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.
The sheriff gives back to the community whenever he can and he did so Friday night when he won the 50/50 raffle at the Best of the Upper Keys and gave it to the Florida Keys Children’s Shelter.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Great event, for sure, a lot of fun. They make that a fun event. Good laughs, good people. Our community leaders come out to do some good stuff there. I did win the 50/50. Was a nice haul. I think there’s $1,500 but working with kids and children’s shelters, they need it more than I do. So I was glad to be there and glad to return it back to the kids.”
MCSO also returned money to the county.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This year, I returned back a record setting 5.435 million dollars that I did not spend. Every year I give back two, two and a half million dollars that I don’t spend out of my budget. Once my budget’s allocated, I can spend it down to zero. Most people are likely to spend it down to zero because they think if they don’t use it, they’re going to lose it. But this year, we had a lot of money because in large part fiscal responsibility that we do every year. But also the county did approach us six months earlier, tell us their financial ways, were really difficult, that they were going to be laying off people and cutting services, and asked us to do anything we could, to save any amount of money possible. So an effort to be a good steward to our citizens, we did a lot of really drastic stuff. We only bought half the number of patrol cars we normally buy. We didn’t buy a lot of our big capital items that we buy towards the end of the year, radios and servers and body scanners and body worn cameras, really expensive stuff that we generally buy towards the end of the year, make sure we’ve got the money to do it. I had a few really high level positions that became vacant. I just did not fill them. We just took on more responsibility. So the money came from two fold, half was just super good fiscal responsibility. The other half was making severe cuts internally to be part of the solution, to do everything I could to give back every bit of money to the county. If I wouldn’t have given back so much money, instead of being 45 positions cut, it may have been 90, instead of the nonprofits only getting half of their money, they may have gotten nothing. So it’s just trying to do our part to do whatever we can.”
A 30 year old from Davenport, Florida with a felony criminal history was arrested last week on a variety of charges.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a convicted felon, been convicted a couple times in Florida. We stopped his car on traffic violations in Key Largo. The driver does not have a valid driver’s license. We see the firearm inside the vehicle. We wind up getting this person out of the car, very combative. We wind up getting a pair of brass knuckles out of his pocket, which also have a knife on one end, a fold out knife. So this is a convicted felon who’s not allowed to be in possession of any weapons, who’s in possession of a firearm, brass knuckles, a knife, he’s got no license, and becomes very agitated with the officer, starts fighting with the officers. We eventually get him secured, arrested, get him off the road, take him to jail where he needs to be. He’s driving a car with no license, thus he has no insurance on that car. He’s not driving in a safe manner in the first place. He’s a convicted felon who’s got weapons on him. This is not a good person, and he needs to be right back to where he has spent a lot of his life, in jail, and he’s at the Rick Ramsay bed and breakfast, and we’re glad to host him.”
A man from Plantation Key was arrested at a bar and grill in Islamorada recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This case here happened at the Hog Heaven, which is a bar restaurant in Islamorada, around the 86 mile marker thereabouts. Late night, that place does have a lot of issues. We always say, not much good happens after midnight. This is almost at midnight when this is occurring. This is a 38 year old male who’s drunk, disorderly, being combative. Their security teams try to deal with him. He’s just violent with them. He winds up punching one in the face, giving a large contusion. He winds up breaking the finger of another security officer. So we get called, we’ve already had two security team members have been injured in this ruckus at the bar. We get there, we’re trying to calm this guy down, to no avail. At some point in time, he grabs the sheriff’s deputy by the vest and starts trying to strike the deputy. The deputy has to pull out a taser. We wound up having to tase him to subdue him, get him handcuffed and take him to jail on a variety of charges. But again, we’ve got to be really careful when we respond in these bar fights or these drunks, because they are so out of control, not thinking logically, making decisions based off of alcohol influenced decisions which are generally going to be wrong. It just goes to show you the crap heads we have to deal with sometimes So a very violent person, attacked three different people.”
A woman made violent threats against a family member on social media recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Not the smartest person. Electronic threats are a crime. You cannot make electronic threats to kill or harm people. We take every threat serious. Any threat by person or persons to do violence, whether they be adult or juveniles in school, we’re going to take every threat serious, as if someone plans to carry that threat out, and we’re not going to allow people to scare, intimidate, threaten people. So this case here, yes, this woman was sending multiple of violent emails threatening death, slashing throat, stabbing, killing. We were able to respond to this complaint. Look at the email threads to verify these emails were actually occurring. We did assign a detective to this, investigated it. We had probable cause. We did get a warrant for that person’s arrest, and arrested this person for making these electronic death threats. You don’t have to like people, but you can’t hurt, touch or threaten to take people’s lives, at least not in Monroe. I’m not going to tolerate it. I keep saying, we can disagree, but we are not going to condone acts of violence.”
