Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
September 11 Remembrance Day is coming up.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I’ll be at the Firehouse Museum in Key West myself, and we have services going throughout the Keys, but I generally try to do the one in Key West, close to my headquarters. I’ll spend time out there and I’ll probably say a few words, and as well, remember this day in history, which is so tragic, and we just can’t forget, can’t forget the lives lost and what took place a long time ago, for sure. But new generations are out there now. Let’s re-remind them, they’ll never know what took place. We’ve got to keep sending the message what took place and people out there that are dead set on hurting this country, and we’ve got to be vigilant to try to protect the country and also remember, those people that made the ultimate sacrifices.”
A big federal investigation and operation took place late last week where 27 arrests were made related to cocaine trafficking and distribution.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “A lot of these names on the list did not surprise me. I knew the majority of these people. We’re talking about 27 people, most of which are from the Keys, most of which are from the central part of the county where I reside in. So I reside in the central part. So a lot of these names are people I know, or I knew their parents growing up in this community. So not too many names are strange. It’s sad to see, sad to see people throwing their lives away. But definitely a few people on the list were not a surprise to me at all. Some people on the list were frequent flyers with the sheriff’s office. So were really no surprise there, but we talk it about every week, these drugs are just destroying people’s lives. It’s just hard to believe people were wasting their time on working hard to buy these drugs or are on drugs, or are greedy selling drugs to try to make money so they have no real job and not caring that they’re hurting, killing people. We’re going to be vigilant on a war against drugs, but it’s a very difficult, challenging war, for sure, but again, to see that organized group of 27 people and so hats off to the FBI, they did a really good job. I know some are from Miami Dade County that were involved, but most appear to be Keys related. The details have yet to come out fully, but they look to be some serious stuff. We’re talking about some decent quantity of drugs that the government indicates these people were selling and putting on the streets. So hey if you’re going to play, you’re going to pay. I don’t have much sympathy for people that are involved in the drug trade. Some of these people were boat captains, worked hard to have captain’s licenses and run businesses and have families and they just threw it away for nothing, out of greed. Threw away jobs running big, beautiful boats, threw away I think there was, like, three or four boat captains that are running some beautiful boats, gorgeous, a lot of these people here have kids, families. You have to pay bills, take care of them. They risk the safety, well being and structure of their families out of simple greed, which is sad, sad to say.”
Some of the people are looking at possibly decades in prison because of this.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “People say all these years up to life in prison, how can that be fair when you’re selling drugs? Well, okay, you look at the volume that we’re talking about over a progressive period of time, we look at how many, just hundreds of lives have been destroyed. People lost families, lost businesses, lost homes, lost everything. How many people we’re never going to know, died as a result of those drugs that were being started in there and put out and laced with fentanyl, maybe, and killing people, overdoses, and what’s the financial cost to the taxpayers and the cities and communities? I don’t know. I’m not convinced that those excessive sentences are bad. We have to send a deterrent message, make it not worthwhile to do this. But also, we say again, all those people, all those drugs, we couldn’t count how many people have died as a result, or how many lives are destroyed. So why should their lives be any better?”
A drug charge happened just the other day as a result of a traffic stop where 13 amphetamine pills were found without prescription, 24.5 grams of marijuana, and a handgun was also found.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a traffic stop. The driver was known to have a suspended license. We stopped this driver and this vehicle with driving license suspended. We had an odor of marijuana coming out the car, very heavy. A supplement search to arrest and the probable cause for the smell of marijuana with no medical marijuana card did bring up 13 amphetamine pills with no prescription, felony amounts of marijuana. This was a 26 year old male out of Fort Pierce area. This also occurred in the Marathon area, around 107th Street, and the person also had a 45 caliber loaded handgun inside the car, which continues to tell you it’s not uncommon. It’s more common to have drugs and guns combined. So we have drugs, not uncommon you’re going to find a weapon in the car. All this is scary for officer safety, public safety. So again, we get a person who’s an unlicensed driver, which means they have no insurance, which means they’re a threat to safety, security, people on the road, we recover the drugs, which, again, are a threat to our citizens, and we take the gun off the street, which is a direct threat to safety, well being of police and citizens. So good job by my team to continue to be proactive, vigilant and deal with this. But we also see what a traffic stop can yield.”
