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.
MCSO deputies became involved in an incident over the weekend with a possible outlaw motorcycle gang member.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It is a sad case. We hate talking about these Pagans because every time they’re hurting somebody, threatening somebody, committing some crime. We talked about it in the past, they continue to try to present themselves as pillars in a community. In fact, one of the guys when we were interviewing him after arresting him, spouting off how he’s a pillar of the community. But this is the Boardwalk Grill and Pub on Big Pine. There’s a guy sitting at the bar, been there for over an hour, he’s wearing a t shirt, which says Support the Outlaws and it’s got an image of a gun pointed at the person reading the shirt. So we think he’s more a supporter than a gang member. We think he’s a supporter, affiliate maybe, but clearly he supports the outlaws. He’s minding his own business, just talking to people having a drink. Unbeknownst to anybody at the time, one of the Pagans girlfriends is a bartender there. So she sees the guy wearing the outlaw t-shirt and instead of just shutting her mouth and doing her job, she contacts her boyfriend and says, there’s an outlaw, motorcycle guy here at the bar. So her boyfriend says okay, so he hangs up with her, calls a couple more of his buddies, they got their Pagan motorcycle jackets, they get on their motorcycles and they come to the Boardwalk to confront this outlaw motorcycle member. Their plan was to drag him outside, make him take off his outlaw t shirt, and make him put on a pagans t shirt. So they get there, two go inside and in this video, very aggressively, and one standing outside kind of watching, making sure no one leaves or an outside a set of eyes. They rush up, they grab this guy, and they forcibly drag him out of the bar. They drag him outside. You can see a confrontation where they’re pushing him, throw him down on the ground, hitting on him. They lift him back up. They drag them out to the side of the building where they’re going to rip the shirt off of him and make him put a shirt on. This is going downhill. In the meantime, we’ve been contacted about a fight between gang members. Patrol cars pull up just as they got him on the side of the building and are messing with him there. We try to separate them. We handcuffed two of the pagans. The third pagan fled the scene left. So he’s not much of a wing man. He left his buddies and was gone. So we get the two people handcuffed for officer safety, investigative reasons to try to figure out what’s going on. We start trying to investigate this. It’s very difficult. We got the pagans who refuse to identify themselves, won’t give their names or information. We’ve got the third guy who’s the victim who won’t cooperate, keeps trying to leave, wants to leave. We keep telling him you’re not free to leave. We’re in the middle of a criminal investigation and you were part of this and you’re not allowed to leave. So we’re trying to deal with these guys, all being combative, multiple times the outlaw t shirt wearing guy is telling us get lost and keeps trying to leave. Eventually he disregards our commands and is leaving, so we have to forcibly grab him, arrest him for obstruction charges, for failing to obey lawful orders. We’re trying to get witnesses, we’re trying to talk to the bar manager or bartender to see what took place. They won’t talk to us, they won’t cooperate. We want to get a copy of the surveillance video, they refused to give us the video. We asked if we can at least just view it, they refused and tell us no. So very concerning that this establishment, the Boardwalk Grill and Pub on Big Pine appears to be anti law enforcement, and pro outlaw gang motorcycle members and won’t cooperate with evidence they’d have of a crime that’s just taken place in their establishment. We call out a detective, we call out our friends at DEA to get some more help. We wind up having to go through the difficult process to get a subpoena. We come back and we drop a subpoena on them and say here you go. This is a federal subpoena, which says you must stop what you’re doing and you must immediately comply with this subpoena and give us a copy of this surveillance video or we will take you to jail, we will arrest you. It’s sad that we had to get to this point, to get a business to cooperate with law enforcement to help deal with a crime that’s occurred in their establishment. This is obviously the bartender who’s the girlfriend but also the female manager, who, I don’t know why she was uncooperative and told us basically to get lost. It’s very concerning, to the point that I am going to today put an order out to my members, tell them they are not allowed on sheriff’s office time to eat there, to go there, unless they’re on a call for service. I am not going to support a local business that does not support law enforcement and I’m not going to have my men and women go to a place which seemingly is unsafe, and is supporting outlaw gang members in their bar.”
Are there cases whereby a business is intimidated by perpetrators, which causes them not to cooperate with law enforcement? What happens in that case?
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That could happen. We don’t think that’s happening here. Obviously, one of the gang member’s girlfriend is the bartender. Seemingly these guys hang out there. So they’ve become friendly. I don’t think they’re intimidated. I think they were supportive in this case. Yes, that does happen. In this case, no, this is a friendship, affiliation, where they’re siding with bad, evil versus good, to the point that they’re impeding law enforcement to do their jobs to keep this community safe.”
Even the person who was initially attacked was uncooperative.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “He was he was uncooperative. Later on, after being arrested, he did cooperate and just filled in some of the vacancies in the story, what took place and told us that he was in fear of his safety, he was going to fight for his life for this t shirt. In the end, we charged the outlaw motorcycle gang members with a variety of charges, up to and including kidnapping. When they forced him, grabbed him and dragged him outside, they stopped his ability to have free rein to leave. He was imprisoned at that point time in time, physically, that is a crime. While we’re there, the third gang member who we saw on video later on, we knew was there, kept riding by. When he rode by one of my guys went out there, identified him and grabbed him and arrested him and he said he wasn’t there. But we had him on video. Then he said, well, I saw two of my brothers there that needed help. So then changed his tune that he was there. One of the three said, I think we went too far. We talk about these pagans. Every time we’re talking about stupid, either immature, or, in this case here, immature on top of that, threats of violence and fear and intimidation. That’s how they roll. They’re bullies. This is a means of getting what they want is scare, fear, intimidation, bullying, grabbing a guy out, making him rip his shirt off to put their shirt on to tell him this is their territory. This is so ridiculous. But then the same token they want to go out there and their at Halloween give candy to kids or have their little party at Big Pine and look for supporters and try to do a toy run and say we’re pillars of the community.”