Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
The Fourth of July celebrations were successful.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It was a good weekend. It was supposed to be kind of a rainy weekend, so we were concerned about the weather, but it wound up being decent, a few little rain squalls here and there, but nothing bad, didn’t destroy any shows. I was up myself in Key Largo Friday for the Key Largo parade. I go up there every year myself, and I walked that parade two miles in my Class A uniform as a nice effort to see the citizens and shake hands and wave and take pictures and high five the kids, and just a great event up there. But during that time, we do have to do a lane shift. So there is some traffic implications, shifting traffic from one lane to another and keeping it flowing. But my men and women do a good job. We’ve got that down pretty well, that the impacts are relatively minimum, but we’ve got to make sure that two mile stretch northbound is safe and secure for the floats and the people walking, but yet keeping traffic going, so a difficult task, but a good day up there, very hot, walking that parade route. Then I came back to Marathon to Sombrero Beach, and I spent about an hour at Sombrero Beach in my Class A uniform. Again, I want to spend time in Marathon, walking the beach, talking to residents, citizens, visitors, being seen, being accessible, which is so important to me, making myself accessible to the community. Then after that, I actually got a little time on my boat. I didn’t have much time, but I put the boat in this weekend and had some friends down, and actually went on the boat, did a little spear fishing and enjoyed the weekend the best I could. Sheriff’s Office had a very busy weekend, traffic heavy all weekend, being a three day holiday weekend, but overall, safe. Again, men and women did a great job to make sure our citizens and visitors alike are safe and secure. I think it was a very successful weekend overall between the cities and counties.”
A traffic stop on Saturday found drugs and a loaded handgun. Consequently, two people from Miami are now in custody being charged with possession of a variety of drugs and drug paraphernalia, as well as that loaded handgun.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is about the 102 mile marker Saturday, one of my traffic enforcement officers, did a routine traffic stop. When they got the car stopped, the window rolled down, they could smell a strong odor of marijuana coming out of the car. Nobody inside the car had medical marijuana cards giving probable cause to conduct a search where we did find ecstasy, THC, vape cartridges, marijuana, drug paraphernalia. We also found the loaded handgun, a semi automatic glock. So not uncommon when we find drugs, to find a gun associated with that. Always scary when we’re out with people that have guns in cars that don’t want to go to jail. Both individuals in their early to mid 20s were from the Miami area down here in the Keys, again, with a variety of drugs. So we’re able to get the drugs off the streets, a gun off the streets, hold these two people accountable, arrest both of them, tow their car. So another successful day off a routine traffic stop yielding the results of more, higher level crimes that are important to our community.”
A domestic case recently saw a guy from New York State try to use a brick as a weapon. He hit another man with a brick. He also broke a glass door with that brick. He is now in jail.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s just part of our job to deal with whatever comes up and here was a domestic situation, some people down visiting from New York at a residence, turned violent with threats to do bodily harm. A brick was used, that person was charged with an aggravated assault charge, and damage is done to some other properties. So it’s interesting.”
There was about 1.3 kilograms of suspected cocaine found Wednesday evening floating in the Upper Keys.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “A kilo of cocaine floated up in the Upper Keys. We did recover it from a Good Samaritan. We did turn it over to Border Patrol. It’s used for intelligence gathering. The chance of finding the owner is going to be low. Had some interesting markings on it, as I recall, that one, I think, had a face with a mask over it. So a lot of times they can use these to determine maybe a cartel, maybe an area where it came from, to try to determine how long it’s been out there, what cartel, who it may come from, where it may have been coming to. Once the intelligence is derived and gathered from it, then it’s destroyed. But I always say it continues to keep the mystique and the mystery of drug smuggling, and it sends a message that drugs are still prevalent being brought in from the Caribbean, whether it be cocaine or marijuana in our geographic area.”
A Key Largo man was arrested Tuesday for leaving more than 1,660 pounds of litter and garbage on Monroe County land.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a homeless individual who’s been living there for a while, and we’ve been out with them in the past and with camp zones, and we’ve sent the message, you don’t cause any disturbance, don’t bring attention to yourself, you’ll be just fine. If you cause a mess, disturbance or problems, you’re going to have problems. We’ve talked to him about it in the past, about keeping the campsites clean and trash bags and putting trash out to pick up, but he didn’t. He was on county owned property and for a period of time, just devastated, destroyed this property with trash and garbage and debris. Ultimately, the property got so bad it had to come in to be cleaned and it took 1660 pounds of trash to be removed from that property to put it back to the condition it was before he moved in and just destroyed it. As a result, we did get a warrant for his arrest for the dumping, and he’s back in my jail where he’s been multiple times, and we’re going to hold him and others accountable if they damage, destroy our community environment. We’re going to do everything we can at MCSO to make sure our communities remain clean and safe. We want the visibility of a beautiful, safe community. We want kids to be able to go out and play and feel comfortable and safe. And we want parents to feel comfortable and safe their kids can go out and play in these communities. This is paradise, and I’m going to do everything I can with my team members to keep paradise just like that, paradise clean and secure, but it’s a never ending battle with the graffiti, with the trash, with the garbage, with these type of situations. It’s frustrating because it’s not really the job of law enforcement to be picking up everybody’s trash, but my stance, generally with my team members, is, no, it’s not our job, but tell me who’s going to do it. If we could find someone to do it, I’ll be glad to pass the baton to that person, or persons. Until then, our job is to resolve problems, prevent things from occurring, and we want to focus on quality of life for our citizens and visitors alike. If we don’t do what we’re doing, we will have those problems that you see in other areas, and other areas we see have given up on the cleansing. Graffiti is overtaking communities in America and Europe, and those communities have just given up, and they’ve come to the point where they say, well, this is just how it has to be. This is just, this is the norm, and we’ve got to keep away from that. I spent last year a couple weeks in Europe, and Europe is graffiti, trash everywhere. Rome, the beautiful Coliseum, cathedrals and architectural is beautiful, but there is trash, there’s garbage, there’s graffiti everywhere. That’s become the norm. We have to do our stuff now. Broken windows theories, fix the small problems before they become big problems, or fix them while they’re small before they become too large and can’t be resolved. We’ve got to stay the course and be the beautiful area that others only could dream about.”
An individual was taken to jail Sunday for spearing a tarpon in a restricted area.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This impacting our environment is always so frustrating. In a no spearing zone, let alone you’re spearing a small tarpon. You can’t eat a tarpon. Why are you killing it? It’s a catch release fish. But you’re out here destroying, killing for nothing, for nothing. There’s nothing good out of this. You wonder why you just, out of sport only you kill this thing you can’t eat. We hate to see that. But I did have all my patrol boats out over the weekend to help aid and assist FWC, make sure we keep our communities safe on the water, patrol boats are out there in daytime. They’re out at night time for the Fourth of July festivities, deal with BUIS and other related issues, but it’s a lot of work out there. Like we say, it’s not our job, but we still want to be a good part of the solution and do whatever we can to help everything and everybody.”