Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
Remember to watch out for school buses on the road.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “When in doubt, stop. Kids are loading unloading. We want to be safe for the kids. And people run those school buses all the time. We write tickets, and we try to follow the buses and try to stay at the school bus stop as much as we can, but it’s hard to be behind every single bus, every stop in the school zones at the schools, I just don’t have enough officers to be everywhere. Soon as we get behind one bus, someone runs it, we have to turn to chase that car down to encounter them. That leaves that bus unattended. So it’s kind of a difficult task, but children’s safety always has to be number one.”
A case with a juvenile making threats came to the Keys recently. It actually originated in Naples, FL, a 13 year old making threats on TikTok showing an image of a rifle that was directed towards a female juvenile. The threats came through while that female was in the Florida Keys.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I named this juvenile, which I don’t generally name juveniles, but when we have such threats of violence, image of guns, I continue to say it’s important for those juveniles to be identified, let the parents to know who these kids are, to make decisions whether their kids can or can’t hang out with this kid. These are two juveniles that reside in Collier County, around Naples area. The 13 year old girl was here in the Keys when the 13 year old male, for some reason, was mad with her, and started sending her text messages indicating threats of violence. One time, he sent a picture of an AR15 assault rifle, and said, I’m going to kill you. So she typed back, are you serious? And he was like, yep. So she was freaked out. She waited a couple of days until she got back home to tell her parents. She told her parents when she got back to Collier County, the mother went to the law enforcement there. The Sheriff’s Office, took the initial report, started investigating it, got a confession from the person who made the threat, along with his parents, who are cooperative. So we thank them for that, but they contacted our agency, because the crime occurred when it was received here in Monroe. So the victim, being the female, was in Monroe when the threat to kill her came in, which gave us the jurisdictional responsibility. So we worked closely with them. We took their information, their interviews, and then we did a probable cause affidavit to the courts, and we did get a warrant and then we contacted our friends back in Collier to locate, pick up and arrest this juvenile who was basically going to be turned back over to the parents with a court date. But I’ve said a thousand times, I will take every threat that someone makes against a person to be a true and credible threat. We always hear these threats, and we would hear that I was just kidding. I wasn’t going to do it. I couldn’t carry it out, or I was just mad, but we’re not going to get in someone’s mind. Our focus is you say it, I believe you’re going to try to back it up. I’m not going to tolerate that. And these threats do a lot of damage. They fear, intimidate, scare people, even if you weren’t going to carry it out, as well as the fear factor. And we’re not going to have kids going to school afraid of school shootings, parents and other stuff. We’re going to continue to send a message to young people, I don’t care how young you are, you make these threats of violence, you will be held accountable. You’re going to be in court, juvenile lock up. You’re going to be in before the courts. You’re going to have oversight. Your parents are going to get in trouble. Your parents are going to have to answer the questions and deal with it. Parents have a tough responsibility these days. We know it, but they’ve got to take the responsibility. We see more and more parents are starting to get charged criminally when their kids go out and take acts of violence into their hands, shoot, hurt and kill somebody that the parents are getting charged for being an accomplice, co conspirator, for knowing there was signs, but doing nothing. We’ve got to send a message to the students and to the parents.”
There were also resource violations with harvesting lobster, five of which were undersized.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We try to be everywhere. (The officer) did see two people that were from out of county that were harvesting lobster, came up to check them out and have multiple violations, measure devices and undersized lobster, and he elected to arrest him in lieu of a notice to appear, which is Officer discretion. We allow a lot of times officers on lesser violations like these to give someone a court date but we don’t mandate one or the other, but we have to keep trying to protect our resources. It’s almost every week that our officers are out there trying to keep the water safe and secure, helping assist our friends at US Coast Guard, FWC, and protect our environment, our resources. We continue to say we want to do everything we can to try to make sure these resources remain here for future generations. And this is part of resource management, and sometimes people think it’s tough that you arrest someone for a couple of lobsters. That’s how you send a message to other people who want to do the same thing that there’s severe consequences. And our state attorney takes these cases very serious. His rule of thumb is, generally, for every lobster you’re gonna do a day in jail. And I think a lot of defense attorneys are shocked to hear that type of stance, and that in other counties you don’t get that type of harsher stance. You get an easier slap on the wrist, but our courts, our judges, our state attorney and sheriff’s office are all rowing in the same direction to send a strong message here, protect our resources and hold people accountable, and that’s what we do each and every day.”
