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.
The Gigantic Nautical Market in Islamorada went very well this weekend.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Always a fabulous event. The weather was great. The turnout was just epic. We had traffic delays. We had some backups of traffic north and south, which is what we anticipated. My troops did a really good job. We got a really good plan in place to do very little stopping traffic and move people across in groups. I think this is probably the most successful year to have the least amount of traffic backups and keep traffic flowing relatively well considering what we had going on. I went to the event myself. It was a beautiful event. Again, great stuff. About 400 vendors, Rotarians, Rotary Clubs, do such a great job, to do this as a fundraiser for children for their scholarship programs. Over the years, they’ve raised over $4 million in scholarship monies for kids in our community. So such a great event, economic opportunities, bringing in money to the communities, Islamorada and elsewhere. So just a really, really fun event. Obviously, it does have adverse impacts on traffic, but we’ve got to find that balance. And I think overall, was very successful. Nobody got hurt. That’s always a plus. Saturday, while trying to keep traffic flowing, around 11 o’clock in the morning, we had a Florida Keys aqueduct authority water main break at the 91 mile marker, so that caused us more problems. While we had a very heavy traffic day, as it was, we had to deal with that as we had both north and southbound lanes flooded. A traffic advisory went out from the sheriff’s office in our app trying to warn people with a picture and video what we’re dealing with. So we already had manpower allocation stretched between general patrols, the Islamorada market going on, and we had to bring in four off duty detail officers right away to try to do manual traffic control with the hazards of the water and the utility services coming in with heavy equipment to dig up the pipe and repair it was about a 12 hour repair project. So it was crisis management 101 for the Sheriff’s Office, and we had to, like always, whenever problems arise, we have to be part of the solution and try to mitigate and try to do the best we can for our citizens.”
The children’s fishing tournament was also this weekend hosted by the sheriff’s department.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Again, our rotary clubs, our Rotarians, stepping forward, partnering up. This is the event with the Rotary Club, the sheriff’s office, our community leaders, it all comes together with our leaders in the community, volunteering services, providing services. Dunkin Donuts brought out hundreds of donuts for the kids for free. Centennial Bank was out there cooking hot dogs for the kids, we had our local marinas and fish places doing stuff with rods and reels and bait and tackles, always so good. All the services that show up there to help provide, donate stuff, prize, bikes. But again, well, this is something we’re so proud of. We had 250 kids. Every kid comes out, gets a free fish and rod and reel, bait, food. I was out there as well. What a beautiful day, parents are out there with the kids, laughing and having a good time interacting with families, something we need to do probably a little bit more but what a fabulous day. I want to thank my team members at the sheriff’s office. I had a whole group of team members out there to make sure the event was safe and secure with traffic flowing, make sure the kids are safe, volunteering, helping wherever they need to get done. Everyone’s out there, everyone’s doing it, and our goal is one thing, make sure these kids have a great, safe day, and building these relationships with these younger generations, making sure they know that we are the good guys and gals, making sure they have fun. Most of these kids have never, ever fished. This is the first time for them to have a fishing rod and be out there. So maybe we’re instilling these kids to want to be a commercial fisherman and the excitement in these kids’ faces is just second to none. You’ve got to feel so good about being part of something so great.”
Last week a 22 year old Islamorada man was arrested after hitting a family member with a broom and threatening her with a knife.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We got a call to the Islamorada area to a domestic disturbance, involving a male and female. We get on scene and separate the parties. We get witnesses trying to figure out who did what, what’s going on. The female’s got some injuries. We check on her medical condition. We get a report from the victim that the suspect in this case armed himself with a broom and a knife and hit her multiple times with a broom and threatened her with a knife. She had minor injuries, consistent with her statements of being hit with this broom multiple times. We ultimately determined that the battery did occur. We ultimately determined that the male was the aggressor with the broom and the knife, and ultimately we did arrest him for these battery assault charges. So very glad it wasn’t worse, but it definitely could have gone worse when you put a knife into an argument.”
