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.
A 23-year-old Orlando man was arrested on July 19th for fleeing from sheriff’s office deputies early in the morning.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is one of the most dangerous things out there for our general public and these cases generally are not us just finding a car; they’re generally called in by citizens, seeing someone like this, who’s speeding, doing 70 miles an hour, driving in the wrong lane, early hours of morning, that’s a head-on car crash waiting to happen, which is likely to result in potential loss of life. So we’ve got to be vigilant, and we’ve got to hold these people accountable. So we were on patrol about 3:45 in the morning, about the 13 mile marker when an alert deputy sees a car speeding, we clock it at 70 miles an hour, and then besides that, the car is driving the oncoming lane. So that’s a big no-no, a big concern for us. We try to get the car stopped. It turns into a pursuit, and this goes on for a little while as the car is turning and ducking and weaving, and going through a gas station and trying to elude. We eventually use our Stinger spike system, to control deflation devices. We’re able to get a good hit, and we spike out all four tires, which then reduces the speeds to what we want. It reduces speeds to two to five miles an hour because it’s kind of hard to speed on rims. That’s the design of the deflation devices: is to stop pursuits, or if they are going to continue, they’re more likely to continue a lot lower speeds. This was a 20-year-old male from out of county, who was intoxicated, who was arrested for DUI. We had drugs found on him, and fleeing and eluding, so he was put into jail on multiple charges. Car was towed, so when he gets out, he’s going to have a large tow bill, storage bill, and have to buy four new tires. So it’s going to cost him a lot of money. Again, that’s the message we want to send it’s not worth it.”
A Big Pine couple was defrauded recently out of more than $70,000 by a man from Coral Springs falsely claiming to be a bank employee in a scam phone call.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We hate to see these fraud cases. We talk so much about them. We try to warn, educate our citizens not to be victims of scams, what to look for. Unfortunately, it just takes one person that takes the bait and this was a fraud. They first indicated they were from a bank, saying that there was suspicious activity in their account, and they were there part of security, and then they talked the person into ultimately going to the bank, withdrawing a large amount of money, like $40,000 and then convincing the person to drop the money off into a rideshare, which I don’t know how you could talk someone to thinking that’s part of banking, and the male did, and then about two days later, same person apparently we believe the same person called back again, thinking that these persons at this house were pretty vulnerable. Now spoke to the female half and talked her into getting about $30,000 worth of her personal jewelry. Again, putting into a rideshare and letting it drive away. So they were victims of this scam twice for money and jewelry. Again, both times agreed to put valuables with an unknown person in a rideshare and let it go away, so we just then had to track this case down, which is not easy, and we’re able to eventually track it down to a person from Broward County, who was a part of this fraud, and then identify this person, work closely with our partners up there, get a warrant with our state attorney’s office. Get charges against this person, so the person has been arrested. The person has multiple prior arrests. This is a career criminal from multiple jurisdictions with drugs and frauds. So the good thing the person is in custody will be held accountable. Can’t commit these type of crimes while incarcerated. The bad thing is, the ability to recover those persons’ losses of money and jewelry are probably very minimal.”
A man from Jacksonville was in possession of three undersized hogfish recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We talk about this every week. This is an ongoing problem, and it’s not going to go away. We’ve just got to be vigilant to try to investigate, prevent, deter, educate people. Three short hog snapper, were taken, found during a resource inspection. We did site that person give a notice to appear. So good job there. Around the Bahia Honda State Park, where we’ve had a lot of cases there, people were snorkeling and staying there, and we continue to make resource cases around that area. Again, undersized, out of season, hog snapper, no flag, no licensing type stuff. This is a full contact sport when it comes to poaching, protecting resources. We’re just scratching the surface as the amount of people that are destroying our resources, and we have to continue to protect these resources for the current and future populations, commercial fishing, tourism, recreational. If we don’t do our part, there’ll be nothing left, and we want to be a good partner to FWC and the environment. So we continue to be focused on that. We got plenty of other work to do, but we’ve got to somehow find time to do this as well.”
A woman was arrested recently for drug sales happening in space she rented out in her home.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a 73 year old woman from the Upper Keys who rents rooms out of her home, and for a period of time, she’s been renting rooms to drug dealers. We believe that she knew that drug sales were coming out of her home. These rooms that were being rented. Our special operations team have been working here. We’ve made multiple cases from this place, and we believe that she was a co-conspirator, while not necessarily profiting off the drug sales, but profiting off of people renting the rooms to use it for drug transactions, knowing these drug transactions were occurring in her home, makes her criminally liable, and she can’t just walk away and say, well, I didn’t sell the drugs. She’s providing the location for this to occur and condoning it, just to try to make sure she can make some money off of rents. So we can’t allow that. She’s complicit with everybody else there, and we’re going to hold her accountable. A little unusual case. These cases can be a little more difficult to prove, but we believe we can prove it. We’ve got probable cause. We did get a warrant for arrest. We did arrest her, sending a message to her and others again that you can’t just know and allow crimes to be committed on your property and shake your hands and say it wasn’t me, and think that you’re absolved from it. You’re not. In this case here, she found out the hard way. She’s spending time in the Monroe County Jail, the Rick Ramsay Bed and Breakfast.”
There was an early morning domestic violence call at the Fiesta Key Resort.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That’s up around the 70-mile marker area. We got called a domestic disturbance between a father, a mother, and a 17-year-old juvenile. The father was no surprise, heavily intoxicated and drinking. He got mad that the wife and the 17-year-old went on the golf cart. They came home doing intoxication and anger over really nothing. Got into an argument with the juvenile. It turned physical with a battery punching going on. The wife, the mother of the child, tried to intervene. Who then also got attacked by the husband. Got assaulted, thrown down to the ground, battered, elbowed. Sheriff’s office got there and tried to determine what was going on, witnesses and injuries consistent with the allegations. We determined that he was the aggressor and he is a suspect in domestic violence to the wife and the mother of his child and a juvenile 17-year-old child in his case. Again, one of the key factors we talked so many times is alcohol-related decisions. If you can’t hold your alcohol, then don’t drink or know your limits. This case here, we did arrest him for domestic battery as well. He’s currently sitting in Monroe County Jail. He’ll go to first appearance today before a judge, but again, this is what you have to deal with every day as a police officer.”
National Night Out is August 4.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s just such an important time to get out into the community, spend time in parts of the county. August 4, 5:30 to 7:30. We’ll be in a joint partnership with Key West Police down at the amphitheater. So this is a great time to make new friends, build new friends, see old friends, and continue to put the message out about the sheriff’s office, our commitment to this community, trying to focus on what we always talk about, our better, cleaner, safer street initiatives. We’ll have our partners from the state, local, federal military out there. They’re such great partners. Fire department. Kids come out. It’s a really great event for the young kids in our community: foods, hot dogs, hamburgers, and we try to make it a fun, family-oriented event where we can interact, find out more about our citizens, our needs, wants, concerns, desires, expectations, and make sure we’re doing everything we can to achieve all of that.”