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 has seen its 21st consecutive, perfect financial audit.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I’m always proud of our finance division of our agency for being fiscally responsible, not only in spending, but always talking about returning excess fees that we don’t spend, millions every year, but also on our ability to manage and track every penny of tax dollars. This is the 21st year we’ve had a perfect audit. We bring it outside auditors to look at us independently and make sure we’re doing everything just right. For the 21st year in a row, we’ve accounted and tracked for every single penny, not a missing penny of tax dollars. I’m always proud of that. It shows how professional the agency is, how we take it serious, how we can truly manage large amounts of taxpayers’ money. In this day and age we don’t see that. A lot of agencies or a lot of organizations always have issues of monies when we see people getting in trouble for misappropriating and misusing or can’t find money, but that’s never the case in MCSO. So people can have confidence and trust in us to manage their money accordingly and provide the best level of service.”
It is National Public Safety Telecommunications week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Telecommunications Week is really important to us. The communication division, our 911 dispatch centers are the lifeline, the lifeblood of this agency. Besides being the first person that our citizens who were in distress or have issues or needs problems, questions, concerns, that’s the first person they’re going to talk to. But besides that, they are the person who keep track of our men and women on calls for service, make sure they’re safe and secure, get them the needed resources. They dispatch out Police, Fire, Rescue, air ambulance, field all 911 calls. They do emergency medical dispatch, which means they are trained to walk novice through almost any medical situation that may arise, whether it be CPR, whether it be choking, whether it be a major lacerations of stuff that people may have no medical training, we’re able to quickly walk them through a scenario of how to best try to mitigate and contain and control the medical emergency until responders can arise. One of the most difficult challenging jobs, 12 hour shifts, you’re dealing with people who are in crisis, craziness going on, 911 calls, a lot of work. These operators have six to eight computer screens in front of them running a little bit everything on phones, on radios, on a police radios, on fire radios, on air ambulance radios. The workload is immense. It’s one of the most stressful jobs. A patrol officer when they come out, they go through what’s called a field training program. The field training program is about 10 to 12 weeks for a deputy, while the field training program for 911 dispatcher is 16 weeks to show the complexity and needs of workloads.”
The Seven Mile Bridge run went off without a hitch last weekend.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We plan this so far out. There’s so much work, it’s the traffic. It’s the flow, it’s the educating, it’s the messaging, the people, it’s the parking, it’s the pedestrians, it’s crossing crowds, it’s shutting down the roads. It’s just so much to this and we have to have staff on both ends of the bridges. This takes a lot a lot of manpower, resources as you can imagine. Our officers are out there about 3am. We started about 3am dealing with traffic and parking and pedestrians. The road is actually hard shut down at 6am but there’s a lot of work until then. The men and women in the sheriff’s office, this is a challenging job. It’s very demanding, high energy. But we’ve done this over the years, we have a really good system in place. Every year we’re able to provide this service and keep our citizens safe and secure. We don’t have people injured. We don’t have fights, we don’t have chaos. It’s a very organized event. We do the best we can again to make sure everyone knows or knew or should have known that the bridge would be shut down by six. So no one’s late for an airport, a flight. We do everything we can to message it. But we think it’s a success again, because why? Because no one got hurt and everything was smooth and there was no fights, no drama, no arrests. So for us, that’s an extremely successful event.”
Last week, a MSCO deputy was injured by a drunk driver.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “He’s still in Jackson. He’s going to be there for a while. I actually spoke with him yesterday. He’s supposed to have his fourth surgery today. So this young man is going through surgery after surgery to repair his lower leg. His spirits were very high. He was in good spirits. I received a lot of people trying to come see him or call him and talk to him, which helped to see the support. Let him know how much the community was asking and concerned about him, which helped to cheer him up. He’s got a long road ahead of him. That woman who was arrested on drunk driving charges for the crash. The bond was set at only $95,000 which I was surprised. I think it was low for such a violent, severe injury accident. She bonded out the next day. Disappointing that she spent less than a day in jail for ruining someone’s life. So disappointed that the judge set such a low bond for something so serious, but she will be held accountable in the courts. I’ve already spoke with our state attorney, and make sure that I’m kept abreast of this case goes forward. We’re going to do our part two hold her accountable. We’re going to do our part to help aid and assist our officer to get back on the mend. We look forward to him one day be able to get back out there and do the job that he worksed so hard to become a team member of.”
