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 Seven Mile Bridge Run will be this weekend, so alternate plans for getting up and down the Keys will be necessary.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That’s really important for our listeners to know. The Seven Mile Bridge run again this weekend, we’re going to be shutting the bridge down at 6am sharp. Between six and nine, the bridge will be shut down in both directions. There will be no traffic flowing for any reason. So we tell our listeners just to plan ahead. If you’re going to go to Miami leave earlier or have a plan or have an alternate date. But from 6 to 9, we’re going to have to shut that bridge down as we do every year to make sure this is a safe event for everybody.”
A 62-year-old Marathon, Florida, man who was a former pastor in Monroe County, was wanted on child abuse charges. He fled Florida and was picked up in Texas.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a really sad case. This was a pastor out of Marathon. We received a complaint from a 15 year old girl alleging that she was sexually assaulted by the pastor. We interviewed her, did the investigation, found her to be credible. We ultimately had probable cause to arrest the pastor for sexual battery. We did arrest him. He proclaimed his innocence and was going to have his day in court, got released on bond and then fled the jurisdiction, no show for his hearing. So once he didn’t show, we had to put a warrant in the system for him, trying to track him down. Our information believed that he had already fled the jurisdiction of Monroe and that he fled the state of Florida. We worked very closely with our partners in law enforcement abroad and eventually we did locate him in Texas, where he has an adult son, and he was rearrested in Texas on a $1.3 million bond from here in Monroe. He was brought back to this jurisdiction where he’ll remain in my jail so he can answer the charges for the sexual battery on this minor. It was important that we got him right away for safety for the victim in this case, for safety and fear of other potential victims, because predators like this continue to reoffend even though they get arrested and move to another jurisdiction. They generally don’t stop their preying on younger people. So it was really kind of important that we had a full court press, which we did, to get him and we had him custody in about a week. So I think really good job to law enforcement partnerships everywhere.”
A number of arrests were made this past week for drugs. One came from a traffic stop.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We keep talking about the importance of traffic stops for a lot of reasons. First there’s traffic safety, but also because cars are used to commit crimes. We continue to derive other charges as a result of traffic stops. Stopped this car, a Tavernier man in the Upper Keys for a traffic violation. We have a strong odor of marijuana coming out of the car, which gives us probable cause to get inside the car. We’ve found methamphetamines and other drug related paraphernalia and signs of drug trafficking. This appears to be a drug dealer, not a drug user. Ultimately we did arrest him on multiple drug related charges, got the drugs off the streets, and hold him and others accountable. We always say, keep sending the message that this is not the place to do it, you’re more likely to get caught, arrested, charged, and more time in jail here than other places.”
A 43 year old Tavernier man in a traffic stop was found with cocaine.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “He had warrants for his arrest from the sheriff’s office for dealing in drugs. So we were looking for him anyway, we got him on a traffic stop, we served warrants on him. He had drugs hidden on his person. We did a cursory search. We don’t do a strip search there. But we always warn people to make sure they tell us now. Because if they have drugs on them, there’ll be additional charges if they come into the jail. When they come in our jail facilities, we have body scanners, to help us look for any weapons, but also in this case, narcotics. So he had hidden narcotics on his person that showed up at the jail. So he got charged with additional possession of the narcotics, but also introduction of contraband into the jail facility, which is a felony. We’re going to continue to hold him accountable. He’s sitting in jail on multiple felony charges, for multiple sales of cocaine and possession. So he’ll be in jail for a while I think.”
A Tavernier, Florida woman fled from the sheriff’s office in Key Largo and she was arrested as well.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “She was clocked doing in excess of 70 miles an hour in a 45 mile an hour zone. The officer tried to stop her, she accelerated, tried to flee, and then suddenly turned off of US 1, went on to side streets and tried to elude us on the side streets, almost striking several vehicles, before she came to a dead end stop, and was taken into custody. So again, people think if they’re going to get pulled over, just stop. Most of the time, you’re probably just going to get a warning, but when you flee and run, you make things so much more worse. You’re going to jail, your car’s going to get towed, you’re going to have to deal with criminal charges. Just not much good comes out of fleeing from the police, especially here in the Keys. One road. It’s hard to get away from us. We have one road in, one road out. It’s hard to get away from the radio. We have stinger spike system on all our cars. So you can only go so far before we’re going to blow out your tires. It just doesn’t make any sense. Just stop and whatever it is deal with it, but people compound their problem by acting irrationally, making emotional decisions versus logical decisions.”
A man in Key West spit on a deputy recently, which made his situation a lot worse.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This individual has been arrested over 50 times. So he’s a frequent flyer, as we call them. He was being detained for a criminal investigation at a convenience store in Key West. At the time we were going to release them. We didn’t think we had enough probable cause to make an arrest right there. So he was getting ready to be released. They were getting ready. They’re starting to try to take the handcuffs off him when he spit at a female police officer from the sheriff’s office who was uncuffing him. Once he did that, spitting on someone, that was battery. We kept the handcuffs on, and we charged him with battery and other related charges there. So it just makes no sense, but that shows what we’re dealing with. Even when someone they’re getting ready to get released, they still potentially could be a threat to a police officer. The threat is always there. Whether your initial encounter, during your encounter, or even at the tail end when you’re closing an encounter. The threat always continues.”
A Marathon Florida man arrested Saturday for threatening to harm a sheriff’s office deputy conducting a welfare check.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “You don’t know what happens on a call, a simple call, you’re called to a wellbeing check, just to make sure someone’s okay in the household. So you would think there, that’s probably a very low threshold for violence. But as you see here, we do the welfare check and while there, a 50 year old male, very aggressive, very agitated, starts making threats to harm one of my officers, threatened to do violence to the deputy on the scene, which ultimately resulted in going to jail from something which should have been just simple to do a welfare check. But we always say we’re not going to allow people to threaten my men and women. You make threats to hurt my men and women, you are going to go to jail.”