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 MCSO recently was re-accredited nationally.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Listeners have heard me talk about accreditation, how important it is living by the best practices, the best standards in the industry. We hold five accreditations state and nationally. This was a real big one. It’s National Law Enforcement accreditation. We are up for a re-accreditation and I was out there in California in the Los Angeles, Orange County area, to go before an interview and then before the full commission to get our accreditation approved. We were successful, and we are once again, re-accredited nationally as a nationally professional law enforcement agency, complying with 310 standards and being evaluated to prove, to show that we are complying with all the standards set in the industry. So I’m really proud of the men and women of the sheriff’s office. This is a big achievement. I’m proud to say that we hold again, five accreditations under a nationally and state accreditation bureaus. Those are really, really important.”
The wildfire has finally been resolved.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Thank God it’s finally been resolved, but it has caused a lot of the issues for people trying to get into the Keys, get out of the Keys, get to work, get home to their families and kids, both directions, businesses where employees could not make it to work. So the impacts in a short time were pretty significant. We did what we could. We think the communication from Miami Dade County could have been better to Monroe. There wasn’t a lot of communication. So we were trying to figure out day by day what was going on when the road was going to be open, when it was closed. The sheriff’s office did the best we could to put the message out through our app or our online sites. So we were trying to put up timely information. The roads open, the roads closed, the roads open, the roads closed because there wasn’t much of a message getting out from anybody. Unfortunately, I think we could have done better to have better communication, cooperation going on. But regardless, they’ve got to make these decisions at times for the betterment of public safety when the fire is jumping the road or the visibility to zero. So I get why they did it, but it’s interesting that it shut down both Card Sound and the 18 mile stretch, which usually one side is shut down, you can still flow traffic the other. It just shows the potential isolation that we have down here with our limited road system.”
There have been pedestrian accidents that ended in deaths recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Really difficult time in Islamorada, just kind of an anomaly, a sad time that within about a week or week and a half, four people lost their lives. No real set pattern. First was a homeless male on a bicycle, about 7am was riding his bike, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, just made an immediate turn in front of an oncoming car who was not speeding, had no time to react and struck the male who was pronounced deceased at the scene. The driver remained on scene. Then we had a couple, an older couple visiting were crossing the road at the 80 Mile Marker, when they both crossed and crossed in front of an oncoming car at night time, a dark area as it is, car never saw them. By the time they did, did not have time to stop. Struck both people. One person died on scene, the other person was air evacuated out to the mainland and succumbed to her injuries. FHP investigated that case. The driver again remained on scene. And then the other day, about the 90 mile marker, we had a 71 year old male who was walking on the pedestrian path when a car left its lane of travel and went off the road onto the path and struck the pedestrian on the path. The driver remained on scene. It was an electric car that has the automated drive capacity. It told investigators that he had the car on auto drive and was looking down doing something. Next thing he knew, the car was riding on the bike path and struck the pedestrian. He remained on scene as well. All three drivers were not suspected to be any alcohol or drugs. All three drivers remained on scene. All three drivers were cooperative with law investigators. All three drivers were not deemed to be driving at high speed, reckless manners. The only question is the one car that went off the road, whether that was legitimately a malfunction of the car, or whether that’s an excuse the person made who went off the road that was doing something different. So no real pattern of what could change, do something different, not like this is same area where these things are occurring, but it was just such a tragic loss of life. It continues to tell us when the two people that got struck at the 80, you’ve got to look left, look right, look left. It’s just sad to see any loss of life, but let alone four people in a short period of time.”
