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.
Recently, an 18-year-old student made physical threats to a teacher and that didn’t go over well with MCSO.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is sad. We’re seeing more across the nation, more young students who are either doing acts of violence in school or making threats of acts of violence in school. We have to take a hardline stance on these to protect the school, the children, the teachers, anybody who may be there and we have to send a strong message that we’re not going to tolerate it, to prevent these verbal threats, electronic threats or physical threats or actual threats that occur. So we did have an 18 year old student out of the Marathon High School area, who was making some serious threats to harm a teacher there. Obviously, we always talk about we take every threat serious that someone’s going to actually carry out these threats. We have to ensure a safe environment for our students to come and learn and teachers to do their jobs. So we had detectives investigate this case, we determined the threats were actually made and were a serious concern to us. We did obtain a warrant for this individual and unfortunately, we did have to arrest this student, an 18 year old male from the Marathon area was arrested for threatening violence to one of the teachers at Marathon High School. So sad case. But, we’re going to continue to our job, protect our community, protect our children, protect our schools, hold people accountable for their actions. Your actions have repercussions.”
A fleeing situation occurred at Big Pine Key recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was a traffic incident. We tried to stop this the individual. This is a 35 year old female from Big Pine. She was in a Volkswagen. We tried to stop her to no avail. Her driving became more erratic on the road, off the road, grass. She clearly knew we were there. She put her middle finger out the window, flipped off the deputies as she was fleeing from us. This went on for a period of time. To some point time she eventually stopped. Once she stopped, she rushed out of her car, rushed back the patrol car, ran back to the car yelling that she hates police, hates cops. Eventually we did arrest her on multiple charges here. You just never know who you’re dealing with. Here’s a person who clearly hates law enforcement, clearly has some issues. When you’ve got a car that won’t stop and suddenly stops and the driver rushes back at your car. These are when bad things happen a lot of times, the officers are trapped in their car, they have no ability to get out, they don’t know why a person at nighttime was rushing back to the car. They don’t know if they’re potentially armed. You’re almost a prisoner car. So these are really scary times for any law enforcement officer to be there by yourself when someone’s rushing back to your car. It could have been a lot worse. We thank God that it wasn’t, but we’re going to continue to hold people accountable for stupid actions.”
In Summerlin Key recently someone took cash from a Circle K register.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is another one of these cases where if you can’t hold your alcohol, don’t drink or know your limits. A 36 year old male from Summerlin Key went into the Circle K on Summerlin Key, in the wee hours the morning extremely drunk, intoxicated. As soon as he came in, he was yelling, screaming, causing a disturbance, a commotion, yelling at patrons was causing quite a disturbance. At some point in time, he came around the counter, got back behind the register and was trying to get the register open, trying to get cash out of the register before the sheriff’s office could get on scene. We eventually got on scene, located him, were able to detain him, get witnesses, determined what took place, determined that he attempted to commit a robbery while no weapon was involved, thank God. I’m sure this was an alcohol influenced poor decision that I’m sure the next day he looked in the mirror and said how stupid are you? Well, pretty stupid. So he got arrested on multiple charges. We held him accountable. We’re not going to tolerate this behavior, we have to make sure our citizens feel safe and secure to go in businesses. We have to make sure our employees of these businesses feel safe and secure to do their jobs, but continue to talk about how difficult and challenging our job is and the things we encounter. So many times the people we encounter, they’re making poor decisions or are arrested, or influenced by alcohol and or drugs or mental illness.”
Recently in Key Largo, a disgruntled former employee attempted to set a business on fire.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We responded to the Pilot House Restaurant, a week and a half, two weeks ago. The report of a burglary. We found the front door smashed out, officers get on scene, we see signs of what appear to be an arson. We have the strong smell of gasoline, some burn marks in the carpet area by the front window, front door. So we believe that it was smashed open, a chemical fuel was poured and set on fire. Thank God the building didn’t burn up. Fire and Rescue got there pretty quickly, did a really good job. We called on the state local fire marshal’s office for that portion. The investigation was the sheriff’s office. We believed early on that the person of interest was an ex-disgruntled employee who was fired, who lived close by, lived in the marina by the Pilot House on a boat. So we believed he was probably the person that did this. But we had to still do an investigation and make sure we got our ducks in a row. We eventually got some surveillance footage from video cameras, which eventually did show him coming up committing the crime. So we had probable cause. We did get a warrant for his arrest. We went to the boat where he resided. We were able to arrest him there as well as recover some evidence of the crime as well. We ultimately did arrest him for multiple charges of burglary, criminal mischief, arson, some really serious charges. He’s sitting in Monterey County Jail, he’s going to be there for a while. I don’t believe he’s going to have to the money to bond out. The bond was pretty high as you’d expect. You talk about arson to a building. Those generally yield pretty high bonds because a person is a clear risk to public safety that we have to keep him incarcerated. So he’s in jail. He’s probably going to be there for a while but we send again a message and it’s difficult with employees sometimes. So you have a bad employee getting rid of them. Even though the reason they get fired, they blame everybody else. It’s so easy to point the finger and find fault in others. The reality is the fault is generally with the person in the mirror.”
Cocaine trafficking happened on Summerlin Key last week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “These are two smart people. We believe they had a kilo of cocaine, which we believed they must have found floating up somewhere. While they came across the kilo of cocaine, male female, one out of Key West, one out of the Lower Keys. They were going to try to sell it. The sheriff’s office was willing to buy cocaine from these drug dealers wannabe. We set up a sting to buy cocaine from them. We made the deal and after making the deal we did arrest both individuals for trafficking in cocaine. So coming across something they should have just turned in or left alone, they thought they were going to get rich quick. At the end of the day, it resulted in both of them being charged with a serious charge of trafficking cocaine, 2.2 pounds of pure uncut cocaine.”
A man was also arrested in a fraud case with a motor vehicle.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s a side by side offroad vehicle. These things are really pretty expensive. He’s done this and we found out through our investigation, multi state, multi counties and every state we’ve identified about least a half dozen times he’s gone in and purchased through fraudulent means high end, ATV side by side razors, off road motorcycles. He’s probably picking these up because they’re not really titled. You could sell them off road, motorcycle, ATV or quad track, and they don’t have to be registered to DHSMV. While they do have VIN numbers, but the chance of an officer running a VIN number on these are very low. I’ve got to believe he’s getting them and then selling them quickly at a reduced rate. But we’ve arrested him. He was wanted by another county for questioning in a similar case. We contacted them. So we actually had a warrant for his arrest. So he was picked up out of county, will be brought back here. These are high end pieces of equipment. We’re happy to stop his crime spree from continuing elsewhere. The motorsport was not recovered. It’s valued at $24,000. So if it doesn’t get recovered, they’re going to have to focus on restitution, which could be difficult. A man like this probably doesn’t have 24 cents, let alone $24,000. But that’s something for the courts.”