Sheriff Rick Ramsay talks about his trip to Europe and proves why graffiti won’t be tolerated in Monroe County

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 sheriff has returned from a trip overseas.

He said, “I was over in Europe for about two weeks. I was in France, I was in Italy, I was in Spain. So I had a good chance to see a lot of the European areas and cities and various areas, and had a good time. The weather was great, about 70 during daytime, about 60 at night time. So really nice weather and beautiful architectural, the cathedrals, the Coliseum, the stuff was just stunning. So that was positive. The negative, and for me, is a little bit more close to home is people know how I am so anti graffiti. I found Europe to be very heavily graffiti everywhere, everything, if it’s not nailed down, it’s spray painted. I found it to be a little dirty, some trash and garbage, not as clean as I would have hoped. As I spoke to some of the locals about the graffiti and some of the stuff there, we know that to be a crime, and it gives an appearance of crime and a belief of gang crime violence, as I spoke to the locals about it, they’re so used to it that it’s just part of life. As I talk to them, they try to justify it, telling me that it’s expressions that they call it, it’s street art. So I think they’ve come to the point in time that they’ve lost control of it so bad, and now they’re trying to put a nice shiny coat of wax on it and make it something good when it’s not. Just like here, I tell our listeners all the time, we don’t have graffiti in Monroe. Once we see it, we remove it in 24 hours. We want a clean, beautiful community. We know that clean communities are safer communities and dirty and disheveled neighborhoods are more apt to have crime, and when you do see, in this case, a lot of graffiti and trash and garbage, even if it is safe, it gives the appearance of an unsafe community to the average person. So if you believe it, if you sense it, then it’s potentially rowdy in your mind, and your sense of safeness is diminished. So it reinforces what we’re doing here, why it’s so important, and how we are so different from some other areas, when we really take pride in our communities and make sure we have better, cleaner, safer streets, better, cleaner, safer neighborhoods. So while it was, again, a beautiful trip, I’m glad I went. The disappointing part was the graffiti and the garbage. I think they could do a lot better. I heard a lot of other people that were on vacation there had a comment, or I was talking to and had commented as well about the graffiti. It surprised them. I was a little prepared, because I knew people have been to Europe in the last few years, and they said you’re going to really struggle when you go there, you’re going to see a lot of graffiti. And we know how you are. And I know people taking trips come back and said we saw graffiti and dirty cities over there, and it made us really believe what you say and understand more so why you do what you do to make sure our community is clean and graffiti clean. It makes us really understand it better. When we saw it, it really hit home and we said, man, if the sheriff was over here now, he’d go crazy. When I was over there and I was going crazy. I wanted to go pick a can of spray paint. I wanted to start spray painting it out.”

The election happened while the sheriff was overseas.

He said, “I am happy it’s over. I was a little stressed out while we’re there with the election, not knowing what was going to happen, but I am happy that at least it’s over, one way the other. We can try to calm down, get the pressure down a little bit in society. We can try to better unify. This last year, I thought we saw just such a division in this country. If you weren’t on this side, you were the enemy, and if you were on that side, you were the enemy. It just got so far that people couldn’t even have an opinion, a perspective. So I’m glad it’s over and we can move on as a country. We hope that we can continue to get good support from state, local, federal, our citizens to support law enforcement. It’s so critical for us to be efficient and effective. Obviously, we need to prosecute cases, hold people accountable. We have to send a strong messaging out that stuff’s not going to be tolerated, and that’s what I think is coming our way. Whoever is in charge, whatever it is, we’re going to keep doing our job.”

An armed man was arrested for assault and battery in Big Pine Key recently.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “There’s a couple that were walking up the Sands subdivision down the road, and they heard a woman screaming for help, and they saw a male trying to hold her, detain her. At some point time, she broke away and ran screaming for them to help, and they kind of started trying to intervene a little bit when the male got really hostile and aggravated with them. Eventually, he retreated into a house, came back out with a firearm, pointed the firearm back at the two witnesses who saw what was going on were trying to halfway intervene with this young lady who’s in crisis. The gun was pointed at them. He pulled the trigger multiple times, and the gun went, click, click, click, click. Thank God. So we got a report. We eventually got into the situation and figured it out, eventually arrested him for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, for not allowing this female to leave. It was a domestic dispute between the male and female, and we know domestics can get so bad so fast and turn deadly so quickly. So we’re able to get him off the streets and that’s a good thing for sure, get some court intervention and some oversight. This person is a detriment to society at this point in time, he was willing to take a gun and point it at somebody who did nothing and pull the trigger. It’s a scary situation, and it goes to show what our law enforcement officers have to deal with each and every day, and how difficult and challenging our jobs are.”

Another domestic situation occurred on Stock Island off of Shrimp Road recently.

Sheriff Ramsay said it was the “wee hours a morning about like 12:50 a.m., a woman about 30-ish, has three young kids in her car. She’s in the domestic dispute with her other half, the male, and she starts trying to run him down with the car. She crashes into his car several times, purposely hitting it. She crashes into his work truck purposely. She tried to run him over, all while kids are in this car. It’s bad enough. It’s so sad that you’re at this level of violence, that you’re trying to run a person down that you’re smashing your car into their car, their car into somebody else’s car that they drive. But you have your kids in the car, putting them at risk and harm physically, but also emotionally, psychologically, to be seeing this go on and you’re teaching them that acts of violence are okay. So, we ultimately did arrest her for multiple charges there. It was pretty clear what we transpired. We saw the damage, saw the cars. We notified DCF to take these children into protective custody. The officers have to deal with this really sad situation about children. It’s so hard on them. So many of my men and women have kids at home. They can really relate to this, these kids in this situation, it’s hard for them to fathom. How could someone do this? How could you have kids in the car? What is going on with society? It’s hard to believe people can be so stupid, and for every action, there’s a reaction. To think you can do this and nothing’s going to happen to you, just like the person on Big Pine, pointing the gun, pulling the trigger, you don’t think that something’s going to happen, that you’re going to be held accountable, that the police are going to get involved? So people, if they would use logic versus emotion, they would be so much better off. So would we in law enforcement and society.”