Another woman was arrested for throwing a life at a man’s face recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was the Marathon area around 39th Street. We did get a call about this disturbance involving a knife, and this woman was in an argument with this male and very heated. She was the aggressor. Had this knife in a threatening manner. At some point in time, threw the knife at the person’s face, strike him in the face, causing minor damage. We’re lucky it wasn’t anything severe. Could have taken an eye out. Could’ve killed somebody, but did strike the person with this knife. Did impact this person’s face. We got a call about this. As the woman was fleeing in the car, we were able to stop her. She’s fleeing on 39th Street towards US 1. We stopped, detained her, did the investigation, had witnesses to what took place, ultimately arrested her for this aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge. Again most of the time we’re more likely to have males be the violent people, but we have plenty of calls, where females are the aggressor, are very violent or threatened to kill people, throwing knives, hurting, punching. We see it with adult men, adult women, and even kids at times.”
A recent traffic stop resulted in a drug arrest.
Sheriff Ramsay said it was a “routine traffic stop. We never know what comes out of a traffic stop. During the course of traffic stop, we do encounter these two individuals, which has a firearm inside the car. We have a variety of narcotics in the car, cocaine, marijuana, scales, baggies, different stuff. We believe this is more than personal use. This is a drug trafficking. All the signs indicative of people who are dealing when you have baggies and stuff to package and weigh and scales, those are not what normal people who are just users keep in their vehicles around them, and this is clearly someone who’s using and dealing. So we’re always glad to get these drug dealers off the streets. Hold these people accountable, throw the car away, get their drugs. Definitely happy to get a gun off the street. It just goes to show, every time you stop a car, we think it’s for just a tag light, but here we got people, some minor charge, but we don’t know if they’ve got guns or drugs or warrants for the arrest or what’s going to take place. They don’t want to go back to jail, and they’re going to do anything that it takes to keep from getting arrested, including attacking officers, which unfortunately happens.”
An arrest happened at the KOA in Sugarloaf recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “They have a bar out there, and they had this female, a 54 year old female, who, the night before was at the bar, was drunk, disorderly, battered the security officer was just really, a drunken mess. They did not call the sheriff’s office that night, but she went back eventually to her site in her camper, and they did not kick her out. But the next night, she shows back up to the bar again, and just like the night prior, gets into a drunken stupor where she’s just sloppy drunk, being a violent drunk. Some people who drink become violent. Some people who drink become more passive and love everybody. This one was a violent drunk, got into an argument with the bartender and the security guard and attacked the security guard. The bartender had to grab her and try to restrain her during the course of this fight. So she’s being aggressive with the bartender, with the security officer who she hit. We get called out there. We go back. We’re trying to look up on her. We go to the campsite. She’s very aggressive, yelling and screaming. Won’t come out, won’t identify herself, won’t give any ID, just really giving our guys and gals a hard time. We’re trying to deal with her. And at some point in time, she struck one of my officers with the door in the camper, and we had to ultimately arrest her. The security guard and bartender elected not to want to press charges on their end. But we did arrest her, the campsite did evict her and her husband out. We had no issues with the husband. He wasn’t attacking us, he was just having to unfortunately, he’s got a drunk of a wife who can’t hold her alcohol and is a violent woman. So he did not go to jail, but he was told to pack your stuff up and get your camper off our property. So he’s driving around here somewhere, waiting for her to go to first appearance, to try to have to bond her out. It’s a shame to come down to beautiful, fabulous Florida Keys on vacation. You’re at the KOA, that’s a nice site. It’s a perfect, beautiful weekend. This is paradise. And hey, go have a couple drinks, but know your limitations, but when you drink, you’re a bad drunk, and then you just drunk to a stupor that you ruined your whole trip. You’re in jail. Get kicked out of your campsite. You ruined it for yourself. You ruined it for your husband. You got to come back here and deal with this court case. You’d think at some point time, some people will learn. This is a 54 year old woman, this isn’t a teenager, or just a young kid who’s trying to figure life out. This is a middle aged woman who’s just appears to be a disaster.”
There was an incident at Big Pine that involved a dog recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is stupid. This is a 43 year old woman who sees a dog she wants, she snatches the dog up. The owner of the dog is trying to confront her about getting his dog from her. She’s yelling and screaming, violent, combative, has got a knife, brandishing a knife, threatening with the knife. We get called out there, and this very aggressive woman, we eventually do identify her. We get the dog back. We ultimately do arrest her for assault, robbery, battery, resisting arrest. The robbery is using force to steal this dog. The dog has an intrinsic value, but we did get the dog back to the rightful owner. Just crazy, middle of the daytime, just someone acting out of control with a knife and wanting someone else’s dog, and they’re going to use acts of violence to steal a dog from somebody. Again, the crap that we have to deal with sometimes in law enforcement, but that’s part of our job.”
A fraud case came up recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said it was “involving a 35 year old woman out of Hialeah, and she was part of a bigger ring that were stealing credit cards and using stealing stolen credit cards. What they would do with the credit cards, they would go to area Publix throughout South Florida, and they would come in before the card was deactivated, and they would buy as much high end meat and seafood as possible. She went to the Islamorada Publix with her credit card, stolen ones, and had racked up almost $8,400 worth of meats and seafood and left. So we had this case. We had to identify her, deal with stolen credit cards. We eventually identified who she was in Hialeah, we eventually got a warrant for her arrest. So we did charge her with multiple charges there, but that’s a lot of money in stolen meats and seafood just from that one Publix alone, let alone the ones in South Florida that the ring was focusing on. So that was a good investigative case to identify and close that case on someone from Hialeah.”