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.
There was an incident with a deputy following an investigation, and that deputy has been terminated.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We always focus on being transparent, and I always tell our listeners, you’re going to hear a lot of great stuff from MCSO, but every now and then, something bad happens, and when it does, I want people to make sure they hear from me first. So we did have a deputy that was misusing her computer database systems for confidential information, and she was dating a person that she suspected was dealing drugs. She knew this person was a bad person and should not have been with him in the first place. We found out we had probable cause to arrest her. We ultimately arrest her on multiple charges for misusing our database systems and providing information to criminals. She’s sitting in jail. So that’s the first part of it. But after the criminal case, comes an internal affairs investigation. So after the criminal case, we arrested her ourselves, MCSO, I suspended her without pay. I’m not going to pay people who are sitting in jail a salary. But then, before we terminate somebody, we do have to give them due process. We have to do an internal affairs investigation and give them an opportunity to respond to that. So our internal affairs investigation completed last week, we gave her an opportunity to respond to it, and we have to have a hearing, a due process hearing, a predetermination hearing before we fire her, giving her a chance to say why we shouldn’t fire her. After that hearing, I made the decision that nothing changed in my mind, that she disgraced the badge, disgraced the agency and failed to provide services that were needed to our citizens. So last Friday, at five o’clock, I fired her. She still remains in Monroe County Jail. We are going to hold her accountable, as we always do. We hold our people accountable, internal, external. It’s a sad day, but citizens can always have confidence that we’re going to do the right thing. Police ourselves, hold ourselves accountable, and if people disgrace the badge that they will no longer be a part of this team.”
Michael Stapleford of KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM pointed out, “The vast majority of your department does the right thing each and every day and has certainly good intent, and we certainly appreciate their service each and every day. But with 600 plus personnel in the department, every once in a while, someone goes astray, and you hold them accountable, and it’s found. So I certainly want to commend you for that.”
Community cleanups have been occurring.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This continues to be one of my staples of my regime as a community policing, true community policing, cleanups, which I call better, cleaner, safer streets. Better cleaner, safer neighborhoods. It’s proven fact that clean neighborhoods are safer. It’s proven fact dirty neighborhoods are more apt to have crime. But we want a clean place for everybody to live, work and play, so we do it ourselves. We try to partner up with our community as much as we can. We have our anti graffiti initiatives. We don’t see shopping carts, graffiti and trash because we’re on top of it. We had two large scale projects put together by our team members. One was down south, around the 32 mile marker. Last week, we showed up with probably close to 30 people. I was out there myself, and we had our on duty officers, our other officers who were coming to volunteer. We had our academy classes out there, and just a wide variety of men and women from the sheriff’s office. We spent a couple hours in the morning cleaning up the neighborhood, and we had just a dump truck full of trash, which is our plan to get this stuff off the road, get it to the landfills and keep our community environment safe and secure. Then a couple days later, we had a large scale one at the 107 mile marker under what’s called Jewfish Creek Bridge, which is by Gilbert’s resort. We worked in conjunction with the owner of that property out there, and their staff. Also Weber. Weber is a subcontractor/contractor for FDOT who takes care of the roads and bridges for Florida Department of Transportation. They’ve been a great partner to us. So we had the crew from Weber, we had the crew from Gilbert’s, and we had the crew from the sheriff’s office all working in conjunction, a large turnout there again, probably close to 30 people. We had our dump trailer out there, and we filled it up with just a mass amount of trash from the land as well as the shoreline, trying to protect our environment and resources. So it’s always good to show this partnership, the collaboration between us and our citizens, but also our efforts and abilities to keep our community safe, clean, secure. So I’m always proud of these community cleanups. It’s a lot of work to get it done, and we do it continuously, and we’re always focused on trying to do what others won’t do, or just focus on it has to get done. No one else is going to do it. So we need to be leaders. We need to step up, and we need to do our part to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
