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.
Keeping neighborhoods clean has been important to MCSO.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We want clean neighborhoods. Obviously, that’s been a cornerstone of my regime. Is cleaning up our communities with our monthly cleanups, with our adopt a highway programs, with our anti graffiti programs, with our shopping cart initiatives being brought back to get them out of the neighborhoods, on and on and on. All of us, working together, are making big improvements in our communities each and every day. Quality of life.”
The holiday parade was a great event on Saturday night.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I love this time of year. We get a chance to go out to so many parades and events, and see our community and shake hands and hug and just build that relationship. Friday night I was in the Islamorada area for the Islamorada Christmas parade. That was a great event. But then, surely, Saturday’s Key West Christmas parade, one of the biggest ones there is. To see the streets lined up from White Street all the way down Duval to Front Street on both sides, with people yelling and cheering and clapping and waving and thanking you. If that doesn’t make you feel good about being a police officer, nothing’s going to because that community is so pro law enforcement. In the whole route, people want to high five, shake your hands. Thank you. Hug you, take a picture with you. It just goes to show that the community policing efforts that we’re doing are paying off each and every day. The relationships we’re building with our citizens are continuing to build and grow. It’s what we want. We want the citizens to see us as their friends, their neighbors, people they can trust, count on, rely on. So it’s really inspirational to do that parade. My team members love coming out, interacting, giving the candy out to the kids. They feel the warmth, the love from the community. It makes them just proud to wear that uniform and want to do a good job for the citizens.”
The biggest cheers from the crowd seemed to come for law enforcement and veterans.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This community loves its military, and loves its law enforcement.”
A 79-year-old North Palm Beach woman was reported missing while diving off the Vandenberg wreck off Key West on Friday.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “The Vandenberg is a very technical dive. This is not a beginner. This is an advanced dive. The top deck is about 150 feet. The bottom is close to 200, recreational dive limits about 130 max. So you’ve surpassed the recreational limits. So you better be a really good diver, for sure. It was a husband, wife. The wife was 79 years of age for diving on the Vandenberg early Saturday, at some point time soon after going down, they got separated. There’s a heavy current there. The current can be pretty vicious. They got separated within a matter of minutes. Eventually, he surfaced. She never surfaced. Law enforcement services, military, Coast Guard, all were called in. Key West Police, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, our friends at NAS Key West, Coast Guard, FWC, but to no avail. She has not been located, found this point in time, the search has been called off. We have to presume she’s no longer with us, either by drowning or by hypothermia. Presumably more likely this case is a drowning event, but a sad, sad situation. Feel bad for the family, for sure, and the victim in this case, and I wish there was a positive outcome, but this case, I don’t believe there’s a positive outcome.”
A trailer was stolen out of Key Largo recently and had a positive outcome.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a great investigative case, a great partnership with Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. Spoke to the sheriff the other day and thanked him for his part out there. We did have a double axle storage trailer that had nine handguns and rifles inside the trailer, valuables. It was being used mostly for storage, so had a lot of property inside of it. Owner found it missing first thing in the morning and called us. We tracked it back down. We believe it was stalling around 3:30 in the morning, and we believe sometime after being stolen, that they took the trailer tag off and replaced it with another stolen trailer tag. These are done a lot to try to avoid license plate readers, which may be looking for that one tag on a storage unit or storage trailer in this case, so we were able to do a lot of good work with cameras, license plate reader cameras, go through about the time frame, go picture by picture, frame by frame, looking for the trailer to identify, okay, we believe that the trailer, but the tag is different. What’s the tag come back to, then we believe that was the trailer. We were able to then catch the tag on the vehicle towing it, a Pathfinder came back to a person in Hillsborough County. Worked closely with our friends in Hillsborough County. The trailer was entered into the computer system, state, national was stolen at that time, we had Hillsborough work with us. They went to the home of the registered owner of the Pathfinder, believing they were involved in this theft case. When we got there, we found the mother of the owner of the car who said, no, my son is in the hospital. Has been in the hospital since November, so we believe at that point time he was not a suspect. We queried him, talked to him, to find out he drove to the hospital, parked his car, and has been in the hospital the last few weeks, searching the parking lot revealed the car was no longer there. Now we believe the car was stolen in Hillsboro by perpetrators who drove the car to the Keys and stole this trailer. So we continued to work with Hillsborough County try to track down, through license plate readers, other stuff up there, this vehicle in question. They did a great job. They eventually located the vehicle. They did surveillance on it on land, as well as with helicopters. They followed it to a storage unit, where they did some surveillance, and they saw them loading stolen property out of the Pathfinder into a storage unit. Then they followed it back to a residence where they believe that people were living at that point in time. They got search warrants for the residents and for the storage unit. They executed search warrants. We located six out of the nine stolen guns, a lot of other stolen property from the trailer. We’ve located the trailer. We’ve located the stolen Pathfinder from Hillsborough County. So a really good case, great partnership. We recovered six out of nine guns, other stolen property, recovered the stolen trailer, recovered the stolen vehicle. We’ve identified a vehicle that wasn’t even known to have been stolen. We’ve identified suspects in Hillsborough who now have been arrested in Hillsborough on local charges there, and then we’ve also got warrants for their arrest here. Each one has a warrant. One’s at 470,000. I think the other person is about a half million dollar bond. So they’re in county jail. When they’re done, they’ll be extradited back down to Monroe, and they’ll face the charges here for grand theft. I always tell your listeners, how important it is to have these partnerships, state, local, federal, military, we all have to work together. I always say criminals cross geographic jurisdictional boundaries each and every day, whether it be cities to counties or county to county or state to state. If they’re committing crimes here, they’re committing crimes everywhere else, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve got to keep trying to attack these people. We’ve solved crimes in Hillsborough that they didn’t even know existed because of this partnership.”