About 40 grams of cocaine was netted from a traffic stop recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This started in the Islamorada area, around the 74 Mile marker area. This person was seen in the parking lot of a convenience store, which was described as handling a decent amount of drugs, reported to us. We did find a vehicle. We attempted to stop it, we eventually stopped the vehicle. We did identify this 22 year old male from Orlando, in subsequent to a search of the vehicle, later on, we did discover over 40 grams of cocaine, such a buy in that it met the criteria for trafficking cocaine. We did arrest him for trafficking cocaine, did seize the drugs, get the drugs off the streets, towed his car away, and just another day in life at the sheriff’s office. So you never know what you’re going to come across and you get called about suspicious activity in a parking lot with potential drugs, and it turns out to be true. And in fact, as described by a witness.”
A man from Blue Point, New York, was arrested on the 18th of February for exposing himself and urinating while yelling at resort staff and guests at the Ocean’s Edge resort marina on Stock Island.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s drunk and stupid, alcohol influenced poor decisions, down here on vacation, 50 year old male, nice resort restaurant area there, showing his ass and causing disturbance, and decided to drop his pants and urinate in the restaurant, had a bottle, threw a bottle down, broke the bottle, elected to go some other part of the property as well and take his pants down, and urinate there. So we had multiple calls about this individual for indecent exposure or disorderly intoxication and his conduct. As we got there, he had left the scene. A short time later, we did find him close by, and as soon as the patrol car went near him to try to stop him, he took off running, started running, jumped the fence, but we got him and then got him in custody, brought him back, verified this was the individual, and ultimately, we did charge him with multiple counts of violations of law between indecent exposures and disorderly intoxications and his conduct. So it’s stupid. This is a poor alcohol influenced decisions. If you can’t hold your alcohol, then don’t drink, or know your limitations. So you’re down on vacation, you’re going to have to come back and deal with these court cases and have court appearances, and you’re going to be on probation here in Florida. But again, this is what we deal with.”
A 38 year old Big Coppitt woman was arrested recently for stealing a $40,000 gold chain from an adult male victim while the victim was in jail.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “The price of gold is so much these days, a large necklace can be pretty valuable pretty quickly. This is the estimated value of $40,000 necklace. The owner of the necklace, yes, is residing in Monroe County Jail, the double R bed and breakfast, and while in our accommodations, she’s aware of this necklace. These two were known to each other, known acquaintances, were at one time, apparently friends. And she knew about this necklace, and knew he was in jail, so she elected to take the opportunity to retrieve his necklace and steal it. She did steal it. We became aware of it and investigated it, and ultimately probation as well was involved. The necklace was found, located, recovered in her possession, her property, and she ultimately was arrested as well for the grand theft charges. So the necklace has been recovered for the victim who’s sitting in Monroe County Jail. It doesn’t matter if you’re in jail or not, if you’re a victim of crime, we’re still going to provide services and try to solve crime and hold people accountable, even if it’s criminal on criminal, it doesn’t matter. Crime is important for us to identify and solve and hold people accountable no matter what. So she’s going to be violated probation and she’s got more criminal charges pending on her. So apparently, not a really good person that’s got a lot of time in the judicial system, on the wrong side of the judicial system, and it’s just tying up citizen’s, time, money and resources, keep on dealing with her, incarcerate her, hold her, but that’s part of our jobs, and we’re going to hope that one day, maybe she’ll see the light and stop doing dumb stuff. And if she does, that’s great. That’s a success. If she doesn’t, then we’ll continue to have plenty of room for her at MCJ.”