Resource violations are also another way MSCO protects the environment.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’ve been really busy. We had two cases, actually over the weekend, of people who had Goliath Grouper, which we know is a protected species. One case involved the Channel Two Bridge, and we had a goliath grouper that was taken from the water and was no longer alive that we cited that person. We also had over the weekend, same location just days later, Channel Two Bridge, one of my patrol officers did a resource check by vehicle on that area. We had a person who was in possession of an undersized and obviously not allowed to have possessed anyway, Goliath Grouper and also was in possession of a black angelfish, which is also known as a French Angel Fish. These are not allowed to be possessed other than four aquariums, if you have the right licensing to catch it and keep it alive. This person had kept it after catching it and killed it, so both were not allowed to possess, one because it’s protected and one because it’s just not allowed to be harvested for food. So we cited that person. Then a guy from the Dade County was fishing down here, who had an excess of 20 fish, and they were small little snapper. Everyone was no bigger than the palm of your hand. This guy clearly was a constant fisherman that just fishes all the time. You could see how he had these fish. He had the heads cut off, he had them gutted, scaled. Clearly, this person does this in a mass quantity, this isn’t someone just catching fish and throwing a cooler, unbeknownst to him, this person is a quasi professional fisherman, based on the number, the size, obviously, was in serious question, but just how we processed these things and put them in a cooler. So we actually took him to jail, due to the quantity of fish that he had captured, over the bag limits, undersized every one of them and clearly the harvesting mechanism he’s doing clearly shows this is a guy who does this almost every week. He needed to go to jail. He’s destroying our environment. These fish never have a chance to reproduce, and this is why we have bag limit season and size limits because of people like this, and if we don’t do something about it, there’ll be nothing left for future generations and that’s what we have to do, is protect these resources. Make sure that they don’t go extinct, that they exist. Make sure that we can go out there ourselves and catch our five snapper and have a nice dinner. Make sure that our kids and grandkids and visitors alike have opportunities that most of us enjoyed and experienced as we grew up in Keys. Almost all are coming out of Miami Dade County, majority, probably 95% of the people that we experience in the poaching, illegal harvesting, are Dade County residents coming to fish, whether by boat or whether it be land or bridges, the majority are of Dade County influenced.”
Drugs also continue to wash up on our shores.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Probably 95% of drugs that come to the Keys come from Miami Dade County into Monroe, but we are experiencing continuous super heavy volume of cocaine that is floating up in the Upper Keys, Islamorada, Key Largo areas. Over the weekend, again, we had 16 kilos that were found up on a beach in the Islamorada area. I. There’s generally 25 kilos to a bale. This one was partially open, so somewhere nine other kilos were potentially either picked up or floating or didn’t get found, but 16 were located. We know a kilo weighs 2.2 pounds. So we’re talking this is 30 something pounds of pure, uncut cocaine that was located. The sheriff’s office took possession of it, later on turned over to the federal government for destruction. But again, when the federal government gets these, they evaluate them, they look at them. They look for markings. This one had some kind of dune buggy markings on the outside. The markings generally determine who’s owns that load, where it’s going to. It’s not uncommon to have loads which have multiple markings, meaning more than one person’s receiving that product. But they’ll look at how long it’s been a water? They’ll try to test it for purity. What’s a purity level? They’ll try to determine origin. Where did it come from? Is this Peru, is this Columbia? What part? Potentially to track it down to cartels. So a lot of this is based on intel driven. It’s why the government’s looking at it before they destroy it, but the chance of charging somebody is zero. It’s more where did it come from? Is this part of a load that they knew was coming? And just for intelligence reasons.”
Traffic stops continue to uncover drugs and other weapons.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “The two most dangerous parts of a police officer’s job are domestic related calls and traffic stops and traffic stops, we do yield a lot of drugs, craziness, guns, different stuff. You never know who you’re stopping, why. We did have a female that was stopped on a traffic stop that we smelled marijuana coming out of the car. She had a warrant for her arrest. In the Upper Keys, a traffic stop, became very violent, was kicking at the officers, refused commands to get out of the car when they were trying to get a hold of her, was kicking, kicked the officer several times, pulling, resisting, to the point that they finally had to pull a taser out, and they pointed the taser at here, and she had a little red dot, she all of a sudden, complied, which is good. We got her out as we were trying to handcuff her, we got one handcuff on her, and once one handcuff was placed, then she became violent again, pulling, turning, twisting, trying to get away. We ultimately did get her secured, but we did charge her with battery on law enforcement, resisting with violence, resisting arrest, related charges, drug charges that came out of this car as well, between marijuana and different drug paraphernalia and other stuff in the car. We just continue to say is, this is one of the very difficult, challenging jobs in America, but one of the most rewarding jobs in America, too, as well. But there’s no shortage of excitement, action, adrenaline. Every single call is different. But we always say, you never know what you’re getting into until you’re into it, and things can go from zero to 180 in a matter of a split second.”
