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 been out and about a lot recently.
He said, “I feel like I’m campaigning every day, although I don’t have a campaign. But Friday night was the Marathon chamber installation. So a great chance to see a lot of community leaders from the central part of the county. Saturday night, I was in Islamorada for the Islamorada chamber installation. A good chance to see my friends and leaders from that area, but I regularly almost every weekend or days throughout the week, I have events, commission meetings, council meetings, Rotary, chamber after hour events, installations. I try to make myself accessible, visible, approachable. It’s challenging. I do enjoy a lot of the social stuff, but it does get a little tough every single week I’ve got events, or I’m asked to go to certain places, and I try to do as much as I can.”
MCSO received excelsior status for a recent accreditation.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We are excelsior status for our corrections in law enforcement, our corrections in the jail as well, two law enforcement programs, and that’s the highest standard. Very few agencies are excelsior agencies. Those are agencies which have been accredited for so many years with perfect audits, no outstanding stuff, five times or more. So it shows a pattern of consistency, not just one time around, but consistency every day, year after year after year. Just like with our audits, we have perfect audits for the last 20 years. We’ve got perfect status for accreditations the last 20 years. We show a practice of being accreditation ready every day and taking accreditation and our audits for monies and financial responsibility serious. So I take a lot of pride in that. I always preach a fiscal responsibility, and I take a lot of pride in being classified as a truly professional law enforcement and corrections agency.
There were also nine new graduates from the College of the Florida Keys for Basic Law Enforcement Academy.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “They’ll be the future leaders of this agency. So we did have an academy graduation. Nine people from the sheriff’s office graduated the College of Florida Keys academy program for law enforcement. Today at 9:30 I have a new hire orientation with 11 new officers, the nine that we just had from the academy, and two that are already currently certified in other jurisdictions that are moving here to work with MCSO. So I’ll have 11 new officers that will be mainly assigned to the Central and South stations, and then next month, in November, we start another Basic Law Enforcement Academy. We’ve identified 13 local people we’re going to be sending. We’d like to get a couple more people, so time is running out. If someone had an interest of being sent to the academy, have your expenses paid and being part of the team, there’s probably still a little bit of time, but not much more. So with those 11 that we are going to start today and the 13 coming through next month, we should be in a pretty good position by the time the academy graduates next time around, our staffing level should be pretty consistent on law enforcement. Corrections were still down I think, 15 to 17 positions in our jail systems.”
Two men were arrested for fleeing on Friday. They were stopped on a traffic stop that turned into cocaine related charges.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Both are from the Marathon area. Both are career criminals their entire lives, entire adult life, and even part of their juvenile lives have been riddled with drug sales and drug use. Frequent flyers. So one of my officers went to trial to stop them for some traffic violation in the north end of Marathon, it turned into a pursuit off of US 1, down on some side streets, back off of 107th Street area, trying to evade and lose the officers. Eventually, we did get those individuals stopped. One individual had 30.5 grams of cocaine. That’s a trafficking level of cocaine on him. He was a passenger, so he went to jail for trafficking cocaine. The driver went to jail for other charges of fleeing and eluding. So just sometimes people just don’t change. We hope that people can change. Some people do, but some people, like these two just don’t care about this community. Don’t care about the people they’re hurting killing. Lives they are destroying with their drugs, and their whole lives are wasted, unfortunately on bad stuff. If you look back in their lives one day when they’re no longer here, I don’t think there’ll be a whole lot good to show from these two individuals.”
