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.
There will be $5.4 million that will be returned to the county in unspent revenue from Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I always talk about fiscal responsibility to your listeners. I’m a steward of taxpayers money, and I treat the money like it’s my money out of my pocket. If we don’t need it, we don’t buy it. No doubt, police services are not cheap. But the same token is, I’ve got to be part of the solution, to try to save money, return money, keep taxes down, keep millage rates down, have the ability for our leaders to have this money sent back and do good stuff for the citizens. So in my general operating budget, I’m returning about $5 million I did not spend that on my law enforcement operational budget. I also have municipal police contracts where I provide under contract services, police services above and beyond to like the city of Islamorada, the city of Marathon, and the Key West International Airport. So the airport, I’m returning over $300,000 I did not spend out of that municipal police contract. The city of Islamorada, I’m returning $123,000 in change I did not spend on that contract. And the city of Marathon is getting a little over $22,000 I did not spend on that contract above the quotes, so it just shows good budgeting, good fiscal responsibility, good efforts to watch taxpayers’ money, and in the end, $5.435 million returning back to our taxpayers. So we’re proud of that. I talk about it a lot because it’s so, so important. Most people go over budget or spend their budgets down to zero because they’re afraid if they don’t spend it, they’re going to lose it, which is just poor leadership, poor fiscal responsibility, when your goal is to spend every penny you have so you can get more next year. That’s not how I operate, but I have such a good relationship with our city and county commissioners and council members that they know if I ask for it, I need it and if I don’t need it, I won’t spend it and I’ll return back what I don’t need. So it’s a good trust relationship between both sides. If that relationship didn’t exist, and i thought I’d get penalized by returning money, then I, like most other leaders, would just spend it down. So we’ve got to trust each other on both sides of this issue, commission, councils and the chief law enforcement officer to do the right thing and have that trust between us both. So again, I’m proud to return that money to our citizens.”
Halloween remained safe.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I always want to thank you and your listeners, and thank you for putting the message out for safety first and protecting our children. Very successful year as always, and we really take this serious, as I told you, this is all hands on deck when we have trick or treating with the kids. Marathon, the fishbowl, one of the biggest areas. I have a dozen officers back there. Every year I shut that neighborhood down to one lane only for residents. Plantation, Key Colony, same thing, we shut that down one lane only for residents. I had 13 officers work in that detail, other geographic areas on Big Pine, other areas, we have used manpower allocation to have visibility, presence, rapid response and to make sure our kids in our community are safe and secure. So another really successful year of Halloween trick or treating, law enforcement services, protecting our kids, making it safe and fun for everybody involved.”
There was a grand theft case recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “There’s a local taxi company in the city of Marathon, and they keep their cars parked and staged in the Kmart Plaza, and they keep the cars unlocked, and I’m understanding, they had a hidden key for drivers that can just pick up the cars. So that’s probably not a smart move. We had an individual who is a career criminal, a violent criminal, had just been released from state prison in late May, so just about four months ago, rifling through the car, found the key, and then was driving the car around town. Well, apparently, he was driving in a reckless operation manner that the owner of the company started getting calls about one of your drivers is driving really recklessly and out of control. He determined that there was no car that was supposed to be on the road, and then called us to report the car was stolen after going to Kmart and seeing the car was not there. We put out an immediate BOLO, which stands for be on the lookout for of the car being stolen, and it was entered in the computer as a stolen vehicle. My officers in Islamorada saw the car going northbound, so we stopped the car. We got the driver who had his license suspended several times. He’s a habitual traffic offender with no license who just stole this car, only within the last hour. So we’re able to arrest him for Grand Theft Auto, driving on a suspended license with multiple revocations, and violated his parole, and he’ll be going back to prison. So the story here is, first off, don’t leave the keys in the car. Anytime we have a car stolen from Monroe, it’s because people leave the keys in the car because they’re so relaxed and not worried about cars being stolen. They just leave the keys in the car. It’s a crime of opportunity, which is so preventable. So we’re lucky that he didn’t hurt and kill somebody with this reckless operation. It goes to show the stupid magnitude of career criminals that just got out of prison and you go right back. And when you steal a car instead of driving like you’re supposed to not draw attention, you’re driving recklessly drawing attention to yourself. So just goes to show that stupid is when it comes to these career criminals sometimes, but we’re glad to get him off the streets, hold him accountable, get him out of our community, and he’ll be going back off to prison. One less piece of garbage that we’ve got to deal with.”
