Gun violence is always so hard to understand, no matter where it happens

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.

It was a tough weekend for law enforcement with the violence at the rally for Republican nominee for president Donald Trump where a fireman lost his life.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “It just continues to show how dangerous things are no matter what state, local, federal government people are around. Even with that bad things happen. I hear a lot of finger pointing going on already. We look at the state, local federal people involved. At the end of the day these type of events, the responsibility of the federal government and we talk about the shooter being 130 yards away, we still wonder how the heck did someone walk up with a rifle, walk on a roof, get on a roof that close without any intervention, how there wasn’t air assets, drones. It was hard to understand. I think you’ve seen the Secret Service refusing to answer any questions, which is interesting. I think you see them pointing the finger saying it was the responsibility of the state and local police that far out. 130 yards is not that far out. We saw the Secret Service, counter sniper, looking at that way, seems confused. I’m not sure if he’s trying to determine whether there’s a friendly or bad target. But seemed that his scope was pointing and looking that way. Just a lot of civilians seeing this, yelling about this guy with a rifle and it was hard to swallow, seeing something like that happen. This will go down as one of the biggest failures in dignitary protection ever for most part. Now, his personal team did a great job, you always have an inner circle. And obviously, their job is to protect the assets. So as soon as you saw him get struck and drop, they did what they’re supposed to do, they’re supposed to swarm him and create like a shield around him using their bodies. That’s impressive that people are willing to do that. But that’s their job. So they did what they’re supposed to, they created a wave all around him. But the question comes outside of that is who’s responsible for this failure and does somebody get held accountable? I think that’s what probably people are going to be watching to see. Does this just get a slap on the wrist or just will be pointed finger and then hope it goes away or will someone ultimately get fired? Technically, in this case here a failure at this level, the head of the Secret Service probably should be dismissed. I would hope. But I suspect that probably won’t happen. So, but yeah, it’s crazy to see what’s happening in America, these types of things are just hard to swallow for sure.”

Locally, a Key West man was arrested Thursday for burglarizing multiple vehicles on Big Coppitt Key.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “A great job my investigators in this case here. This was a string of car burglaries. We think burglaries, most people think something being smashed, broken into forcible entry. These were unlocked cars. As we’ve talked in the past, most crimes are crimes of opportunity that are preventable. So these were cars left unlocked in the Big Coppitt area. Our suspect in this case, a 32 year old male from Key West was going from car to car, was checking whether or not they were unlocked and was looking to steal whatever sunglasses, radar detectors, any type of forms of identification can be used for potential credit card or other related stuff and go through and just take anything, pills, wherever is in the car, they would just load up. So we did a really good job. Patrol division did a canvass of the neighborhood, looking for security camera ring doorbells, homes with surveillance systems. After a period of time we’re able to identify a person of interest. We eventually build probable cause and we eventually got a warrant for that individual’s arrest. The person was arrested for six counts of a vehicle burglary. When we arrested him, we did recover some of the stolen property in his residence, he had his possession, which just helped to reinforce the case, when you actually are in possession of the property that we said you stole, so that was really good. So in this case, our detectives and patrol officers all working hard to try to solve crime, hold people accountable, stop potential crime sprees. If we don’t stop and arrest him, he’ll continue to do this in the city of Key West and the county of Monroe. So, hats off to my team members again for doing great work.”

A 53 year old Little Torch woman was arrested Wednesday for stealing groceries and then selling them.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “We hate to see this as you steal from stores and these aren’t crimes that people think sometimes it doesn’t really have an adverse impact. But it does. As you steal from stores, what happens is the loss gets pushed over to the citizens. They mark up food prices and at the end of the day, we all end up paying for theft that occurs. This was a large scale theft occurring at Winn Dixie in Big Pine. This was an individual coming in and just loading up carts and just walking out with the stuff on a continual basis. We know two times for sure, with about $1,600 with the food stolen, but how long has it been going on? Who knows? It could be going on for a long period of time and she just finally got caught. Again we got the report, we had to bring a detective, investigated the case. We had determined who it was, eventually located her, determined she was the person that committed these crimes. What she would is steal the food, keep some, but then was stealing it for business to go back and sell it to people she knew at half price. We are looking at that was really hungry and had to provide a sandwich, that was so hungry, not that it makes it right. This is someone who’s stealing massive amounts of food as a business, to steal it from a store, sell it for half price, and then push that cost back on the consumer who ultimately has to pay for this stuff. So really good job to work closely with Winn Dixie and our patrol detective divisions and to get someone in jail and hold them accountable for this crime.”