A juvenile case where child neglect charges were filed occurred recently, too.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This could have been so sad, it could have been deadly. One of my patrol officers was driving down the road when the driver of the patrol car and a couple other citizens all about the same time, all see a two year old boy who’s just wandering, getting ready to step into traffic. Everyone stomps on their brakes and runs out to try to whisk this kid before he gets hit by a car. We find this two year old toddler unattended by the side of the road, just wandering around. We eventually tracked it back down to a residence pretty close by. We encounter the male, the father of this child, who immediately is very aggressive with us, agitated, mad at us, and trying to grab the kid from us. We’re like, nope, right now we’re responsible for the safety, security, of this child, and we have to see what’s going on. Why is this kid out there? Why is he not attended? The father appears to be intoxicated. We start talking to the father, find out what’s going on. We find the house. The door’s open. We see the father impaired. The father keeps coming up with different stories, that he just left for two minutes. Went here to get something, went here to see somebody. The stories changed several times about what he was doing, where he was at, how long he was gone. So we ultimately made a decision to arrest him for child neglect. He neglected his child, let the two year child unattended and unattended with the ability to leave the house, and in this case, wander, almost walking in front of cars before thank God a sheriff’s office deputy and couple good citizens saw this, and all took the immediate action to try to prevent something catastrophic from occurring. So we did arrest this numbskull, and we did notify Children and Family Services, made a report to DCF so they can look and follow up on this, so no matter what happens if the father has any type of contact, that DCF can make sure that the household is safe and secure and that there’s inspections that occur to make sure that this child won’t be put in his harm’s way again. So, just stuff we see each and every day is scary.”
Five people were also charged with human smuggling recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s sad to see when the federal government doesn’t step up do their job. This is one of those cases by the US Attorney’s Office, custom Border Protection did a great job. They did their job. They did what they’re trained and trying to do is disrupt criminal activity. They were working a case that we were not involved in at the time, and it was a human trafficking case where migrants were being smuggled in, via the Bahamas into the United States, 20 non-US citizens, 13 from Ecuador and seven from China, were Chinese nationals, which, for Homeland Security, is more of a threat and concern. This is a very well organized smuggling operation. Most time we think smuggling, they pull up and just drop them off on the beach, and people run every which way, and the smuggler goes back and leaves his gunboat and goes away. This case here, they picked them up and brought them from foreign countries into the Bahamas. Had a plan to then bring them across. They had a lookout boat with communications. They had land based vehicles staged to pick up and then drive the people out of the Keys up to some location. So they had drivers for vehicles, drivers for boats. Very well organized, communications set up to say when to come across, the coast is clear. Look out boat when they got to a certain point would call in a distress call to the marine to try to have any marine assets diverted to where they say they’re in distress, thus trying to pull marine assets away from where the point of landing is going to be, based on GPS coordinates, which is right where the vehicles are located, on County Road 905, behind the woods, where the drivers would wait for the boat, get the migrants, escort them through the woods to the waiting vehicles, load them into the vehicles, and then take them to Miami Dade County, but they were subsequently stopped and brought back into Monroe for processing by CBP, so all events appear to be a great case. They seized two vehicles, they seized two boats. Had five smugglers, apprehended 20 migrants. They had good probable cause statements. We had a lot of really good stuff happening to approve this case. Seemed like a great case, all but a bow on top, and next day, US Attorney declines to prosecute, which means that they were just going to let these smugglers go and no accountability. So myself and our state attorney are not going to tolerate this. They would have been better charged under federal law, but in the absence of federal government doing their job, the sheriff’s office and state attorneys are going to step up and keep this community, safe, secure, hold people accountable and try to make this place a deterrent of not a place to commit crimes. Because someone else doesn’t do it, we’re going to do it. So under state law for alien smuggling, migrant smuggling, we arrested all five, a female and four males, four from Dade County, one was from West Palm and we arrested those five people. They were put into our jail. The judge placed a bond of $100,000 on each one of them. As of Friday, three were still in jail. Two had bonded out, and the judge placed what’s called a Nebbia hearing on them, which says within three days of being bonding out, they have to prove that the proceeds they used to bond out were legal, not illegal funds, that they weren’t illicit proceeds. So we’re going to try to send a message, either don’t smuggle at all, or if you do it, don’t do it here, because we’re going to put you in jail. If the Feds won’t do their job, then the sheriff and the state attorney will. But again, CBP did a great job. US Attorney dropped the ball.”