A 45-year-old Key Largo man was charged with sexual abuse of a juvenile recently.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a case handled by our major crimes case. This was the case was reported about some type of inappropriate adult to male juvenile contact, sexual related. We investigated it. We determined that there was probable cause. We got a warrant. We got the state attorneys involved. The judge signed off on it. We ultimately did arrest this person for these lewd, lascivious sexual acts with a minor. So, so sad. We see this. We talk about it on a regular basis, inappropriate contact with juveniles. We don’t understand why people do this crazy, sad stuff. They’re destroying people’s lives. They’re making the victims of these type of cases hold this scar and emotional for the rest of their lives. This is something that just they can’t shake. It’s it forever. So we’re always happy to get these sexual offenders off the street. If they sexual offend one, they generally have sexually assaulted more than one person in the past, and will continue to if we don’t put a stop to it. So we held him accountable, arrested him, put him in MCJ where he needs to be. The hope that this young person gets the psychological counseling, emotional help they need to try to cope with something so tragic in your life. Sad, sad, sad, for sure.”

Another handgun incident in road rage happened recently on No Name Key.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “This initially happened around Watson Boulevard, where he was allegedly speeding, a very high rate of speed, and that’s a really slow speed zone for a lot of reasons, because of the residential, protected key deers, because the road just narrows and not great conditions. A lot of people walk, travel, ride, in this case, two people were riding bicycles when this motorist flew by in what they believe was a reckless, dangerous manner, a little bit later on, around the No Name Bridge, the two bicyclists and the motorist came together and got into a verbal confrontation about his driving. He became agitated and did not like the fact that they were questioning how he could drive and his driving abilities, so he pulled out a firerm, pointed and brandished and threatened the two people on the bicycle, and then eventually took off. We got a report of it, a phone call. We sent deputies out, interviewed the two victims in this case, got some descriptions. We’re able to eventually track down who this individual was. We did get a warrant for his arrest for an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and did arrest him and hold him accountable as well. We keep saying why? You’re in a dispute of how you’re driving. Well, if you’re not driving like you’re supposed to, maybe you should be a lesson learned. Difference opinions are okay in life, just like politically, we should be able to have political a difference in opinions but still break bread together, but here as well, this is no reason to be engaged in this. He could have just gotten in his car and left, could have called law enforcement. Could have been calm, cool, rational conversation. Could apologize, could have done one of 20 things, but the action he decided to do was not a logical decision. It was an emotional decision. Emotional decision, go back to your car, pick up, brandish a firearm, point it at somebody, threatened their lives. Again, you have to believe that for every action there’s a reaction, that you will have some accountability, that you just can’t point guns at people, and don’t think law enforcement are going to be looking for you. At the end of the day, if you look back at this, what did he gain versus lose? He gained nothing and he lost everything. So we just hope people can listen and think about these poor decisions, how adversely they impact people’s lives and hopefully, if they’re ever in a similar situation, that they can just take a breath, walk away, don’t argue, call the police. You have a right to protect yourself if your life is in intimate jeopardy. Outside of that, you don’t be the aggressor and you don’t want to try to escalate a situation. Our goal always should be to try to de escalate a situation. You don’t want to put yourself in a situation not knowing the person that you’re in argument with, whether they have a gun, whether they’re violent, whether you think you’re big and bad, but maybe you’re not as big as bad and you think you are when someone calls your bluff.”

There were also some resource violations as well.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “We always say, this is not our job, but we want to be a part of the solution, not part of the problem. We want to help our friends in FWC, which are understaffed and there’s so many people poaching and destroying our environment, we have to do what we can to help aid and assist, to protect our resources. So my marine officers and my patrol officers on land and sea and bridge checks and on the waters continue to do our part to try to make sure the waterways are safe, but also that we protect resources, hold people accountable. So we’re ever week getting people for mostly, generally going to be undersized snapper, yellowtail Lane snapper, Mango snapper, over the bag limit is what we see majority of the time. We see these time and time again, these fish about the size of palm of your hand. We don’t understand it, because there’s not even any meat to get out of there, small little medallion. It’s not even worth it. But yet, they continue to reoffend. So for us, it’s job security. We’re going to continue to be vigilant and try to protect our resources, protect our community, protect our way of life, make sure that these resources are available for commercial industry, for recreational fishing, and make sure they’re available for future generations.”

The correctional officer training academy class recently had some graduates.

Sheriff Ramsay said, “The College of Florida Keys is such a great partner. We just graduated that class. We continue to put classes on. We’re always looking for people that have interest in law enforcement, corrections, patrol, civilians. We always have jobs, but difficult, challenging job, for sure, the work in a bureau of corrections. I spent time there myself. It’s a challenging job, but I’m proud of these men and women who went through a vigorous training, are now going to enter this career and do good stuff to help aid and assist and keep our community safe and secure. So congratulations to them, for sure.”