Keys sheriff fires high-ranking detective over telling a deputy ‘to be the neo-Nazi’
A high-ranking Florida Keys sheriff’s office detective was fired Thursday as a result of an investigation that she told one of her deputies to play a racist cop to pressure a Key West murder suspect for information.
Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay already ordered Capt. Penny Phelps to turn in her badge and gun late last week. But he gave her until the end of this week to rebut the accusations against her before officially firing her.
A internal affairs hearing was held Thursday, and Ramsay said that he is sticking to his decision to terminate the veteran detective.
“Understandably, this incident has caused great concern to me, the members of this agency, and most importantly, the community we serve,” Ramsay said in a statement. “Today, I made the decision to withdraw Penny Phelps’ appointment to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. I cannot allow the actions of one individual to undermine the hard earned trust and confidence of the public and our members that the men and women of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office work so hard every day to build and maintain.”
Phelps, 59, has worked for the sheriff’s office since February 2002 and her salary was $121,395 a year. She could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
The Nov. 20, 2017, instructions were caught on tape and surfaced in October as part of the discovery process between defense attorneys and prosecutors in the “tree house murder,” a homicide that happened three days earlier in an actual tree house on Stock Island.
Phelps and other cops were sitting in an interrogation room that continuously records while she spoke to a deputy on the phone, telling him to make a traffic stop of one of two murder suspects in the case, Rory “Detroit” Wilson, who is black. She told the deputy that Wilson would be riding his bike, and she wanted the deputy to stop him and get information from him by acting like a “white supremacist cop.”
“We don’t want Detroit knowing that we know who he is,” Phelps is heard saying on the recording. “We want it to look like you’re the grumpy old man. You have nothing better to do than, you’re the white supremacist, you’re messing with the black guy who’s riding his bike.”
“I just want you to be the neo-Nazi who’s picking on the black guy riding the bike,” Phelps said.
Moments later, Phelps is heard instructing other deputies about the assignment.
“He knows his bit,” she said. “It’s the white supremacist cop picking on the poor black guy that’s riding on a bike.”
Ramsay pulled Phelps from the tree house investigation in October when he found out about the recording, he told the Miami Herald / FLKeysNews earlier this month. That’s when he also ordered an internal affairs investigation into Phelps.
On Dec. 4, Ramsay relieved Phelps of her command of the Special Operations Unit, which includes both major crimes and narcotics detectives.
This week, the sheriff’s office announced that School Safety Director Patty Thompson will maintain her existing role and take over command of the Special Operations Unit. Thompson is a retired FBI agent who joined the sheriff’s office in early 2018, said Adam Linhardt, spokesman for the agency.
Investigators say the tree house murder was the result of a crack cocaine burglary that turned deadly. Police believe Wilson and another Stock Island man, Fanklin Tyrone Tucker, 48, went to the tree house on Laurel Avenue to steal drugs and money from the woman who lived there, Paula Belmonte, 55.
Both Tucker and Wilson have pleaded not guilty to murder charges, and Tucker maintains he was not at the tree house that night.
Police say he held a man inside the house at knife point while Wilson held Belmonte down, demanding cash and drugs. In the process, Belmonte’s throat and hand were cut. She lived.
Meanwhile, a neighbor, Matthew Bonnett, 59, heard the commotion and climbed the steps to the tree house to help Belmonte, according to police. It was there he was killed after being stabbed five times, police say, by Wilson and Tucker. Both suspects were wearing masks that night.
Another man, John Travis Johnson, 41, was also arrested in the case and is accused of being the getaway driver.
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Keys sheriff fires high-ranking detective over telling a deputy ‘to be the neo-Nazi’."
