A joint Flagler County Sheriff’s operation with the Northeast Florida Interagency Child Exploitation and Persons Trafficking Task Force (known as the Intercept Task Force) rescued three adult victims and arrested 10 individuals on drug, prostitution and gun charges.
Two of the individuals are from Palm Coast, both arrested on misdemeanor solicitation of prostitution charges and released on low bonds. The rest are from Jacksonville, Melbourne, Melrose and Seminole County. The investigation is ongoing.
“Operation Innocent Shield was a multi-month undercover investigation that targeted human trafficking,” Sheriff Rick Staly said this afternoon, “and was designed to disrupt the online sex market activity, child exploitation, and human trafficking by focusing on demand, identifying and rescuing victims, and apprehending offenders.”
Staly spoke at the Sheriff’s Operations Center, flanked by several members of the Sheriff’s Office, including the lead detective on the operation–Detective Joseph O’Barr–and members of the Seventh Judicial Circuit and the Attorney General’s prosecution arms.
“The first phase was an undercover operation,” Staly said. “Detectives responded to internet websites and platforms that advertised commercial sex services. During phase one, three adult victims of human trafficking were identified and rescued, narcotics and drug paraphernalia, along with the firearm, and a car was seized. Six arrests were made for various prostitution, drug, gun, and fugitive charges.” A second phase targeted individuals who responded to online ads offering sex services, netting four arrests.
No arrests on human trafficking charges were made. But Staly said a third phase of the ongoing investigation may lead there. “Based on our interviews and forensic examination of digital evidence conducted by the Sheriff’s Office Digital Forensics Unit, detectives have identified and are investigating three human sex traffickers,” he said. “The investigation is likely in phase three to identify additional victims, lead to further seizures of narcotics and firearms, and lead to additional arrests and charges.”
He showed a brief clip of parts of the undercover operation in which a victim was rescued.
“In this operation, we have spent several months collecting a list of NGOs and other non-LEO partners that can provide care and comfort to these victims,” O’Barr, a member of the Intercept Task Force, says in the clip, “be it beds, rooms, services, mental health, and they are being immediately interviewed, triaged, and then taken to wherever they get the best care needed to help get them out of this lifestyle.”
All three victims, who range in age between their 30s and 40s, were cared for the night of their rescues at the Family Life Center, the county’s only shelter for abused persons. “We housed victims when they needed support,” Trish Giaccone, the executive director of the Family Life Center, said. “I worked with these individuals. They are victims of human trafficking.”
Giaccone stressed that while the legal definition of human trafficking could be different when it comes to charges and prosecution, she had no doubt that the victims had been subjected to what she considers human trafficking.
Federal law defines sex trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age.” A sheriff’s release states that Operation Light Shine will follow up with the victims.
Staly referred to the three people rescued as “victims of a dirt bag that is either drugging them up or making them go sell themselves and give that individual the money just so they can live or get their next fix. They are a victim, is who they are.” The sheriff made a distinction between the rescued individuals and individuals charged with prostitution.
There have been several instances of individuals locally charged with sex trafficking only for the charges to be either downgraded by the State Attorney’s Office or pleaded down. For example, in March 2025, the Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of Jose Valerio-Rodriguez, a 70-year-old homeless man who’d given gifts to and engaged in sex with a 16-year-old girl in his tent. He was charged with human trafficking and unlawful sexual activity with Certain Minors, only for the State Attorney’s Office to file the unlawful activity charge, along with a child abuse charge and a molestation charge, but no human trafficking. In January he was sentenced to 6 years in prison in a plea.
In the summer of 2024, the Sheriff’s Office arrested and charged David William Chenowith, then 32, with three dozen charges, including human trafficking of several minors. The State Attorney’s Office filed several charges, but not human trafficking, and Chenowith pleaded to 14 years in prison last August. In 2022 Peter Strickland faced more than two dozen sex crime charges, including human trafficking of minors. The State Attorney filed 21 charges of possession or promotion of child sexual abuse materials and sexual activities involving animals, but not trafficking, and he pleaded to 25 years in prison. Other local cases initially charged as human trafficking follow the same pattern.
It isn’t clear how additional individuals in the current operation may be charged, beyond those charged today (those 10 individuals will not see additional charges). “I can’t comment on ongoing investigations,” Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark, who was at the sheriff’s press conference, said. “Obviously each case is case specific, and you have to obviously look through the statute and see whether or not the facts of an individual case match the statute. So I can’t really answer the question with regard to what we have currently.”
Six of the 10 individuals arrested in Operation Innocent Shield were charged with misdemeanor offenses (prostitution is a second degree misdemeanor, the lowest crime on Florida’s books). Two of them had warrants on unrelated charges from other counties. FlaglerLive generally does not name defendants on misdemeanor charges. Those charged with felony crimes include:
- Travonce Brewer, 37, of Jacksonville: Possession of fentanyl with intent to distribute, possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Currently being held on a $106,000 bond.
- Katlyn Howard, 31, of Jacksonville: Prostitution, possession of fentanyl, possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia. Currently being held on an $8,150 bond.
- Dwight Cicero Jr., 38, of Jacksonville: Possession of cocaine, resisting an officer without violence. Released on a $3,000 bond.
- Donisha Courtney, 32, of Jacksonville: Prostitution, possession of synthetic cathinones. Currently being held on a $2,650 bond.
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