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.
Labor Day is upon us.
Sheriff Ramsay said it’s “kind of a busy weekend for the Sheriff’s Office, as we would imagine. The last kind of big push for the summer, a three day weekend, most people will be off on Monday, the ones are lucky enough. So a long range forecast looks like some really good weather, like seven, eight knot winds. So I think we should see a lot of boats and cars and traffic and people down here on the water, on the land, and the sheriff’s office be ready. We’ll have extra staff out, be vigilant the entire weekend. Try to do everything we can make sure we keep it safe and secure. But again, Labor Day weekend coming up before we know it.”
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office secretary was arrested for DUI by the Key West Police Department recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I always think it’s important to be transparent. You’ve always heard me tell you and your listeners, you’re going to hear a lot of great things from MCSO, but every now and then, something bad happens, and when it does, I want our listeners to hear it from us first, so they can have confidence in us to tell stuff and be honest and transparent and not cover stuff up. This was an off duty civilian employee, but just like everyone of us, we all make poor decisions at some point of time in our life, she had made a poor decision, to be out drinking excessively and driving at the same time, and our friends at the Key West Police did come up behind her as she was stopped at a green light, cars behind her and causing a traffic jam, and apparently not making a right decision what to do with a green light due to impairment. They did contact her, determined they thought she was intoxicated, they did sobriety tests, and ultimately they did arrest her for the DUI charge. So we have to get people impaired off the road, no matter who they are, but we did, again, do a press release, just because we want to make sure that people have confidence in us to brief them on everything and not hold back. So that’s exactly what we did. We put the word out there, and we hope for the best for this young lady that she can learn from this poor decision, and try to be a better person and have a better ability to protect herself and others while driving a car in the highway. So just a poor decision for sure.”
A 60-year-old man from Marathon and a woman from Clearwater were arrested just a couple of days ago for engaging in a sexual act in public view of a Marathon gas station.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “These appear to be two homeless individuals who appear to be under the influence of alcohol at same time. A poor decision in the middle of the daytime, at the Tom Thumb in the car wash, decided to have open sex or observed by other offended citizens, as you would imagine, who reported it to the sheriff’s office. We responded quickly, immediately got on scene and saw this disaster occurring with these two homeless individuals, we took swift, immediate action to hold them accountable. We did arrest them, but again, it’s stupid when you’re making decisions based off alcohol or likely not to be the same decision you would make if you were sober. So unusual to see something like that occurring for sure in this area. This is a very good community. We just don’t have chaos like that that you may see some other errors, but our job is doing what it is, to respond to whatever calls may came up, hold people accountable, stop these type of activities and educate others and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
A 50 year old man from Jupiter, Florida, was harvesting undersized lobsters recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Up around the 73 mile marker, this individual was harvesting lobster. Officers did encounter him with an undersized lobster. He determined he was not from here, but did give him a notice to appear. We continue to be vigilant with our efforts to protect our resources, which are so fragile and are on constant attack. So my marine officers are making cases almost on a daily basis. We keep doing it. Keep talking about it, we keep trying to send messages and letting people know that you’re again, more likely to be held accountable here, more likely to be charged and more likely to spend jail time for attacking our environment. In the mainland and other counties, charges like these won’t dictate any jail time. Our state attorney is very aggressive in our courts. The State Attorney’s stance generally is for every lobster, you’re going to spend a day in jail. So again, harder than most, but we’ve got the most fragile ecosystem here of almost anywhere, and per capita this is the biggest area where we have attacks occurring of people coming that’s so easy to go right up to the shoreline and bridges and be harvesting versus other areas that don’t have the easier access like us. So we’ve just got to set the example model for other counties, so hopefully we all come together and start taking these harder line stands. Maybe there’ll be a bigger impact nationwide versus just here in Monroe.”
A 41-year-old former Marathon resident, has been sentenced to a combined 40 years in prison following federal and state convictions for incest, sexual battery, lewd and lascivious molestation, child neglect and promoting sexual performance of a child.
