Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
A 34-year-old man from the Mainland stole a kayak from an Islamorada resident last week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This goes to show the good partnership with the sheriff’s office and citizens. This was witnessed by some witnesses about the 79 mile marker who saw this guy take this kayak from the beach area behind a residence, and take it out, and apparently was kayaking around the mangroves and having a good old time, and then at some point in time the witnesses confronted him, and then he abandoned the kayak, and then was last seen getting into a pickup truck and driving away. They got a description of the vehicle, so they contacted the sheriff’s office, told us what happened. We looked into it, determined that this was a theft from a property, thus a burglary. We put out what’s called a BOLO, be on the lookout, for a description of the male, the vehicle, what took place. One of my alert officers did find the vehicle at a gas station, gassing up. We made contact with the person, got verification this was the person in question, so we were able to charge him with burglary and theft, hold him accountable. Yes, this was a 34 year old male from the Dade County area down in the Keys. We say a lot of our crime in the Keys does emanate from the county neighbor to our north. Unfortunately, a lot of really good people in Dade, but there are some bad people that do come down to take advantage of us. So, but again, we talk about the partnership with our citizens, and I always tell you, I think they’re an extension of the sheriff’s office. They’re the first ones to see something unusual, be a good witness, help us solve crime here. They help us identify crime, and then he helped us solve crimes. So, thank you to our partners in this case.”
A rental car was stolen from a Marathon resort on last week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is going to show you a lot of good stuff. A partnership with inter agencies between Key West Police and MCSO, who worked so well together. Obviously, surveillance footage from the resort was important. This was a rental car, and Isabella is a private resort. You’ve got to go through a gate to get on there. A person had the rental car, and Crimes of Opportunity left the key in the ignition, which we keep saying, just take the keys out, so after the car is reported stolen, we go back to security cameras, and we could see through security cameras this male coming on the property about 10 minutes before the car is stolen, and this is a male out of Key West, a 41 year old male from Key West, for some reason he’s in Marathon wanted to get back to Key West, so he jumped in the car, which had keys, and just drove right out and was gone. So, we got the information from the renter and the rental company. We entered it into the computer system as a stolen vehicle. We notified our MCSO team. We also notified our friends in Key West Police. The vehicle was located at a hotel down in Key West, so it was recovered, no keys in it. It was towed away, so there’s no keys, but we had a really good description of the male on the video who stole it. So we had put out that picture as part of a crime report to our team members to look for this person. One of my alert sergeants down there saw a guy riding a bicycle, and the person met the description. They stopped him. They went out with him. He was a convicted felon, failed to register. We initially believed he was a suspect. We did arrest him initially for failing to register while we continued the investigation, subsequently, ultimately we did get him to confess that he was the person that stole the vehicle, because we confronted him with the pictures and video him stealing the car, kind of hard to dispute that. So he then told us where he dropped the keys, went over to locate the keys to get the keys back to the rental car company, and then we did charge him with multiple car charges there for grand theft auto as well. So he’s sitting in the Rick Ramsey bed and breakfast. I think he’s going to be there for a while, but it continues to show what I preach all the time, just partnerships, all of us working together, whether it be citizens or would it be another law enforcement agency, good investigative efforts to try to canvas for security and videos and officers out there getting the information in the field of what we’re looking for, who we’re looking for, and then being vigilant to look for that, and all people riding bikes, you see someone that that looks like the guy that stole the car in Marathon, and sure enough, it leads to this convicted felon who didn’t register, and also leads to a person who stole a car here, and if he’s committing crimes in Marathon, he’ll commit crimes in Key West. So we’re stopping the crime spree in the county and in the city.”
