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.
This weekend sure saw heavy traffic.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We saw increased traffic, for sure. We expected that. And even on the water, we saw heavy traffic. But the weather was on and off with the rains, I think it kept a lot of boaters off. We didn’t see quite the crowds on the water we would have thought. Labor Day weekend is always a very, very busy week for the sheriff’s office, between party and drinking, traffic, crowds, other issues. We had a domestic matter occur Sunday morning, about 6:45 on Duck Key, a nice area. There were people down on vacation, apparently. A domestic call. We get called early in the morning. We get units out there a male, female, 35 year old male from the Central Florida area, pretty good sized guy, and he’s intoxicated early in the morning, agitated, angry, hostile. We’re trying to deescalate the situation between the male and female. She’s a relatively cooperative. He is not. He’s not listening to commands. We’ve got two officers there, and he’s really becoming enraged. At some point in time, he’s focusing his tension on a female deputy, and then he starts making threats to her, and he starts trying to get to her, and he’s pushing another officer out of the way to get to this female. This is just a bully, he’s there in a domestic with his girlfriend. Now he wants to be in a battering situation with a female deputy. Gets to the point he’s not obeying commands, and he’s being so aggressive, we have to pull a taser out. We actually had to tase him, subdue him to get compliance. Ultimately, we arrest him on a few different charges here, assault on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest. We hate to do this. Our job is to try to deescalate when we can, seek compliance, try to resolve problems. But when you’ve got someone who’s got anger management issues already and won’t comply with orders from law enforcement, just situations going downhill quickly, and he’s too stupid to see that the only place he’s headed to is Monroe County Jail. You’re not going to have these situations where you’re going to intimidate my men and women or attack them and go free. You come down on vacation, you’re leaving on probation, which is stupid. Have a good time. Don’t ruin it for yourself, and don’t ruin it for everybody else. Everyone else in the household has to deal with this numbskull and his antics. I don’t think he’ll be invited on the next group trip.”
A male juvenile was bitten by a shark on Monday in Key Largo and Trauma Star was called out.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That helicopter is saving lives every day. We got a 911 dispatch call at Horseshoe Reef about the 106 mile marker, ocean side, a family is out there snorkeling with a young man. Young man’s about eight years old. And while out snorkeling, a shark, we’re not sure what type, but apparently came in there and bit this young man in the upper leg, doing heavy damage, and he went back to the family boat. The family was obviously frantic. There was a local dive boat there which helped aid and assist with a tourniquet, helped them get the boat back in to shore. On the way in, they had to put a second tourniquet due to the extensive amount of damage. Coordination occurred between the sheriff’s office and our first responders, our fire rescue detachment, to be staged for the incoming boat, Trauma Star to be placed on a standby mode. Once they got in, Trauma Star launched, we did pick up this young man and continue to do advanced life support services on the ship so that we could land and get him to Jackson. That’s about a 17 minute flight once we pick him up from Upper Keys, and he immediately got wheeled into the ER, and he immediately went into surgery, and he was in surgery most of the night. I got an update this morning, that he was taken out of surgery and going into recovery. He was doing well. I was told at this point in time he still has his legs, so we’re thankful and hopeful for recovery of that. But I understood there was some pretty extensive bite wounds on that upper leg of this eight year old young man. Again, the EMS services worked between everybody involved and surely Trauma Star’s, life saving, critical air ambulance, which also has blood on board, we can actually do transfusions in flight, if need be, for these type of situations.”
There’s a new Trauma Star aircraft.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Two of the three helicopters landed last week, so Trauma Star One and Trauma Star Two are here, the third ship should be here within the next two weeks. Then we have to do a training, a program, to train the medics and firefighters in the field for this new helicopter when it comes to landing zones. The older helicopters, we would do a shutdown on the bridge. Shut the rotor blades down. This new helicopter, we are not going to do a shutdown. We’re going to what’s called the hot load, the tail rotor and the main rotor head will continue to rotate and turn. They’re higher up, so we don’t think there’s a safety issue, but we still have to make sure the crews are trained to approach a helicopter with the rotor blades turning. We have to do good training with that crew to make sure we’re safe and secure. Our medical crews have to get the helicopter style stocked the way they want, get used to where all the equipment is versus the other ship, and learn that ship. Then we have to do some training with the medical crew in the back per FAA, there’s a crew requirements for specialized training. Our pilots and mechanics have already gone to school and trained up on this ship. So there’ll be a transformation from one ship to the other ship, which we’ll take, we think, probably sometime in October, before the ships are up and running. But, definitely well needed. These helicopters will be here for next 25 years. They’ll take us into the year 2050, so we’ve got a long term, stable program that we can rely on.”