The woman’s blood alcohol content was .310.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That’s four times the legal limits. A 26 year old female, 100 pounds at that drunk level. Thank God, no one got killed. But at the same token, this officer is in a tough position.”
A crash yesterday on the Seven Mile Bridge saw a three car head-on collision.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is early hours of morning, 8 or 8:15 and it was a drunk driver, again, which is hard to believe that early in the morning. We got a report of a reckless vehicle. We were looking for it north and south at the Seven Mile Bridge. But before it could come off the bridge and we can find it, it was driving erratically and wrong lanes and recklessly and ultimately caused a head-on car crash and after the head-on car crash between itself and another vehicle, a third vehicle also got involved in the crash, a truck towing a boat, so it wound up being a three vehicle crash. It completely shut down the Seven Mile Bridge, north and south. We had to bring in police fire rescue resources. We had three trauma alerts out of the case. The driver who caused the crash and two other passengers in another vehicle who were just driving down the road, enjoying the scenic view when this drunk hit them. All three had to be air evacced out. So we had to bring in Trauma Star North, Trauma Star South and our air ambulances and air evacced three to Jackson Rider for their medical needs. FHP arrived to work the crash. This individual will be waiting for the blood draw at the hospital, but I suspect based on odor, impairment signs, open containers that this person is likely to have a blood alcohol level of illegal level. If so they’ll be charged with multiple DUI counts for serious bodily injuries and he will be ultimately arrested on a warrant for multiple charges and we’re going to hold him accountable, too. He was from out of county I think from the Central Florida area maybe.”
Another accident occurred on Sunday in Summerlin Key at 6:07 p.m.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was an older gentleman, 88 years of age, was pulling up in the handicap parking zone and something happened. I’m not sure if he hit the gas versus the brake or what happened, but he wound up in drive, accelerating through the building, through the front of the building, into the building, coming out the back of the building where the front tires are hanging off a dock and almost went into the canal. He did injure six people, non life threatening injuries, but did do extensive damage to the building. The restaurant had to be shut down. We’re glad no one got seriously injured. But it did do a lot of damage and a lot of minor injuries to multiple people from what appeared to be an elderly driver.”
A 78 year old man was hit with a 2×4 by a 64 year old Marathon recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is the 20th Street area again, which had been for a couple years no real issues. But this last six months, we’ve been seeing more acts of crime and violence occurring from that homeless population. There can be generally a lot of mental illness, alcohol, drug use in this type of population. Some type of disturbance took place. When anybody strikes a person who’s 65 or older, those charges are enhanced to bat around the elderly is 65 years of age is a felony. But because it was a weapon of that magnitude which could kill, cause serious bodily injury or death, it’s an aggravated battery on an elderly individual. So we did get on scene, the victim received medical attention. We did ultimately identify the suspect in this case, we did make an arrest and draw up multiple charges. So again, you know homeless populations are difficult, challenging for law enforcement anywhere. We do generally see more acts of violence per capita in smaller groups like these.”
Another incident at the beach in Marathon saw a man who believed it was a nude beach.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was in the north part of the city. We got a call from a very upset woman about an individual who was not only naked but was touching himself and had some apparently some sex toys with him in this public area. This is a quiet beach, there’s not a lot of traffic out there. It’s a really kind of remote area. So we went out there and we did in encounter this individual naked and whatnot and with the sex toy and ultimately, the victim did not want to cooperate on pressing charges or signing a statement, which made it a little harder for us because she’s potentially the victim who saw it. Eventually we’re able to work with the State Attorney’s Office and arrest this individual for indecent exposure and being naked in public. He did say he’s not from here and he thought it was a public nude beach that you’re allowed to go there and be naked, which is not the case, but even if it was, you’re not allowed to go out there and performing sexual acts and touching yourself inappropriately and have sex toys out. Even if the place would have been legal for nude sunbathing, new sunbathing is different from lewd acts.”