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 Nautical Flea Market over the weekend went very well.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “What a great event every year. I love that event myself as well. But it is a very challenging event, as you would imagine, for the Sheriff’s Office, between the crowds and congestion, the parking, the traffic, the pedestrian traffic crossing, trying to make sure they’re safe and secure, trying to keep traffic flowing at some levels. We know that it’s always going to have some backlogs as a result. We continue to try to be better every year, I think traffic was taking about 45 minutes to get through that area, which sounds like a lot, but for historical times, is pretty low. It’s pretty good when you only have one North, one South lane, and you have to keep stopping traffic to let pedestrians cross back and forth. It worked out well. I got a lot of good reports and feedback about the ability to flow traffic, keep it flowing for the most part. It was a safe, orderly event. We had no drama, no fights, no arrests. We had a strong presence, not only in the highway for traffic control, pedestrian crossing, but also at the event. We have several officers there in uniform capacity to make sure it’s a safe, secure event. That event goes over smooth every year for the most part other than traffic. So I think overall, a successful event and hard work by my men and women in the sheriff’s office, out there eight hours a day, standing on the hot pavement directing traffic is a long day.”
The Upper Keys Alcohol Coalition checks occurred at various businesses last week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’ve worked a long time with alcohol coalition. Not to try to stick it to any bars or restaurants or businesses, but to try to make sure they know that there is oversight, there will be random compliance checks with young people going in there trying to buy alcohol, and then we advertise it because we want other sales places to know that this is occurring. Initially, when we started this years ago, we were citing a lot of bars and package stores. Now it’s at a point I think people are pretty locked in that they’ve got to check the IDs, they’ve got to make sure that if the person doesn’t have an ID do not sell it to them. It doesn’t matter if they look 30 years old, the law requires you to check identification. I was just in Las Vegas last weekend, went to a club and I got almost all white hair, I’m 50 years old, and they carded me. If I didn’t have an ID, I wasn’t getting in. So I appreciate the fact that it doesn’t matter how old you are, how old you look, if you don’t have the ID, you’re not going to get in. Well here too, as well, we need to have the same stance here. If you can’t produce proper ID, you shouldn’t be able to provide the packages. So it’s been successful, as you saw with this recent one, you know, 16 and 0 were successful and did not sell alcohol. To us, that’s a success. We’re not there trying to be upset that we didn’t get somebody. No, we don’t want to get anybody. So that means that it’s working, our plan, our partnership with the coalition and our checks over the years, having ingrained, instilled in the sellers mind how important it is. So now we’ve got 100% compliance. Perfect. That’s 100% success.”
Three people were recently arrested on drug charges during a traffic stop in the Upper Keys.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Well, like we always say you never know when you stop a car who or what’s inside the car. That’s why we’ve got to be really on our A game. Traffic stops are one of the most dangerous, deadly parts of our job. But it’s so critical. That’s the number one complaint we receive from citizens is traffic speeders, reckless drivers, tailgating. So we do spend a lot of time on traffic to try to keep our roads safe and secure. But while there yes, we do look for other potential violations. Here’s another good example, Sunday, the Upper Keys, north of Key Largo, we stopped the car on traffic violations. When we approached the car, and when they rolled the window down, we could smell the strong odor of marijuana coming out of the car. No medical marijuana cards were in possession, which gave us the authority to search the car. We did find a large amount of marijuana, a felony amount packaged for a sale, which shows the intent to deliver not for personal use. Another person we found to be in possession of methamphetamine, we know how dangerous that drug is. We found other signs of drug sales, drug paraphernalia. One person had a warrant from Miami Dade County for a violation of probation. So we had three individuals in the car, all three went to jail, all three from Miami Dade County, all three coming down to the Keys for no good, just to hurt, harm our citizens, our community, which we’re not going to tolerate, and we hold these people accountable. We got them off the street. We got their drugs off the street, we served a warrant for our friends in Miami Dade County. We towed their car, and we keep sending the message, don’t come down here and do it because you’re more likely to get arrested, prosecuted and spent more time in jail. That’s the message I keep talking about because I want them to know I’m not trying to make a secret. Myself, the state attorney have hardline stance on these drug dealers and other related crimes and you’re more likely to get in here in the Keys than you are in other counties.”