A man from Oldsmar, Florida, was arrested on multiple lobster violations, including nine over the limit lobsters, possession of eight undersized lobsters, possession of two speared lobsters, and possession of rung tails in the water.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was around the Channel Five Bridge, which is about the 70 mile marker. This is just after noon, about 12:15pm, we saw this individual lobstering, throwing tails and doing different stuff. So we did approach them. We had a lot of violations, it’s no spear zone. You can’t possess a spear and you can never spear lobster. We saw two lobster had puncture wounds consistent with the spear gun, so he was spearing lobster, obviously over the bag, undersized, rung tails, just continuing to attack our environment, and we have to keep doing this. I tell you every week, we’ve got to be vigilant to help aid and assist FWC, protect our resources and environment, our commercial fishing industry. This is just another example of people doing stupid stuff, which they know better, but the sheriff’s office trying to be vigilant to try to protect our resources, prevent this stuff from occurring.”
A man was arrested for drugs on Friday after a traffic stop around mile marker 9 for possessing more than 95 grams of cocaine.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Traffic stops are so important because that’s the number one complaint we get. But also, they do yield other violations of law which are critical. This is just after seven o’clock, about 7:15 about the Nine Mile Marker, we stopped the car on traffic charges. Our friends at Key West Police showed up to back us up and had a canine, the canine alerted to the presence of narcotics in the car, giving us probable cause of search. Subsequently, we did find over three ounces, just almost 96 grams of cocaine. That’s trafficking level, really serious enhanced charges. This was a career criminal that’s been involved in the drug trade for a long period of time. So we were able to get this individual charged with these crimes, get these drugs off the streets, tow his car. Again we talk about the strong partnerships with our state, local, federal, military, working together. Key West Police is one of my strongest friends and partners, and we want to remain one of the strongest friends and partners to Key West Police as well. Chief Brandenburg does a great job and his team. He’s a good friend of mine, good relationship, but again, proactive policing and doing a good job to keep our community safe and secure.”
Another drug arrest happened in Marathon last week where nearly 30 grams of crack cocaine were found with one man from Marathon and one from Florida City.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is around the park. We did observe what appeared to be a drug deal going down. And we had field units, traffic units, stop this car. We’re able to identify two out of three people involved, and we got them stopped. Mr. Charlie Hayes, who’s a known subject from Marathon, most of his life, has been a drug dealer, and then a 48 year old male from the Florida City area – we see a lot of drugs coming in from Florida City – Mr. Myles, those two were stopped in a car leaving after what appeared to be a drug transaction had occurred. So we did see these two people. We did find almost 30 grams of cocaine, crack cocaine, and that’s enough to consider to be trafficking in cocaine. Almost $1,000 in cash was found, which we believe was from the transaction. So we did arrest these two individuals, did seize the drugs, take them off the street, did seize the cash, tow the car, trying to continue to send a message. But yeah, these two individuals, especially Mr. Hayes, the Hayes family has been in Keys for a long time and has done a lot of damage to this community with drugs.”
Richard Toppino of Charley Toppino and Sons donated a new golf cart, to be used by MCSO to conduct inner and outer patrols, as well as perimeter security checks, of the airport property.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Richard Toppino, a good friend to the sheriff and the sheriff’s office. Doing a big construction project at the airport, they really had a chance to see the sheriff deputies and what they do out there, walking on the tarmac, walking around the planes, having to do inner and outer perimeter checks for security, walking around the park out front, walking in the upper and lower levels. It’s a lot of walking. You can’t just drive a car that much because it’s short proximities. So a lot is via foot. They saw the need, and Richard was very kind to buy a golf cart and have it wrapped with the sheriff’s office logo and presented it to the sheriff’s office so they can use it to better police the airport. Make it easier for officers get from point A to point B through those inner and outer perimeter checks, do the ramp checks, be on the ramp. We don’t want to drive cars around airplanes because they’re so big and blind spots. We don’t want to take a chance of hitting a wing or a prop or hurting something. So we don’t really like the cars anywhere near planes. This golf cart will make it a lot easier to be able to do those safety checks and have a presence, visibility and response. So again, partnership, partnership, partnership, as I always talk to you about, and it works, and it works here better than any place else. And Toppinos have been one of the strongest community partners the sheriff’s office could ever ask for.”