Two people were stealing Amazon packages from two Key Largo residences recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’re pretty lucky we don’t really have packages being stolen here in the Keys. It’s so seldom. So we did get this call, and again, this was an alert neighbor who had a Ring doorbell camera video, and again was a good partner to the sheriff’s office to help identify a crime that just took place and a good, good witness account of the vehicle and persons. So we got a call from a neighbor who says he saw a vehicle that pulled up to his neighbor’s street across the street, and the car pulled up. A female driver, male, got out, walked into the fence area, and picked up two packages, walked back to the car, put the packages in the car, and drove away. So the neighbor was pretty clear that these people did not live there and believed that they just stole packages. So they called the sheriff’s office right away, gave us a really good description of the car and person. Later on, we saw some video footage that he had, which gave us a good description again of the car, including a tag. We put the tag information out right away, the vehicle information, the person information. And then our officers in Key Largo were looking for this car diligently. An officer saw the car about the 105 mile marker heading back north back towards Dade County. We did a traffic stop on the car, we had the female still driving, male in the passenger seat, both match the description given. Tag was the same tag, plain view in the car. We could see multiple Amazon packages, some were open, some were not. They were subsequently arrested, they refused to cooperate. Two of the packages were the ones that were reported stolen by the witness neighbor, a couple other packages were in the vehicle, and when we tracked those back down to the name and address on the packages, that homeowner had not reported it on his phone. It showed that they were delivered, but they were not at the house, so unbeknownst to him that this was a burglary theft that occurred that was already solved by the sheriff’s office, thanks to a neighbor from another neighborhood around the corner. So, again, it goes to show the partnership that is so important that the citizens look for suspicious stuff, call us, tell us, become a good witness, and help us prevent, deter, investigate, solve crime together, and I always talk about the three components of effective law enforcement: good, hardworking men and women, the sheriff’s office, strong relationships with the other law enforcement agencies, state, local, federal, military, and then third are citizens who are an extension of the sheriff’s office. You’ve heard me preach this a million times. As we talk about these type of cases, we can see all this turns out to be true. We stopped these people. We arrested them both on burglary and theft charges. We’ve towed their car and are looking to maybe seize it. They’re sitting in jail. Their bonds were, I think, $30,000 a piece. The packages were recovered, returned back to the rightful owners, and we’re sending a strong message of deterrence to other people who may want to come down to Keys and steal packages, and to these two people in particular, who will probably think twice about coming down the Monroe to steal packages. They’ll probably continue to reoffend, but they’ll probably continue to reoffend in Dade, where they think they’re more likely to get away with it.”
A 53 year old Key Largo man was arrested recently for kidnapping, false imprisonment, interference with child custody, and unlawful sexual activity with a minor.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This appears to be a two year ongoing relationship between a minor and adult. Started when the female, who’s from Orlando, is 14 years of age, and the male is 51 years old, from Key Largo. Presumably, they met online. She, for the last two years has been traveling down to the Keys, and she’s been telling her mother periodically that she was going to spend the weekend with her friend, and the mother would not verify who the friend is, that she’s spending time with her friend, isn’t tracking her phone. Most parents have the ability to track the cell phones to their kids, so they know where the phone is at, or they call and check in. This mother wasn’t doing that, and there appeared to be very little oversight to verify. While you want to trust, you still want to verify, especially when it comes to kids, and make sure that they are where they say they are, they’re doing what they say they’re doing, and who they’re with. In this case, the mother was oblivious, and for two years couldn’t figure out that the daughter was leaving, going to the train rail system, getting on a train in Orlando, taking it to Miami, a three hour ride, and then the male would drive up there and pick her up at the train station in Miami, bring her back to his residence in Key Largo. While here, presumably they’re engaging in sexual activity. This has been going on for two years now. She’s 16, now he’s 53. At some point in time she wanted to leave, he didn’t want her to leave, so they got into an argument. She was going to call the police. He took her phone, deprived her the right of the use of the benefit of the phone to call for help. And then at some point in time she was able to get a hold of his phone and used his phone to call 911 saying that she’s being kept against her will, and wanted to leave and he wouldn’t let her leave. We then tracked the cell phone she was using the boyfriend’s phone. We’re able to track it through the phone services to the address. We came to the address. At this point in time, he had her hiding in a dryer in the house. We came to the door. He came to the door. We told him why we’re there. He said he knew nothing about