A sexual predator notification came from a gentleman near the 20th Street Bridge in Marathon.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That 20th Street area is definitely problematic for us. But we do put out notifications for sexual offenders. As soon as we are aware of someone being here, we want our citizens to know who they are, where they’re at, to take due diligence care. We also put that out on the Sheriff’s Office app, again, trying to be transparent and visible. Make sure our people have as much information as they possibly can in this community to help protect themselves and their families as well. People sometimes call about these and you understand it, but we can make someone leave either. The most we can do is be aware of it and make sure they check in. Make sure we check in on them. We go out and do periodic checks for our sexual offenders to make sure they’re still living there. Keep track of them. So we’ll send teams out to verify their current addresses, and if they are no longer there and don’t report change of addresses, which is required, then we go on and get warrants for their arrest. A sexual offender person is required as a move to report into a new County Register and make sure that the state knows where they’re at and that they are available when checked on. So we have team members go on a regular basis. We want them to know that we know, that we’re looking, that we’re checking. And I think it’s a good deterrent.”
Three Marathon residents were recently arrested for illegally removing a towed vehicle from an impound lot.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’ve seen this a couple times, where they go in on a second set of keys or whatnot, and then jump a fence, open a fence, cut a fence, or maybe the fence is open, but have the keys and just take their vehicle. But at the end of the day, while that vehicle is in the possession of the tow company, it’s like a mechanic’s lien. It’s a tow lien and who owns that vehicle at that particular time is the tow yard until you pay your bill and satisfy it. If you go in and take it without paying, you commit Grand Theft Auto. You steal a car. Even though you think, I can’t steal a car, I own it. The law doesn’t allow you just to recover your car when you have debt. So we did go forward identified, looked into these individuals, what took place, and we did charge them with this crime. This is burglary, because you enter on a property with intent to commit a crime therein, to get your car. So you generally have a burglary charge, because you’re going on property not allowed to be in, and then when you take the property, you’re committing grand theft. So this is stupid, because it’s going to track back to you, not like, we’re not going to know you got the car. We’re going to see you driving around. We’re going to go by your house, your place of work, and see the car parked there. There’s camera surveillance systems everywhere. To try to get out of paying $550 whatever it may be to now be in jail on felony charges, to have your car towed again and you still owe the money. What did you gain out of this? Nothing. We always have to remember that for every action, there’s a reaction, that you generally just can’t commit a crime and get away with it. People aren’t going to just say, okay, well, he took his car. It’s my bad. No. So it’s going to come back and haunt you. The reality is, your car got towed for a certain reason in the first place. That’s your fault in the first place. But then you come back and do this that you’re just reoffending and continue to make poor decisions in your life which have adverse impacts on you. So the right thing to do is stop, take a breath, make a logical decision, not an emotional decision. You may not agree with the fact your car was towed. It’s irrelevant. Your car was towed. You owe someone money, and you’re going to pay it one way the other.”
With Fantasy Fest going on this week, make sure you have fun, not folly.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This event’s been so honed down that it was dialed in pretty good. But early on the first week with Goombay and the zombie rides, a lot of that is a lot of local people during daylight hours, but not as much drinking involved. Our locals are less apt to be involved in fights and chaos. So these events are very well attended. They’re impressive, they’re fun, and we do have a lot more stuff heading our way. They do cause a lot of traffic, though. We know the main event, Fantasy Fest itself, is going to be very difficult and challenging for motorists to get in and out of the city to find parking. So those are challenging times. We’ll see a lot larger crowd, who’s not from here, a lot more people who are drinking excessively. So those impacts will cause more law enforcement issues on Fantasy Fest night itself, that’s a difficult time to be driving on the road, especially when Fantasy Fest comes to an end. It’s a little scary to be driving because so many people leaving Fantasy Fest who have been consuming alcohol. Police just can’t have a roadblock and check every motorist to make sure they’re clear leaving Key West. We’d need 1,000 officers do that. It’s just not feasibly possible. So use good discretion. Leave early if you’re going, try to carpool. If you can use some other parking systems or busses to maybe help bring you down there. Don’t be in a hurry. Expect delays. Enjoy yourself, don’t over drink no matter what, whether you’re driving or not and use logical decision making, not emotional decision making, and you’ll have a good, safe night. Have a good time. Be part of this solution, not part of the problem.”