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.
Traffic will be a big deal on New Year’s.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Tomorrow, obviously New Year’s Eve will be a busy time on the road, a lot of people coming down for a long, extended weekend, or just to come down and potential parties. So while that’s a good thing always to get together with friends, but we’re always worried about the drinking and driving aspect. So while we’re down, we always tell people to try to have a plan ahead of time, know where you’re going, know who’s driving. If you are there and you’ve had too much to drink, obviously, there’s so many means these days to get home, taxis, Ubers, designated drivers. We just keep trying to remind people to think ahead. Don’t destroy your life or somebody else’s over a drink. We’re not saying don’t have a good time. We just say, have a plan and try to have a plan ahead of time before you’re drinking while you can make rational decisions based off of no intoxication, versus trying to make a decision when it’s too late and then you can’t make a rational decision because most people have been drinking think, oh, I’m fine, I can make it. Oh, no problem. I’ll just have a glass of water. And no, it’s going to turn out bad for you or others, but we will see heavier traffic tomorrow, a lot of inbound traffic coming in from Dade to the Keys, especially Key West. We know Key West is one of the top destinations for New Year’s Eve. We’ll have CNN, a lot of other people down there for that big event. So a lot of people will be driving down to Key West. Key West is going to be challenging for the travel drive down and the parking on New Year’s Eve, pretty challenging.”
Michael Stapleford of KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM pointed out, “We want to thank you and your entire department for being on the call consistently throughout New Year’s Eve and beyond, but also assisting the Key West Police Department, and Chief Brandenburg, partnering with your department to make sure that everybody is safe, and especially, as you said, Key West being one of the top 10 destinations worldwide for New Year’s Eve. So thank you for all of your hard work and partnership there as well.”
The fireworks and cannons going off on New Year’s Eve are legal activities.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s frustrating for so many of our listeners, especially listeners who either go to sleep early, have to work the next day, or if you have animals, the dogs go crazy, as we know, with the fireworks. But the governor has changed the law several years back, saying, on Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, it is lawful for citizens to shoot off fireworks, and there’s nothing that law enforcement can do unless it’s being done in a dangerous manner, shot at a person or being shot at a house. So as long as it’s not a crime involved in that type of use of fireworks, it’s lawful to shoot these off. They can shoot all they want. There’s nothing the sheriff’s office can do. So we tell people, listeners, it’s one of the busiest nights for law enforcement, on New Year’s Eve, that calling us about fireworks, we’re not going to be able to do anything. We’re probably not going to send an officer, because we are so swamped with calls for service, and the person that you’re calling about is not violating the law, thus we don’t have the ability to tell them to stop doing something which is deemed to be lawful by the governor.”
A man was charged with assault last week after he apparently pointed a realistic looking airsoft gun at a motorist during a road rage incident.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is ongoing stupid stuff, road rage. We see this a lot these days. You don’t understand why people won’t be a little bit smarter. But two people going down the road got into some road rage incident. A male pulled out a gun, later on, identified to be an airsoft gun, which looks just so real, black and brown gun pointed at the motorist. A motorist called us right away, gave us a beautiful description of the car, tag, person, what the gun look like. We located the car, stopped it, the person who had the gun pointed at him, in this case, the victim did come up and positively identified the person that we had stopped. We located in the vehicle a black and brown airsoft pistol which looks identical to a real one. So that’s an aggravated assault. You cannot point this or anything else at somebody which is a potential weapon or it looks to be a weapon. We just have to have calmer heads prevail. So we did arrest this individual, and hope we send a message to him and others that these type of actions and behaviors are not acceptable or not lawful and are not going to be tolerated.”
People also continue to violate resources.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “A 47 year old man from Hialeah down here, five undersized mutton snappers. Again, we did give him a notice to appear in lieu of taking him to physical jail. But we keep trying to send a message. My other marine officer made a case for same thing. Lobster, undersized lobster. So we’re still seeing lobster and fish cases on a weekly basis that we’re out there trying to make sure people are following the laws, rules, regulations. If they’re not, we hold them accountable and try to send a message to people who come down, mostly from Dade County, and most of our violators that we have down here are from Dade County, that they know that they If caught, are going to be held accountable here, and the reality is, you’re better able, less likely to get in trouble if you do that in the Dade county than in Monroe. In Monroe, we’re going to hold you accountable. The state attorney is going to hold you accountable, and our judges are. We take a hard line stance on the attack on our resources. We have to protect these resources for current and future generations.”