A Tampa, Florida man fled into the mangroves after being pursued by police last week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was a lot going on for just a simple retail theft, which would not have been a big deal for the person, but he went into a tackle shop in Islamorada and stole a pair of fishing boots and left the store. The store owner confronted him outside and got his boots back, but called us to report the theft. We put a Be On the Lookout For the vehicle. We conducted a traffic stop around the Snake Creek Bridge. The car initially stopped. Our officer was getting ready to get out of the car when the driver bowed out, took flight. A short foot pursuit took place until the person jumped into Snake Creek, so jumped into the water. We had another passenger car we detained. We set up a perimeter. We had our friends from FHP, FWC, helping to assist us. We spent a couple hours out there. FHP brought in drones, and we were able to with the drones track and locate the person, but he was so deep embedded into the mangroves, we just couldn’t even get in there by boat, by water or by land. This went on for a long period of time trying to get this person who was seen down canals, hiding under docks, hiding in the mangroves. Well, sheriff’s office brought in a drone later on, when we had to replenish the drone, and this was just a multi hour ordeal, and we left some undercover officers in the area, hoping he would surface. Sometime later, we got a call from the marina on Snake Creek Bridge letting us know that they saw the person coming out of the mangroves and going into the creek, and we sent a patrol boat out, and we sent out a good Samaritan boat with one of our officers on it, and we found the suspect clinging to a channel marker in about waste deep water. By this time, he been in water for hours, probably freezing. That water is pretty chilly. It’s still only probably in the 70s, at that point in time, he gave up. It was a male from Tampa, who later on admitted to stealing the boots. They didn’t have the money, his occupation listed as a fisherman, so I’m just not sure it was worth it to go through all this mess over a pair of fishing boots. Just get a job, earn some money and buy the boots you want. But we’re vigilant. It showed strong partnership with FWC, FHP, the sheriff’s office, all working together to combat crime, hold people accountable, get people out of our community who are bad people, and that’s what happened here.”
Ten different immigrants with illegal status were apprehended with the help of the sheriff’s office recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’re not going after the average people, just going to work, doing their jobs. Our focus is, like the government’s focus, career criminals, violent criminals, criminals who are here in this country illegally committing crimes while in this country, those are prime targets for us to be helping and assisting. The government asked for our assistance on some cases, and working with them, we did help round up 10 illegal immigrants in this country and those had serious charges. Nine out of 10 were convicted sexual offenders, and sexual offenders are more likely to continue to reoffend. Sexual offenders are more likely to target juveniles, children first, females second. We have to protect our kids and our women in our community at all costs. The 10th person was a career criminal who have been arrested multiple times on major crimes, so all 10 were terrible people. These people are detrimental to the safety and well being of this community, our citizens and visitors alike, and this is a good tool to help make this community safer and get rid of garbage, and that’s what we did here. I have no problems saying that we helped the government in these cases. Again, we’re not going to job sites looking for the men and women who are just here trying to make a living and take care of their families, but when you are a criminal committing crimes in this community or this country, as far as I’m concerned, you need to be eradicated. There’s different views on this, we know. I think it’d be hard pressed for anybody to see these 10 people and see their criminal backgrounds of sexual predators, I don’t know how anybody could support them not being picked up and deported. That would be hard. I don’t care what your background is and what your thoughts are, how you could support, protect and defend sexual offenders over our citizens, would be hard to believe.”
Scams of thieves pretending to be law enforcement are on the rise again.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’re definitely not going to be contacting you. We’re not going to be calling, texting, emailing, asking for money, any matter or form. We’re not going to be talking about you missed the jury duty. You have a warrant for your arrest. You need an ankle monitor. That’s just not going to happen. We’re not going to be calling you to pay. You can’t pay yourself out of a warrant, and you can’t pay yourself out of not coming to jury duty. It just doesn’t happen. And we’re not going to ask for cards or money orders or PayPal or anything else in any different forms. So if someone calls you, reaches out text, emails and other forms trying to get something from you, it’s going to be a scam. We always recommend whether it be law enforcement, whatever they say they are, whether they say they’re any other services, just to hang up, contact the direct number you can find of the agency they’re representing themselves to be, and just get the straight scoop. Don’t take the word of someone on the phone or someone who’s emailing or texting you. They’re almost always going to be a scam. People are trying to do everything they can to get your money and scams becoming more and more realistic. They’ve become so realistic where they can clone your phone number, they can ghost your number, they can have your caller ID come up and say, sheriff’s office, aqueduct authority, Keys Energy, whatever it is. They’ve used my name, Sheriff Rick Ramsey. Just because they drop a name or the phone number looks to be what it is, don’t ever give any personal information. They want to keep you on the phone. When they won’t let you get off the phone, there’s a reason why, because they’re trying to work on your emotions. They’re trying to get you fired up. They’re trying to get you to believe that you’re in trouble. They know if you hang up for a minute and you take a breath and you think about it, that you’re going to say, wait a minute, that doesn’t sound right, or you’re going to ask somebody else, and they’re going to say, absolutely not. That’s always the thing they’re trying to keep you on the phone. We’ve seen people keep people on the phone for 30 minutes while they’re driving to the in the car, driving to Walgreens to pick up gift cards while they’re still in line.”