There were other drug arrests last week, also for trafficking drugs.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a frequent flyer. This individual that we arrested. he was living around 20th Street in one of the encampment areas. He’s a frequent flyer for drugs the majority of his life, and we weren’t surprised. He had a couple warrants for his arrest already from the sheriff’s office. He had 42 grams of crack laced with fentanyl, plus he had felony amounts of marijuana living on 20th Street in a tent, but he and a large part of his family over the years, have been involved in dispersing street level drugs. When I was a young police officer to now, this continues on and with this family, I’ve seen multiple generations, from generation to generation, one generation teaching the next generation the drug trade. You think that people would want to try to help the next generation not fall into their footsteps and have the life they have. So he’s been a drug dealer as long as I’ve known him. That’s been 40 years and what’s he got the show for it? He’s living on 20th Street in that tent. It just goes to show you, what a waste. But yes, we did get him off the streets for warrants for the drugs, continue to hold him accountable, and he’s back in the jail where he spent a good part of his life in my jail, what a shame.”
Nitrous oxide also has been coming into the county.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We haven’t seen too much of that. Every now and then we do come across the nitrous oxide type case, but we’ve seen two cases within one week. We’ve talked about the week before that the two adults and the one juvenile coming in from Dade where they bought a whole tank, then we just had this case a few days later. So it was unusual to see two similar cases in a short period of time. But again, all this is part of proactive policing. All this is part of the traffic enforcement resulting in other related crimes, trying to deal with the traffic issues as well as the fruits of our labor that come out of these. This young lady here is where she needs to be as well, in my jail. We’re just keep hammering these drug users and drug dealers, and keep trying to send a strong message.”
A man was recently arrested for felony child sexual abuse against a 12-year-old in Tavernier.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “These are some of the, saddest, heinous cases you can come across, anything dealing with kids just, it breaks your heart. My major crimes units did a really good job. This is a 65 year old male from the Tavernier area. We actually got search warrants for his property and we had arrest warrants and search warrants. So we had arrest warrants for lewd and lascivious on a child under the age of 12 with a $200,000 bond. But we also had search warrants to search his property, his residence, any all electronic computer databases. So our teams did a great job arresting him. We seized all his computers, all his phones, all electronic devices where we’re going to have forensics go through those, see on what’s on those. See if there’s any other type of child pornography or anything that we can either help foster this case, or build other cases, and then potential other suspects may derive out of these electronic devices. These are just so sad. These are just kids, just trying to go through life and have adults do really sad, disgusting stuff to them. It just breaks your heart. There’s so many of these cases that don’t get reported out there. I don’t know, it’s just, it’s a tough job sometimes.”
Then there’s the national case from Georgia where a shooting occurred at a middle school and the shooter was a 14-year-old who got the semi-automatic rifle he used as a Christmas present from his father.
In the Keys, the school district and all law enforcement work hard to keep kids safe.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We do have a strong relationship. We just a week or two, actually had an unannounced inspection from the state. They came down to check for School Safety and it’s a surprise to make sure that you don’t know they’re coming. I talked to the superintendent and talked to my school resource officer. We got a perfect audit. They were really impressed with my security teams, showing up and what was going on and being challenged. We’ve got to keep our kids safe at all costs. This situation in Georgia was really sad. Some of these cases are predictable. That was a 14 year old male who had issues with the family, who had just transferred to another school, like two days earlier, brand new to the school. Sometimes they transfer a problem and then bad things, unfortunately, do develop at some point on. We’re always watching this. Anytime I see any potential threat, we take any threat immediately responsive. We do have a situation here where, last week, on Friday, we had a concern about a 14 year old male who had come in from out of state and was living with a another parent. They’re a divorced family, and was having issues in school and threats and other problems, and the parent didn’t want to deal with them, so just shipped them off to the other parent here in the Keys, which only moves a problem from one area to another. So this child being here, we thought was a threat. There was some information we had, I can’t really discuss it, but got to the point that I felt that I was concerned, that I directed my teams to move forward with what’s called a risk protection order on this individual, kept in contact with the school as well. I think the school was moving to take some action against this juvenile, but myself, what I can control, because I had teams working Friday and Saturday, and we got an emergency risk protection order put before a judge on Saturday, had a judge sign the risk protection order on this minor, and we served the risk protection order on the parent and the step parent on Saturday and we’re doing everything can to document to make sure the parents are aware of the concerns, the risk, to take any means possible to remove any weapons that could be in place, obviously talk, communicate with our school so they can be aware and take whatever action they see fit, make sure our school resources are aware of this young man.”