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.
A woman was found in possession of five undersized mangrove snappers recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is complaint driven. We actually got a call from a Good Samaritan who saw this group of people fishing, and saw them catching small, undersized snapper and not returning them, keeping them. So when we showed up, we saw a small crowd of people, of some adults and one small minor. We could see one of them trying to hide the fish under a sandal and when we started talking to the group, they actually started blaming this small minor, like a five year old child, putting the blame on this little kid for the fish, which is hard to believe, because the kid was so small, and you’re not out there fishing by yourself and hooking and unhooking and making decisions. But ultimately, we did determine that the one female was the primary violator, and we did give her a notice to appear, but yeah, five really small, undersized fish, could barely fit in the palm of your hand. So it’s sad. It’s sad that they’re teaching this wrong way to this young child to make this child think this is how it’s supposed to be, this is okay, and then when they get caught, blame this little child for all the actions of the adults. So just the whole situation is sad, but we did hold them accountable. Continue to try to protect our environment, our resources. Again, this group was from Miami Dade County, which is the norm. Most people from Miami Dade are good people, but there’s a lot of trash that comes down to the Keys, and does a lot of damage to our community.”
A kilo of cocaine was also found in the water this morning.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We got a call today, early this morning, one of my deputies went out to the location. It’s in Islamorada where a good Samaritan, again, had seen what they determined was a suspicious package floating, and we recovered it, we field tested it, believing was narcotics based. It did test positive for cocaine. It was a kilo, which, for our listeners, is 2.2 pounds of pure, uncut cocaine that had washed ashore. Generally when we see kilos that when they float up, these are generally either a disrupted load or a load of cocaine being transferred from a mother ship to a smaller boat, sometimes something may fall under water. Somebody may be bringing drugs in and have a boat close to them and get scared, thinking it’s the police, and purge it. So a lot of reasons why sometimes we see, one or more kilos or even a bale of cocaine float up, but again, we contacted our friends at the United States government. They come out, they look at it. The chance of finding the owner is really nothing, is almost zero. But they use it for intelligence driven. They look at the package. How long has it been in the water? Are there any markings? Can they identify it to a certain cartel, a certain region, country? They try to use it for intelligence gathering. Then after that’s done, then it’s destroyed.”
What would the value of something like that be?
Sheriff Ramsay said, “When you’re seeing a single kilo, usually loads are in the hundreds or even thousands. So this is nothing, but a street level value of a kilo is probably about $23,000 and then obviously, when it gets purchased, it’s cut multiple times to make so much more money. So the actual value, if you’re willing to cut it and sell it on street level, would be tremendous, but to buy it up here uncut, you’re looking at probably about 23.”
A man from Miami was arrested for trafficking cocaine recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We continue to talk about traffic enforcement, why it’s so important, not only for public safety, but crashes and complaints. We’ve got a guy with no driver’s license, thus no insurance, so he’s a hazard to all the motorists on the highway. Our patrol units in the Upper Keys did stop this car, did identify this person. Ultimately, we did find narcotics. Not uncommon to have narcotics hidden on a person’s person, in their shoe, in their underwear, in their bra, inside their person. Criminals continue to try to be smarter and learn and put stuff in places where you’re unlikely to go look. A lot of times they get away with it, but in this case here, they didn’t. So this is trafficking level of cocaine, which increases the penalties. But again, we get a drug trafficker off the road. We get an uninsured motorist off the road. We get a person with no license off the road. Again, from Miami Dade County, we talk about that influence on Monroe. We keep sending the message to those criminals from the north, this is not the place to be if you want to continue to commit your crime sprees, whether it be on water or land. We’re more vigilant here, and we’ve stopped these drugs from being dispersed on our streets and holding these drug dealers accountable. He’s sitting in the Monroe County Detention Center, MCJ, where he needs to be, and I hope he stays there for a long time.”
A Marathon man was arrested Wednesday after attempting to light multiple vehicles on fire during an argument over a game of dominoes.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is hard to believe. One minute you’re friends, playing a simple game of dominoes with the joking going back and forth, and then a simple game turns into an argument, which escalates to the one person going outside, identifying these couple cars that belong to the people at the game, and then trying to set the cars on fire, pushing them side by side, close together, putting a t shirt in the gas tank of one, and then trying to light the t shirt on fire, to ignite these cars and attempted arson. We were called about the dispute. We did arrest this person for attempted arson, but it’s sad to see this type of stuff occurring and this behavior, and especially when we say these were friends that were playing a social game. These social games are designed to unite people, to bring friendship, not to get pissed, mad, angry over a simple game of dominoes that you’re going to go ahead and then try to light someone’s car on fire. It’s ridiculous, but that’s what we deal with. We deal with this crazy, stupid stuff every day.”
Near Long Key Bridge Thursday, another individual from Miami was found with undersized mutton snapper.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Sometimes it’s too rough to be on the water, and if it is, then our marine officers do a lot of land based patrols around the bridges, other fishing areas to continue to try to protect our waterways. Yes, around Long Key Bridge, doing bridge inspections, they come across a Dade County individual with undersized snapper. This is non stop. This is all day long. We dealt with a case last week that the sheriff’s office was contacted about two males on the side of the road with a large June fish and a spear gun. We arrived along with our friends and partners at FWC, we both got there at the same time. We identified two males, they had about an 80 pound June fish they just speared by one of the bridges. It was a very large fish. I saw the picture. Again this is a call from a Good Samaritan, which is so important to help aid and assist us. Ultimately, the FWC officer made the arrest. But it’s good to see these partnerships occurring between Sheriff’s Office, FWC and citizens, how important it is that we all work together, for the betterment of this community.”
A new scam has popped up in the county claiming a person has a toll that hasn’t been paid.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We see so many scams, and so this toll booth stuff has been prevalent here lately, and it goes out and sends out an email or text message to people’s phones, and it looked, well, relatively legit, and they’ve got links to go on to and they’re just trying to get your information or get you to send forward money. But we try to tell our people here, when it comes to toll related matters, you’re always going to receive something in the mail from SunPass to your address registered on your driver’s license, you’re not going to see these surprise stuff coming to your phone to pay. It just doesn’t happen that way. When we see that we shouldn’t fall trap to this. When in doubt, you can call SunPass and verify. You can go online and check your account online, as you saw, we put out a link to a contact by email. Or you can just easily go online and see, do you owe any money? But again, they try to scare you with a long litany of you could be arrested, you’re going to lose your license. We’re going to give you penalties. We’re going to suspend your privileges. We’re going to tow your car, name off a half a dozen things just trying to scare and that’s how these scams work. It’s fear, intimidation about you have to do it now or else.”
Graduation for the Basic Law Enforcement Academy is this week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’re graduating nine new officers. We’re excited about that, to have a chance to have some new men and women from this community to join the ranks and go out there and help aid and assist our citizens and continue on our community policing efforts that we talk about every week. I’m excited to be there for their graduation, and that’s just a continuation to build our team.”