Some juveniles broke into a cannabis shop recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is still under investigation, but we’ve had a cannabis, a marijuana shop in Marathon up around 107th Street area, 109th that was broken into, used bricks and rocks to smash out the window and then also rifle through the cannabis van that was parked out front, which was left unlocked. Again, leaving the vehicles unlocked only help to perpetrate crimes. So we had some good video, surveillance video, our crime scene detectives are out there, general patrol crime officers, and we’re working this case where we think there’s a large amount of money and damages and stolen property that we’re dealing with, but we do have suspects in this case, juveniles, all of which are around the 15 years of age range. So this case is ongoing. We expect the arrest to be imminent on this case here. It’s a really good job by my team members, by time we get the report, have suspects and within a matter of hours. It’s really good, hard working case with a lot of police canvassing videos, crime scene related work. But again, these are juveniles who are out there doing stupid stuff, starting their lives off in a really bad manner, burglary and thefts and criminal mischiefs. So when we do pick these kids up, we hope to get court intervention. We hope to get department juvenile justice services involved, the parents, sheriff’s office. We hope we can all work together and have a battle plan to try to get these young people back on track, keep them from reoffending before they destroy their lives. Right now, their lives are salvageable, but if you keep this path up, your life will be less likely to be successful, and you’re more likely to be spending time in jails and prisons, which is the last thing we want. We want to try to identify and correct behavior of these young people while we can, early stages correct the problems, while they’re relatively minor, but it’s still sad to see a group of juveniles doing a burglary and it’s interesting to see what the target is. Target wasn’t something for money. Target was a marijuana shop. So with the parents, the parents have to look not only at the crime, but the parents have to look to obviously, these kids are all smoking marijuana at the minimum, that this has to be a concern for these parents, that these kids are using drugs. As a result of using drugs they’re willing to commit crimes to get those drugs. It just goes to show that there still is always different opinions on marijuana. I truly believe marijuana is a gateway to other drugs. But we’ll see how legislation goes down in the future. Every election year, there’s a push to legalize marijuana. I don’t think it’s been successful in a lot of other states. I think they’ve seen large increases in certain crimes and other stuff and impaired driving as a result, but those are for our citizens and leaders to decide. The Sheriff’s Office, our job is to enforce laws, not create them. But at this point in time, it does have to be a wake up call to the parents of a few issues going on with these people, between drug use, willingness commit crimes to get drugs, and damaging and stealing other people’s properties.”
The power boat races are in town.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “The biggest impact is the city of Key West and Key West Police Department do a great job. The sheriff’s office, our impact was a lot. You probably saw some really large, oversized vessels coming down the Keys, especially the X insurance group. They had truck after truck and boat after boat. So people probably saw the sheriff’s office doing escorts either down the road or getting on and off the road, trying to keep those teams together. So we’ll be working with those as they came down and on the way out again, escorts trying to move those safely through the Keys. We’ll also be having a couple patrol boats every day. Sheriff’s office will have two patrol boats on the circuit, working with the other law enforcement vessels from coast guard, Key West police, trying to make sure that’s safe and secure, people are staying back in the safe zones, they’re not in a race course, trying to respond to any emergencies may arise. So you’ll see MCSO boats down there, like every year, and we want to be a good team partner to our friends at Key West police. I’ll be down tomorrow morning, Tuesday at opening ceremonies with the race crews. I’ll talk to them real fast about the sheriff’s office safety, Trauma Star. We’ve had to use Trauma Star in the past for boat crashes where boat operators were severely injured, and again, Trauma Star will be on standby in an event God forbid there’s a serious crash, we’ll be able to get those racers out to the best possible care as soon as possible.”
Counterfeit money has been seen recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’re seeing a lot of counterfeit $100 bills. So our businesses, especially, just take a second. If you get $100 bill. Just look at the front side. If you look at it, you’ll see in the top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right, it’s going to tell you motion picture money. It’s going to say not legal tender. It’s going to tell you clearly, that it’s fake. It looks real, with the exception of there are in the four corners you’re going to see writing saying that it’s motion picture money, not a legal tender. So be careful when you’re accepting $100 bill that you make sure it’s real, because we’ve seen this about two years ago, a large amount was floating around Marathon, and now we’re seeing a large amount that was brought in. It’s being used for tender, and also it was being dispersed, where they print them, and then they throw them all around on the street so people see it, pick it up. Initially people think it’s real, and then when they figure out it’s not, they still try to use it because they look so real when you’re passing money quickly. So for our businesses, especially in the south end, be careful, be leery. Take a second, look at the money. If you just look at it and read, you’ll see it’s going to say not a legal tender, motion picture money and some other warning signs will be clear on there. So just want to warn everybody that is rampant right now. We’ve got to be vigilant.”