A situation last week during a domestic abuse case turned into quite an incident.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a very dangerous job, even in the Keys, which is one of the safest places ever, there are bad people. Bad things happen. This male was from Miami Dade County. He had come down to the Upper Keys to see his wife and kids in a very long estranged relationship. He’s been a domestic violation offender multiple times. The wife has actually moved out of state, state to state, to get away from this guy, but he keeps tracking her down, finding her. Then the acts of violence continued. So he came down and started attacking and beating severely his wife. Ultimately, she had to go to Miami for her injuries, sustained multiple broken bones in her face, orbital sockets, requiring extensive surgeries. There was two young children at the house, and it’s so sad that who has to call is this young child, like a six year old girl, calls 911 to tell us that the father was beating up the mother, and so it was such a severe call, the sergeant was running lights and sirens to get to the house, got to the house, let the car unlocked, with the light bar running. He just got to the house, jumped out of the car, ran right into the house, knowing that this woman’s life was in jeopardy. So once he gets in the house, the attack is still going on the female. He gets the male to stop the attack on the female and redirects the attention to himself. This goes on for a while. We get him to comply initially. He’s in his underwear. He puts his hands up. He complies. The officers have got the gun pointed at him. We’re directing him outside the house. On the way out, the officer felt comfortable to secure his weapon in the holster. As soon as the deputy puts the gun back in his holster, the suspect turns and attacks the police officer, starts punching him in the face, chest, back, and then grabs his weapon, just trying to get the duty gun out of the holster. There’s a struggle for a period of time over this weapon, while one hand he’s trying to get the gun out, the other hand, he’s punching the police officer. So the officer’s trying to defend himself from incoming punches, but also trying to keep one hand to try to keep his weapon from being taken out of the holster. Now he’s in a battle for his life. This fight rolls out to the front yard. At some point in time, the officer is able to pull a taser and tries to tase the suspect, but it doesn’t have the effect we require and we needed. He’s able to get on top of the deputy, and ultimately get up off the deputy, run to the deputy’s car, jump inside of it, and put the car in drive and drive away with our patrol car. Lights are still going. The deputy is calling for emergency backup. Suspect only gets about a block when he gets behind a woman driving a red compact car. He gets behind her and conducts a traffic stop. She stops, thinking it’s the police. As soon as the car stop, he jumps out of the car, and our dash camera is running the entire time. So we’ve got the whole body camera and dash camera recording everything. He runs up in his underwear, rips her door open, orders her out of the car, tells her he’s going to kill her. We can catch this on our dash cam. We can pick up the video and audio. So he’s telling her he’s going to kill her if she doesn’t get out of the car, rips her out of the car, does a car jacking, takes off in the car. He’s trying to get back to Miami Dade County, where he’s from. Obviously, he’s less likely to be seen in a red compact versus a marked patrol car with lights. He’s going northbound doing about 100 to 120 speeds are estimated at. He strikes a car in the same direction, loses control and rolls over the car that he just carjacked. We get a call about the crash. By time my patrol units get there, he’s trying to get out of the car to get away. We have to re-engage in a physical altercation with him to eventually get him secured. After being secured, he makes a statement to the fact of well, he didn’t kill anybody, so he’s willing to do 20 years. So that’s pretty arrogant. He’s out on parole. This is the guy who’s been arrested multiple times. He’s a very bad person. So we eventually get him arrested, get him down to the jail. He’s charged with multiple crimes of battery on law enforcement, resisting arrest with violence, aggravated domestic battery, grand theft auto, carjacking, a convicted felon in possession of firearm, no driver’s license, just a whole litany of charges that we put on him. He’s sitting in my bed and breakfast on about a three quarter of a million dollar bond. So he won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Won’t be able to hurt anybody, and he is going to be found guilty of these charges. They’re again all on body worn camera and all on dash camera, so that all these crimes have been captured. So it’s going to make it really easy for a jury to look at this and come to the conclusion about what’s going on here. So we feel confident about this case for sure, and we are going to hold him and others accountable for acts of violence.”
It highlights how dangerous policing is in this country.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s a difficult, challenging job. We say we don’t do it to get rich. We want to do it to protect people, make people’s lives better, but it is a tough job. Anywhere you go, we see officers being shot, assassinated, attacked, just like this situation. We never know what you’re at, calls can go from zero to 180 in a snap of a finger, and the two most difficult calls we have are traffic stops and domestic violence calls, and that’s what we’re dealing with here.”
Homicide charges from drug deals continue.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We continue to focus on drug dealers as one of my top priorities, to hold them accountable. We have arrested another person just last week for a homicide charge for selling drugs to a person who used them, overdosed and died. This is like the sixth person in a year and a half that we’ve charged who are held responsible for killing people by the drugs they sell. Again, it was a fentanyl laced narcotics which a 40 year old male sold to a 41 year old Tavernier man, and our investigation resulted in he sold the drugs to that person, the drugs that that person bought for them, was ingested. As a result, they overdosed and died. As a result, we’ve arrested him for a murder charge, and we’re going to keep holding drug dealers accountable and try to send a message. If you sell these dangerous drugs and someone dies, you’re going to be going to my jail, and you’re going to sit in my jail for a couple years while you wait for your case to come up to trial, and during that time, you’re not going to be able to sell drugs to my citizens and hurt and kill them. So I’m proud of that. That’s uncharted grounds that other agencies just have not done, aren’t doing. This is state of the art thinking when it comes to holding people accountable. But it’s not easy to track down the drugs from one person to another, because most people who use drugs, will buy drugs from more than one person. So it does make it challenging at times for us to prove where the drugs originally came from. To you and your listeners, as well, I wish everybody a Happy New Year. Be safe. Be safe out there.”