Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
Keeping visitors and residents safe during Fantasy Fest takes a number of organizations.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “These are planned, year out, these are so important to have the relationships, state, local, federal, everyone working together. Sheriff’s office, Key West police, especially. We’ll send down 25 officers that night to help aid and assist the city and make sure these men are safe secure, traffic control coordination. We send down our barrier devices to block off certain areas where cars can’t get into. This is a full team effort, but it’s a fun night. We enjoy it. We want the citizens and visitors alike to all have a good time, be safe, obviously. We’ve got to get out there with the chief and some other people to lead the parade, and it’s just one of the best public relations things you can do, waving, high fiving the crowd, the people. It’s amazing to see this crowd, and how much they love law enforcement here in Monroe County. They’re all standing up. They’re cheering, they’re yelling we love you. They’re clapping for you. They’re saying thank you. Just so many other communities right now just don’t have this relationship with the citizens, and they could only dream about the relationship that we have. They can only dream about people standing up, cheering and clapping and thanking you and high fiving you. We’re so lucky and blessed to have this relationship, but this builds back on our constant community policing. If they know us, they’re probably going to like us, trust us, and respect us, and we’ve got to make sure they know us for a lot of reasons, and it pays off, and it shows that our efforts are working when we’re at events like these, to see this cooperation and we can feel the love from the crowd. I was happy to be down there, and it makes you feel good to wear that uniform when you are out in an event like that, and you see that the people rejoicing you.”
With Halloween coming up, the sheriff’s office will have police out.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’ll have a full court press with officers out at all the various events. Obviously, some areas have bigger crowds. A lot of these bigger areas, kids are actually driven, bussed in by family members, so there’ll be heavy traffic, parking issues. Kids should wear bright clothing, reflective clothing. They should be out there in groups, together with someone else, not out there by themselves. We want to focus on no distracted driving. Put your phones down. Pay attention. These kids dart out of nowhere. They’re so excited. They’re having fun with other kids. They’re chasing each other around. It just takes one little thing for someone to step out and get hurt. So we have to make sure that we are paying attention. And these two areas in particular, we are going to do traffic diversion, we’re going to be rerouting traffic, we’re going to be limiting traffic. We’re going to limit traffic’s ability to go in certain areas and some areas, unless you live there and show that you can live there, you may not be allowed to transition to there, because these roads are going to be shut down for the most part for pedestrian juvenile trick or treaters, it may only be one lane at a time where they’re letting traffic alternate or move in. So you should be looking for the officers to give you direction. If the road is shut down, don’t complain. If you need to be in there, we’ll get you in there. If you don’t need to be there, then you won’t be going in there. It’s just the kids safety has to come first and foremost and if we have some disruptions as a result, that’s just the way it’s got to be.”
A Tavernier man was charged with spitting on two prosecutors while in court recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is not the smartest guy. He was arrested years back for aggravated battery, domestic battery. He drug his girlfriend down the road, behind this vehicle for a period of time, did some extensive injuries to her, went off to a prison for a couple years, got out on probation, had a no contact order, not allowed to communicate with her. As soon as he got out, he immediately started burning her phone up, trying to call her and called her like 80 times. So he violated the terms of his probation getting out. So he was going back in. I think he was set to go back in, like a 10 year plea, and he was in court. I think he was there, trying to argue with the judge about his sentence, what it should be, and he was unhappy with the prosecutors who were just doing their job. So he jumped up handcuffed, but jumped up, ran up and started spitting on them. We had officers there right away who took him down to the ground, but obviously the prosecutors were not happy about being spat on, and that’s technically a battery, touching or striking someone against their will. So the prosecutors wanted to pursue charges, So here he’s going to have another act of violence on him, besides looking at the 10 year violation of probation charge. He’s going to be held here while he’s going through the court proceedings for battery on two individuals, and he’s just making the situation worse. He’s angry at others for his actions so he thinks he’s going to spit on them. But at the end of the day, you didn’t win the battle. You didn’t win the war. You’re going to go to jail for longer periods of time because you spit on somebody. You didn’t get them. They’re going to go home and laugh that that spit cost you an extra couple years in jail. So for every action is a reaction. So you’ve got to stop and think before you speak. You’re before the courts, but you’re trying to get leniency. You’re trying to say that you’re not violent and you’re not angry, you don’t have problems, but yet the judge sees you jump up take that disgusting action, and this is the same judge that you’re going to be continuing to have your cases before, the judge can remember that you clearly have severe anger management issues, and you haven’t learned from the time you injured this woman, from the time you were in prison, from the time you’re going back in again, not following court orders, spitting on prosecutors, the judge can only come to one conclusion, that you’re detrimental to the safety and well being the general public, and that you need to be incarcerated to protect others from your actions.”
Swatting incidents are serious issues – any call that is found to be a hoax will be prosecuted.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “More and more we’re seeing these swatting cases. They’re very dangerous for officers and civilians. Officers coming up to homes with weapons drawn, thinking something bad is going down, trying to run into what they believe is danger. Then the citizens who don’t know what’s going on, and you may be armed inside, not knowing what’s going on outside the door, it ties up, police, fire, rescue services, a lot of manpower allocations drawn out, but yes, so a call did come in, indicating, a person is suicidal, got a gun, going to kill myself, got bombs, got people held hostage, going to blow the place up. So obviously we have to respond. When you do, it’s very chaotic, very manpower intensive. As we said, we actually had an off duty officer who knew the family who went over there, knowing that there’s no way this would occur there, and the responding officer didn’t know this other off duty officer was there. So when they come up with guns drawn, for a short time we actually had blue on blue, where uniform officers have guns drawn out on off duty officer not knowing initially. That’s why this is so dangerous. But we did this investigation, very complex, takes times to get the IP address, track it down, prove who did it, and arrest this individual, which doesn’t happen often. It’s hard to make these cases, but every time you do, we’re sending a message to other people, and this person who, if you swat somebody one time, you’ll keep on doing it, that they find out that they’re going to be held accountable and they don’t want to go to jail, and they’re likely to stop this behavior because they know they can’t get away with it. So these are sad, stupid cases, immature. We have to hold people accountable. We have to send the message of no mas, and we have to make sure they know every action has a reaction. My reaction is going to be hard on crime, and my reaction is going to be to hold you accountable and make your life miserable.”