A woman was stopped near the marker 101 area for an expired tag and was found with a whole lot of other issues.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “She’s on probation for fraud. But when we stopped her for traffic violations, we stopped her for expired tag, we find a fraud still appearing with her, that she’s still doing. She’s in possession of a fake driver’s license. She’s also in possession of stolen credit cards, which then are used for fraud to steal from people, to buy stuff. So you think you’re on probation for fraud, you would maybe learn your lesson, at least get off probation. But we deal with a lot of stupid people that are just career criminals that don’t learn and continue to do stupid stuff which adversely impact the rest of us. This is a 42 year old female from Davie, Florida and we’ve got her for multiple charges. In this case here out of county warrant, traffic violations. She had no driver’s license, driving on a suspended license. She was arrested for six counts of larceny, for possession of a forged driver’s license, stolen property and related stuff. So she has multiple charges sitting in MCJ, which is where she needs to be. I think she’s sitting on I think four felonies and like maybe nine misdemeanor charges. She’ll be with us for a little while. We continue to talk about how important is for patrol officers to be vigilant to deal with traffic concerns, but how traffic concerns so many times roll into so many bigger more important cases. If we didn’t stop her for minor traffic infractions then we wouldn’t have been able to stop her from driving with no license which means she has no insurance but also to find out that she’s got people stolen credit cards, to get these credit cards and make sure they’re not used. So we get her off the road, get her out of the county, tow her car so an unregistered uninsured car is off the road, which is a hazard to the safety and well being of our citizens and visitors alike, which we continue to focus on is so many different parts of our jobs and one related matter so many times rolls into multiple unrelated matters, but are criminal in nature.”

A death of a dog resulted in a Marathon man being arrested last week for animal cruelty.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is disgusting. This is so sad, some people should just not be allowed to own animals, they won’t take care of them. This person has been in constant contact with law enforcement, SPCA, for how they live, animal treatment, how they were not taking care of an animal in the past. But we did get involved in this case where the dog was locked in a vehicle for hour. It’s just like a four month old puppy, just a young little dog. By the time we get there, the dog would wind up passing away and just was neglected and not taken care of, locked in the vehicle with the temperature. This person knew or should have known and had been warned multiple times in the past and had efforts to try to educate you how to take care of a dog, what to do, if he couldn’t do it, make sure that you turned the dog over to someone else who maybe can take care of it or the SPCA, get a good family to take care of it. But this person is where they need to be. This person got arrested by the sheriff’s office for this animal cruelty case, which resulted in the loss of a life of a beautiful little dog, just a puppy. If that breaks your heart, all of us can relate to animals and how dependent they are on us and if you can’t take care of them, then don’t take on that responsibility.”

Mini season has concluded.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “I thought for one day of mini season, I didn’t expect a lot of people to come from out of county to spend the time and the effort to go out for one day for six lobsters. So I really didn’t expect much of an out of county response. I thought we would see more of a local residency, go out for six lobsters. The weather was good, and there was good water clarity. If it was not good weather or the water was churned up, you’d have a lesser turnout. I think we saw that. Some of the rains we had a lot of rain over the weekend. Some pretty big squalls that generally makes the water a little less visible, a little more green, a little more runoff. It was about 11, 12 knots on Sunday, which means if you’re not on a bigger boat, it can be a little choppy out there. A lot of people in Keys are running small little skiffs. We saw very few amount of boats on the water and the ones who are out there, for the most part, are struggling to get their six lobster per person limit. So we didn’t see a lot of lobster. I think a lot of that was because visibility was difficult, challenging, and the conditions weren’t the best. So we at the sheriff’s office really had very low impact from the one day mini season. Very little, little to no cost to service. We didn’t see issues with the boat ramps, weren’t backed up again, because we didn’t see a large influx coming out of county. So if I had to say I would have to probably say that this mini mini season was virtually a nothing burger for the sheriff’s office.”