It looks like we may have a little more assistance and help from federal prosecutors in South Florida after a recent meeting.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That’s the US Attorney for the Southern District, Jason, a good young man. I’ve met him. I’ve had lunch with him a couple times. I’ve expressed concerns in the past about the relationship with the US Attorney not doing much in the Keys and prosecuting or dealing with human trafficking, human smuggling cases. He’s been very responsive. Assured me that we are going to have a new relationship, that we’re going to be able to count on the US Attorney’s Office, that we are going to see prosecutions, and we’re going to see a footprint, and if there’s a particular case or cases that I have concerns of, he’s assured me that I can count on them coming in and federally prosecuting these cases. I specifically even brought up the Pagans, who, I’ve got to say, since the last time we arrested him, we haven’t heard much crap from those guys. I hope it stays that way. But I had a good conversation with the United States attorney that if we have any more cases involving those Pagans, whether it be guns and drugs or anything else, that he’s assured me that he is willing to take any cases regarding the criminal outlaw motorcycle gangs that I want to a federal level. So I hope it doesn’t have to come to that. But if any Pagans are listening, they can be made aware, rest assured, I’m partnering up with the United States attorney, and I will take federal charges against any and all persons in that group. If they commit any crimes which I can get a federal charge on, they’re going to be federally prosecuted.”
An altercation occurred at the Marathon Home Depot recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Calmer heads have to always prevail and if someone hits your car with a shopping cart, I wouldn’t be happy. There are means to deal with that. From a law enforcement perspective, call us. Don’t take matters in your own hand. Home Depot, about 8:15, in the morning, an individual had struck a truck with a shopping cart and then went into the store. The person with the vehicle became angry, as the other person did. They got into an argument inside the store. The two were arguing about the shopping cart when one of them decided to arm themselves with an umbrella that was inside the store, and then decided to use that as a weapon to strike and choke that person. This situation escalated so far beyond where it should have, could have been and needed to be, from a civil matter over a bump with a shopping cart to an aggravated battery case. When you take that thing and strike a person in the head, and then you’re trying to choke them out, you’re passing the level between a misdemeanor to a felony, and you’re just getting yourself in deeper, deeper, more and more trouble for nothing, for something that, again, if you would have called us, we would have got both parties together, looked at the situation and been able to give a better perspective and try to deal with it in a simple matter, small claims court or taking care of it between themselves with cash or whatever it may be. It’s hard to believe that things can blow up. But these are decisions which are made off of emotion, not logic. There’s emotional outbursts. For every action there is a reaction, well, you arm yourself and attack somebody you’re going to jail. And did you win? No, you won nothing. There just has to be a neutral person being law enforcement to try to get in there and deescalate and give direction and try to resolve, mitigate these situations, this or anything else, but taking upon yourself is not likely to work out well.”
A domestic incident happened this morning at the Reef Resort.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “The investigation is still ongoing, so details are not fully there, but just in the wee hours in the morning, we got a call to Reef Resort. A female called us, a domestic disturbance with her boyfriend. She locked herself in the office area while he was assaulting her and trying to get to her, she had to lock herself in fear during this time, though, prior to he had battered her in the face and body. He had verbally accosted her. He’d taken her phone and destroyed her phone so she couldn’t call law enforcement services. She alleges that he had a gun and pointed a gun at her and made threats to her safety with a weapon, before she locked herself in and he went back to the room. We went back to the room to find him sleeping. We woke him up, obviously, we took him in to detain him while we had an investigation going on, we ultimately determined we did have multiple weapons inside this residence, which we took for protective keeping. We determined that there’s been multiple domestic related matters between these two over a long period of time, up to including prior injunctions for Domestic Violence Protection. It is no longer in place. It expired, but she had had protective orders in place in the past. We’ve been called multiple times, which always makes you wonder, why did people continue to stay with these people that always hurt, attack, violence, that they have to get protective orders from the courts, but yet they’re still with them. So we don’t understand that, but we ultimately did arrest him on these domestic violence charges. Again, we brought in a victim advocate to work with her. The courts I’m sure will put a no contact order. We did take the weapons into safe keeping. We are probably going to proceed forward through the courts for a risk protection order to keep those guns away from him, so when he gets out, he can’t get access to those guns. Obviously, if he’s got guns, he’s violent, had protective orders, has pointed a gun and threatened her due violence, you probably shouldn’t be possessing these weapons until you can get your anger management under control. So we’re glad no one got killed, that the weapon wasn’t discharged, but it goes to show you how dangerous these domestic violence cases can be for everybody involved, not only the victims, responding officers that were dealing with people who are angry, agitated, anger management, armed. , these are very, very dangerous calls. Two most dangerous calls officers can be on is either domestic call or a traffic stop. Those, historically, our officers are injured, attacked and or killed, so we have our guard up at all times, especially with domestic violence calls.”