There have also been arrests for theft and larceny recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “The victims of this case are commercial fishermen who work out of the Hurricane Hole. These guys work so hard to earn a living. It’s a tough job to be a commercial fisherman. They reported multiple vessels that were burglarized and their fishing gear, the rods and reel, the livelihood of their business were stolen, gone. So they want to go to charters, people show up to fish. But there’s no rods or reel, you can’t take your charters out, you can’t run your business. I had detectives on this case, we worked hard on this case, we identified persons of interest, which happened to be a mother and son team on Stock Island. We’ve dealt with these types of people in the past for drug sales, we’ve determined that they traded drugs for these rods and reels from the person who stole them, a drug user. We were able to build enough probable cause to get a search warrant signed by a judge. We worked very closely with our friends at FWC and Key West Police in this case, we executed the search warrant at this residence. We did locate all the rods and reels for the most part, which had the names of the boat on there. As we were coming in the house, the son opened the window and threw a bag of marijuana on the roof to try to hide it. That’s where the tampering evidence came into place. We found these rods all about the house, inside and out. So they are charged with dealing in stolen property coming up, too, more charges are pending. But we recovered the rods, got the rods back to our commercial fishermen so they can continue to work on their livelihoods, arrested these people for a variety of charges and continue to send the message again, we are going to be vigilant in the pursuit of criminals and put people in jail, hold them accountable. So it was success. Again, working with a joint partnership with our friends at Key West Police and FWC. We want to work the best we can with our state, local, federal partners to act and work as one big team.”
There was a disturbance at 20th Street in Marathon.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This has been this way for several years, the homeless have been residing in that area, property owned by the city of Marathon. For the most part has been orderly and no problems. The last six months, we’ve seen a sharp uptick in crime, mostly batteries and assaults occurring out there, homeless on homeless we’ve been dealing with. We send officers out there every day to do directed patrols for visibility, but we just can’t be there 24/7. This population, a lot of alcohol involved, substance abuse is involved, some mental illness. It’s a challenging population on a good day. Well, we got a call out there about a battery. It was reported that one person heard a commotion going on in a tent and then looked inside to find our suspect punching another person. The suspect then came out of the tent, armed himself with metal rake and attacked the next victim striking, swinging towards the head, but striking in the back. We got called out there. He had clear injuries consistent with a metal rake. We did arrest the individual there for multiple charges. We are working with the City of Marathon who’s talking about going out and doing cleanup project, as well as removing some illegal structures, which are not in code, non compliance, non permanent, or illegal, are hazardous. So I think the city is probably going to remove those. We recommended that they remove those structures for the safety of the homeless who are living in him. But also when law enforcement and police service, fire and rescue have to go out there, we don’t want to go inside one of these structures, have them collapse and fall on us because there are so unsafe. They are hazards for hurricanes because these are just plywood, just barely kept together. So I think we’re going to see the city come in, clean stuff up, cuts of trees back, take out those illegal structures, and try to take a little better control of that area, which is a city owned property.”
A Key Largo resident was just recently a victim of a phishing scam, where $850,000 in bitcoin were lost.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This case is still being put together, still trying to figure all the facts out it’s so new, we haven’t even done a press release because we don’t have much details. But yes, this is another scam, phishing expedition online, sending messages out there about this person’s finances. The person responded back and the person was heavily invested in Bitcoin, which we know is impossible to really track and trace. It virtually doesn’t exist. Well, he got duped into believing the person was legit, was going to help secure, move some money. At some point time, turned over access to his computer, let someone remotely access his computer to help him navigate through. Well the person then, while in the computer, navigated okay, but navigated to take all the bitcoins and transfer to other locations, steal the money. Then at some point in time, told the person if you have any question or problems, here’s a number here’s my name. Later on, he didn’t hear back and he’s supposed to call back in 15 minutes, he never called back. So when he called the number, it came back to a disconnected number. So this person is out almost a million dollars. We’re going to see. We’ll look, but the chances of solving this case are so remote. Bitcoin is impossible to trace. A lot of this phishing stuff comes from overseas. We want to be honest, this and other cases like this are so challenging for law enforcement anywhere to hold anybody accountable. You almost always are out the money, and there’s no insurance coverages. You made a decision to allow someone to access your accounts, because you believed that they were who they are, but if you’re not 100% sure, it’s almost always going to be a scam. If someone’s calling you, we always say hang up, get the right number, call some customer service to make sure you know who you’re talking to, that is legit. To find out, if there is an issue with any of your accounts or problems or anything else they say. And 99% of time, it’s going to be an unlawful attempt to steal your money that people get duped out of. These scams become so realistic, they become so good at cloning phones, your ID will show up at someone’s number, they’ve really honed in their ability to steal your money. You just can’t let your guard down. You have to be wary of everything and never give personal information over the computer, over the phone. You just can’t do this. This is what happens. We’re trying to message this anti-scamming stuff every way I can. We continue to put the message out, but people continue to give in to these people and turn over tens of thousands of dollars. It’s so frustrating for them. But it’s so frustrating for us because we hate to see our citizens become victims. It aggravates me, as you can tell.”