A Key Largo man who was formerly employed as an Islamorada Fire Rescue firefighter/paramedic was arrested last week after allegedly taking fentanyl from an ambulance and falsifying public records.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a shame to see someone ruin their career, their lives. This is a firefighter paramedic that is probably never going to do that job again. That this started off as one of the fire lieutenants seeing his prescription pills were missing from his control three different times. We were notified, so we just started looking into it. We’re down to two people that believed potentially had the opportunity to take drugs. At some point in time, the firefighter command had confronted him. At some point in time, they figured out that he had diverted fentanyl and hidden it, and then falsified the drug logs, which require two people, two medics, to both sign off that has been properly disposed of. So there’s some procedural errors that are going to have to be resolved, I think, at the higher level, at the one medic who’s supposed to witness, the other medic got back and just said, the next shift’s coming on, just have the next shift witness you destroyed that drugs. I’m going home. And he shrugged his responsibility. To have oversight is why those policies are in place. If he would have done his job, then the other person would not have been able to divert the drugs and would not have been able to falsify his name. But when he just left, the other firefighter who stole it, just falsified the drug log from the other person’s name, saying that he did witness the drugs being destroyed, which were not. The unused portion was recovered and turned over to the fire chief who disposed of it. So we were involved. We did investigate this. We did determine that the drugs were diverted, these were highly controlled substances, which were stolen, and that the drug logs were falsified, altered. And we’ve been in contact with the city manager about this matter, and it had a lot of similarities to how Trauma Star with Monroe County Fire Rescue had the same issues with diversion, maybe someone not witnessing and drugs being destroyed and then falsifying documents. That’s why these policies are in place, and they need to be followed all the time, and they need to do constant audits of their drug logs and drugs and make sure that there’s some oversight and check. It’s a shame to see this young man destroy his life, his career, his reputation, and stealing pharmaceuticals from his co workers, and then stealing the drugs from the fire department. And we don’t know really how much had occurred in the past, whether it’s isolated, but generally if you’re stealing and using fentanyl, it’s not likely to be your first time.”
A 43-year-old man from India passed away after diving off of Key Largo last week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s a sad case, he actually had his daughter down here with him, who was diving, snorkeling, was in the water with him. He surfaced from a dive, got to the surface, and when he came to the surface, appeared to be in distress. Regulator was out of his mouth, and they noticed that he was in distress. And before someone could get to him, he went under and then they got to him, and by the time they got to him, he was unresponsive. They pulled him back to the service rescue, swam him back to one of the dive boats, brought him on board the boat, took his gear off, and started doing first responder CPR and notifying our friends at Coast Guard for help and assistance, getting 911 services from the sheriff’s office so we can get fire rescue at a staged location ready to go. He was rushed in and brought to, ultimately, Mariners, where he was pronounced deceased. No signs of foul play, as he was conscious when he surfaced, just in distress. It’ll have to go through our medical examiner to determine cause of death, whether it be a heart attack, stroke, whether you had some level of salt water drowning when you surface. Could be possible that you inhale a bunch of salt water, and things went downhill from there. So we’ve got to see what took place. Diving is very beautiful and generally very safe, but it can be deadly dangerous, and it’s a gross motor skill. If you don’t do it on a regular basis, you lose it. And if you don’t do it on a regular basis, you need to get caught back up. Have a couple classes, maybe, and refresh yourself, depending how long it’s been since you’ve dove. You get someone to give you a quick little update, refresher on dive tables and safety procedures. Always check your gear. Have someone else check your gear. Always dive with a buddy. But this is so sad, especially that your child was there too, to see, witnesses. I mean, something’s going to affect the child the rest of their lives, I’m sure. But, but definitely a sad day.”
Sunday was Easter on the farm at MCSO.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I want to thank all my team members who put that together. We hide 10,000 eggs on the farm for the kids. So there’s a lot of work. The Easter bunny is out there, live music. We make a fun day for all the kids to come out and enjoy a family orientated day at the sheriff’s office farm, kids and parents and grandparents, family and friends, we make such a special day to touch, hold these animals, and we want the kids in this community to a have a great time. Have a good time with family and friends, have a good time with sheriff’s office and build these relationships with the parents, but also with the kids at the sheriff’s office, so they continue to know that we are the good guys and gals that they can count on, and this is fostering current and future relationships with our current and future leaders of the county.”