger,” Chief Assistant State Attorney Joseph Mansfield said in a statement.
“Sharing confidential patrol locations, warrant information, and active investigations for personal gain isn’t a mistake; it’s a deliberate act that endangers law-enforcement officers and sabotages the integrity of criminal investigations, and directly endangering deputies by sharing pictures of undercover deputies to the drug dealers,” Mansfield continued.
This story was originally published November 24, 2025 at 2:54 PM with the headline "Florida Keys deputy sentenced for giving boyfriend information on drug operations."