A two year old child was found wandering on US 1 after a Key Largo woman was apparently not supervising this child and that woman was consequently arrested.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was in the wee hours of morning. We thank a Good Samaritan for calling us again on this case. This is like 5:50 in the morning, about the 101 mile marker, still dark out, motorists driving down the road. She’s a small child, about a two year old child in pajamas with no shoes, walking right along the edge of the road. If this child would have been just a foot or two more to the left, the child would have been in the highway, would have been struck and killed. The mother is a 31 year old female, I believe, a single mother, left this child at home to go run some errands unattended. This is exactly why you cannot do this. A couple minutes could be the difference between life and death in this situation. So we did respond to the scene, recovered this child, eventually figured out where this child lived, went back to the house, the house was dirty, disheveled, not in a good, safe condition for a child, we don’t believe. We did contact our friends in DCF to respond. DCF did come out, assessed the home, assessed the situation, and we arrested the mother for child neglect. DCF agreed to the child being turned over to the grandmother. We hope this mother can get her stuff together and be a better mother. And this is going to occur because of DCF intervention, sheriff’s office intervention, the state attorney, the courts, everyone’s going to make sure that, part of her arrest is going to be an action plan for parenting and some oversight from DCF and the courts to make sure she’s doing better. So that’s what we want, we don’t want to take children from parents. But sometimes in situations, we want parents to be better parents. The difference could be whether a child lives or dies, and we’ve got to be more worried about the child.”
A double fatality accident occurred late last week on Card Sound Road.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That was sad, unfortunate. I think it was two miles on to the Dade County side of Card Sound Road. It turns into Monroe County County Road 905 which intersects with Dade and turns into Card Sound past Alabama Jacks two miles into the Dade County side. We were contacted by Miami Dade County Sheriff’s Office for mutual aid about a car crash involving a fatality, and that need to shut that road down and divert all traffic to US 1, so we responded to the incident as well to help aid, assist our friends in Miami Dade. But unfortunately, two people did perish. That’s a very dangerous road, people speed because there’s very little enforcement, especially on the Dade side and Monroe side is in pretty good shape. Monroe County has a pretty good road system, when it’s maintained and patrolled, the Dade side isn’t patrolled very well. They’re just so busy up there. And the Dade side, the road is very narrow, very bumpy, poor condition, no real shoulders. When you drop off from the pavement to the gravel, sometime it’s a sudden, deep drop. People over correct when they jerk the wheel. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of bad crashes out there, cars, flips, motorcycles, if you’re out there, if anybody’s been driven out there, you’ve got cars blowing past you, driving crazy, recklessly. It’s a dangerous road, and it’s unfortunate, but per capita, that road is probably one of the deadliest roads there is for that stretch of road.”
There was also a crash on the water over the weekend.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We helped aid and assist our friends in FWC, United States, Coast Guard Bayside, about the 90 Mile Marker thereabouts, in the daytime, good conditions. There was a single vessel, center console, single motor with multiple people on board, on plane. Not exactly sure why they didn’t see a marker, but there was a channel marker next to a telephone pole, which had some wire cables going out there, clearly visible. For some reason, the operator of the boat must not have been paying attention. It looks to me, last minute, he probably saw the pole and maybe tried to make a quick evasive maneuver, turn to the right, the boat was so close, the pole smashed into the left rear of the vessel. The vessel struck it so hard it ejected all the people out of the boat into the water. And the pole actually wound up sitting in the very middle of the boat, behind the rocket launcher seat. It was stunning. Some good Samaritans came up and rescued the people who were thrown in the water. Some injuries. There was multiple injuries. Two were severe and critical that we had to bring in Trauma Star. And Trauma Star in that area would have landed at the Founders Park, but it was all set up for the Gigantic Nautical flea market, so we had to do an alternate landing zone at Coral Shores High School. So we appreciate the school board for being a good friend, letting us use those fields for these emergency situations. The bad thing was, they had a high school game going on and they had to stop the lacrosse game, get the players off the fields onto the stands, while we had to land Trauma Star in the middle of the field and bring in our friends in fire rescue with two critical patients, so we keep the helicopter running. So the fans had an amazing experience to see this big trauma helicopter come in, the rotor blades running, fire rescue units coming in, loading two critical patients on board the ship, and then the ship taken off to go to Jackson Ryder Trauma Center. Glad the program is there to save these lives. It was probably a really good show for the people who were in the stands at this game to see this, probably going to talk about it for months. But again, it’s dangerous out there boating. You have to pay attention when operating a vessel at all times. We don’t think there’s any alcohol involved. We just think it was operator error. And again, it was horrific. If you saw the pictures, they were stunning.”