Sheriff Ramsay said this is “one of the most heinous, sad cases I’ve seen in my almost 40 years of being a police officer, for sure, and especially being that the parents were these suspects, the aggressors and the children were the victims of this case. They’re living on a sailboat in Boot Key Harbor, living on a boat aboard and doing some heinous stuff with physical acts of sexual abuse on these minors, videotaping, selling the video clips of the inappropriate sexual acts with a minor from the mother onto the son, and using that as a means to profit. The whole case was just terrible. These kids are traumatized and are going to for the rest of their lives be traumatized, and the parents are where they deserve to be in jail. The fact is, the father should never have a chance of getting out. He should spend the rest of his life not just 40. And the mother as well got a lengthy sentence. But then she tried to play the victim card and say that she was victim and that she was pressured and forced and into this. But this went on for a long period of time, and she had more opportunities to notify the authorities, police, locals, state, federal, to seek intervention, get kids out of there, to try to protect these kids. As a mother, parent, your job is always to protect your children. She didn’t protect them. She victimized them. She was participating in sexual acts with her own kids. Disgusting woman. She should be in jail for the rest of her life as well. But then, she had the gall to try to make out herself to be an actual victim when she was a co conspirator and one of the most terrible cases ever, a good joint cooperative case that was done between the sheriff’s office and the federal government working hand in hand to try to deal with Child Exploitation cases.”
Last week, a man from Long Key was arrested for methamphetamine and marijuana possession following a traffic stop that started as suspected illegal window tint.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Week after week, I talked to you about traffic stops and why they’re so important. The number one complaint we get at the sheriff’s office is traffic. So we want our officers to be aggressive, and the number one loss of life and injuries and property damages, traffic, traffic crashes. So we spend a lot of time trying to be aggressive. We did make a lawful stop based on traffic charges. Again, like usual, not uncommon, have the strong order of marijuana coming out the car when we encounter the driver. Driver did not have a medical marijuana car, which gave us authorization then to search the car, whether he wanted to or not. Inside the car, we did find a variety of narcotics and drugs, drug paraphernal, methamphetamines, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, signs of not only use, but potential sales. So this individual from Long Key was stopped initially, again for illegal tints, and it turned into something bigger, which is not uncommon. We always talk about majority people commit crimes have to use their car to commit that crime, whether it be nefarious or whether it be just because you got drugs in it. But at the end of the day, this is a very, very common situation that cars are used to commit a bank robbery, to commit a sexual assault, to commit a murder, or, in this case, to transport drugs. It’s good for my officers to be proactive, trying to prevent, deter stuff, find stuff occurring and make a case, versus wait for something bad to happen. We want to prevent bad things from happening by just this type of law enforcement action.”
Recently 10 packages of marijuana were found in a creek in Key Largo.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s almost every week the sheriff’s office comes across some type of drugs that are found, located, washed ashore, that are from a drug trafficking load, importation type of case. The 25 kilos, 55 plus pure cocaine, interesting there, and then another one being the marijuana, just again, it’s the history of the Keys. People love hearing about it, love talking about it, and it’s interesting that we’re never going to know, there’s no way to track it. But we talk about the stuff we find. Some of the bigger question is, how much is coming in or is found that never gets turned in, that people try to profit from, gets back on our streets, that’s scary or that are found, and then bad things occur as a result. Remember that double murder in the Upper Keys was based on a bail of cocaine that was found by some fishermen and decided they were all going to split it up and sell it and all get money from it. And then when they got greedy for drugs and money, threats to turn each other in if you didn’t give me more money or dope, is what led to a double murder there. Then we remember just six months ago when the FBI came down and arrested 27 people, most of which are from Monroe County, that was all drug related as well, from drugs that were found at sea, that were brought in and this group of individuals all plotted, conspired to deal it, sell it, move it, get it onto the streets, and all make money. There were different levels of people involved in that conspiracy, between the people who found it that were to make the most money to the people in the streets that were recruited just to sell small amounts. All were arrested by the FBI. So there are cases where we see that the drugs found do result in bad things occurring. And when these drugs do make it to shore and hit the streets, there’s a lot of bad things result, crime and bad things and overdoses and death. It’s a difficult situation. The war on drugs in America, is probably a war they’re never going to win. They’ve just got to keep fighting it. But where there’s a demand, there’s always going to be a supply. Doesn’t matter what the penalties are.”
Don’t forget about traffic for Labor Day.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Plan ahead. Have a plan. If you don’t have to go somewhere, don’t go. Try to get to the grocery stores ahead of time. Pick up your supplies. We know Friday we’ll start seeing people come in heavy for the long weekend, especially Saturday. Vacation Rentals do turn over. So try to get to the grocery store, get to the gas station, get your stuff you need for your boat supplies, so you’re not sitting in line and being frustrated, and if you’re going to be driving, plan ahead. Leave early, don’t get frustrated and pay attention. There’s going to be a lot of people on the road this weekend. And we want people to be safe and secure.”