why we’re there. Knew nothing about a minor. There was no one else in the house. Denied any concern we may have about well-being or someone being kept against their will. We wanted to search the house initially. He was non-compliant, but safety of a minor, we will be able to search the house, whether he wanted us to or not. Something he did say, okay, you can look, there’s no one here. Well, when we looked in the house, we did find her inside the dryer. So we then immediately separated these two, got her outside, worried about hair care, custody control, contacted her friends in DCF to come out for this situation. Eventually contacted the mother in Orlando, who had no idea where she was at, what was going on, clueless, sad. We ultimately did find counterfeit money, sheets of counterfeit money in the house. So we contacted our friends, United States Secret Service, as this is in their wheelhouse. We did charge him with a slew of charges for the custodial interference, for this sexual contact with a minor, other related charges. So we did arrest him. We’ve got more charges potentially pending on him, and the Secret Service may drop charges. We’ll see what they’re going to do on account for money, but he was brought to MCJ, where he’s sitting in the county jail, where he needs to be. Sad case on so many levels. Again, to me, this comes down to poor parenting. If you’re going to have kids, you’ve got to know where your kids are at, know what they’re doing, who they’re with, what’s going on. You should be tracking their phones, you should be monitoring their computers, you should be going at times in their room. Parents tell me, well, I don’t want to invade their privacy, or it’s their phone or their computer. I tell them it’s your house, it’s your room, it’s your computer, it’s your phone. And this isn’t an invasion of privacy. This is good parenting to make sure who’s communicating with your children, who’s online trying to sway them to meet them somewhere, or sell them something bad, or do something. A lot of bad things are occurring on online. Predators who take advantage of young naive people, and it’s the responsibility of parents to have oversight to make sure they’re protecting their kids from these people who take advantage of them. There’s a balance between trying to be their friend and not invade their privacy and trying to be their parent and protect them.”
The holiday weekend will be a busy one.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Three day holiday weekends are very busy in the Keys, especially during the summertime and Fourth of July. So, yes, we’re going to have a very busy weekend. We’re going to have a heavy amount of traffic coming in from people for the weekend. Most of your bed and breakfasts will be full. It’s going to be busy on the land and on the sea. So, yes, we want people to think ahead, plan ahead, use designated drivers. Don’t drink and drive, don’t drink and operate boats. If you’re going to go to the store, try to get there early. Come Friday, the stores will be empty shelves or packed, so throughout the week try to pick up some fuel for your boat and car, or whatever you want to do. Pick up some food and groceries, and much as you can, I recommend not driving. Stay off the roads as much as possible, and if you are on the roads, be patient, expect delays. Yes, we will have the Fourth of July parade in Key Largo at 9:30. We will shut the road down, and we’ll do a lane shift at 9:45 where one of the southbound lanes will be used for northbound traffic. This will go while the parade starts at 10 and goes to about noon, and between the basically the 97 into 100 mile marker area, that area there will be shut down. And then around noonish, we’ll do the lane shift to get traffic back in a normal configuration. There’ll be different events occurring throughout the Keys on Fourth of July. Most are going to be on July 4. There will be Big Pine, Lower Keys, Chamber Rotaries do their fireworks show at the county park on Big Pine on Friday, July 3, and then City Marathon around 11 o’clock, will have a small parade around the Sombrero Beach Road area, which could have some traffic implications there. So, there’ll be a lot of really good stuff happening throughout the holiday weekend, but there will be a lot of boat, a lot of car traffic. It’s going to be a nice weekend. The weather looks pretty good, about 85 degrees, I think, about nine knots. I think about two foot seas, or a foot and a half to two. So, I think good boating weather. So, again, we remind our listeners that the governor, years ago, had made it legal on certain days to shoot off fireworks and July 4 is that time of year that you are allowed to shoot off fireworks. It does not violate state law. While we know it does disrupt people’s lives, who have to work the next day, who are trying to sleep, who have animals, animals, especially dogs, go crazy with the fireworks. We know it, we get it, but our ability to stop it does not exist during this time, because it’s one of the few days that the governor has exempted from the fireworks law. So, when people have rowdy neighborhoods or shooting fireworks, or they’re loud, or they’re bothering their dogs, calling the sheriff’s office will do nothing, because we cannot stop it, because they are not in violation of law during that time. Frustrating as it may be to some of our listeners who don’t understand it, but the sheriff’s office job is to enforce law. We don’t create them, the others do. Our legislators, in this case the governor, our job is to make sure the laws are being followed. In this case, if they’re shooting off fireworks on July 4, the weekend, that is lawful, and we cannot stop it. So we just remind our listeners again, every year we try to bring this up just to educate them about the law.”