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.
The recent indictments with Trauma Star do not really reflect on the sheriff’s department.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Trauma star is probably the premier program in the county, with the job of saving lives each and every day, flying 1,000, 1,200 flights a year. We say, we save lives every day we fly. Unfortunately, a couple years ago, there was a chief flight nurse who was employed by Monroe County Fire Rescue who stole a lot of narcotics and apparently was addicted to controlled substances. That case has been out in the public for a long period of time, but the grand jury was meeting lately, not necessarily on that factor, but they were meeting more so on the factor of concerns about what were perceived to be cover ups and hiding and stopping investigations and derailing and trying to impede law enforcement, as well as internal investigations. Several people got caught up in this. Instead of doing the right thing and reporting it or cooperating, they obstructed, opposed and caused criminal investigations to be stifled, or stopped internal investigations, failed to hold fire rescue personnel accountable for their parts. The majority of men and women in County Fire Rescue are awesome, hardworking men and women, doing a difficult, challenging job, but there are a few people that made some poor decisions that affect everyone. We all get painted with the same brush sometimes. So the grand jury met. The grand jury report has not come out yet. It should be out anytime. But from what I know about it, the grand jury report is going to be very critical of Fire Rescue Management and Administration. It’s going to be very critical about county oversight from various areas of administration, and it’s going to be critical of the medical director at the time, and it’s going to paint the picture of a systemic problem in Fire Rescue in the county when it comes to how employees are treated, or how things are potentially swept away. So it’s sad. This is public trust. It is so hard to obtain public trust, but it is so easy to lose it, and that’s what’s at stake now, is trying to, I think the county and Fire Rescue is rebuild that public trust which is in question. So overall, again, the Trauma Star Program has not been the subject of the overall investigation. The Trauma Star sheriff’s office personnel have never been the focus criminally, administratively or anything else. The clerk’s office audit cleared the sheriff’s office of 100% compliance. No issues. They were not so pleasant when it came to Fire Rescue. We know that clerk’s office audit came out in the past, the grand jury report is going to focus on the county and Fire Rescue. The grand jury report is going to clear again, the sheriff’s office of 100% compliance with no issues, questions, concerns. I don’t say this to beat up on Fire Rescue or county, but my job is to speak on behalf of MCSO and protect MSCO. If we’re wrong, we admit it, we own it, we’ll deal with it. We’ll be transparent, forthright, and we’ll do a press release to put it out there, like we always do. But same token, it’s important that I let people know, because most people think Trauma Star, they just think sheriff’s office. It’s a joint, proper partnership between the sheriff’s office, the Fire Rescue Monroe County and Monroe County Board of County Commissioners. So I like to distinctly tell people here that our portion that we control, which is the pilots, the mechanics, the ship is not in question. But the grand jury report is also going to be very positive in regards to Trauma Star program being efficient, effective. It’s going to be very complimentary of the personnel who run that program at all levels, police, fire, rescue, again, that the people doing the jobs each and every day are there, are efficient, are effective, are doing their job, are saving lives. And that’s not the question from the grand jury. The question is going to be the management oversight of those programs and how things were handled, so people can be assured with confidence, Trauma Star’s availability, their efficiency, their effectiveness and their capacity to save lives each and every day has never changed. So that’s something we want to reassure our people. We are there, we are solid, we are committed. We are going to continue to save lives each and every day.”
An alien smuggling case is now coming to light.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is not necessarily sheriff’s office case, but I know some about it, so I want to report to listeners, because it’s close to home, and is really interesting. We always see the Keys as a smuggling point for drugs and migrants. This is a very well organized migrant smuggling, human smuggling operation, which Sunday night, took place on Card Sound Road, where 15 Ecuadorians and five Chinese nationals were smuggled into Monroe County, the north end, on Card Sound Road. This was a custom Border Protection operation, so we weren’t really involved for the most part, but they were brought in here. They had vehicles staged and waiting, where 10 were brought in each vehicle to the mainland, where they were stopped and then later on, brought back to Monroe for a custom border protection. Four smugglers are sitting in Monroe County jail now. The governments have seized their vehicles in a smuggling operation. So very well organized, very detailed. Usually, migrants are brought in and just dumped off the shore to make it on their own and run away. Here they had vehicles waiting to pick them up and transport them to an unknown area in the mainland, but with drivers, vehicles, boats, this was pretty well organized and anytime you see Chinese nationals come into the United States, it’s a little heightened sense of concern for national security, I think.”
A 30 year old Miami, Florida man was arrested Monday in Key Largo for sexual battery of a female teenager that happened about four years ago.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is an historical case where the victim didn’t come forward until years later. Being a victim of sexual assault, it weighs on these victims every day, and they emotionally are just dealing with this, and it’s hard to get over something so traumatic. This was a known person. They were friends, co workers. They had a work and personal relationship, non sexual at the time, when some point in time, the 25 year old male sexually assaulted the 16 year old minor. She did not come forward initially, and, as we said, just weighed on her, weight on her, weighed on her. Years later, she made the complaint. So it’s always hard to investigate something happened years earlier, but our detectives did a really good job. We worked very closely on this investigation, brought in major crime detectives, worked on control calls and text and different messages to prove it, we eventually had probable cause and prove that the sexual battery did occur, as indicated by the victim, four plus years earlier. We able to get a warrant for this individual and get him arrested and hold him accountable for a sad case. If he did it once, he could do it again. We’ve got to hold people accountable. We’ve got to give some type of support to these victims and some type of closure, and we’ve got to hold people accountable for violent such acts.”
Drug cases also continue.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “They continue to be result of proactive policing from my team members. A lot are coming from traffic stops where we’re dealing with traffic safety. One in Marathon, around 45th Street, we stopped the car for speeding. Had a female from Jensen Beach area. Inside the car, we found psychedelic mushrooms, other controlled substances, drug paraphernalia. When we stopped her, window went down, we smelled marijuana coming out the car, which gave us probable cause to continue on. So we’re able to hold her accountable, get drugs off the streets. We had another case in the Upper Keys, a traffic stop again, stopping an individual for traffic violations, had a suspended license. While stopping, something was thrown out the passenger window, recovered. It wound up being cocaine. We got the driver, he later on admitted to being scared, throwing the drugs out the window. That’s an individual from the mainland as well. We continue to try to keep our roads safe, fight the war, the battle on drugs, which is a very difficult, challenging job, for sure. We are focused on proactive policing, trying to prevent, deter crime, versus waiting for it to occur. We don’t want to be reactionary. We want to be preventive.”
Protecting resources is also a concern for the police department.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is always going to be a problem. Poaching is always going to exist. One case at the Channel Two Bridge resource checks caught an individual who had caught a goliath grouper. We know that they are a protected, endangered species, that you’re not allowed to possess those. He caught it, kept it, resulting in the loss of life of that species and we’re going to hold him accountable. He was given a criminal citation to answer to possession of a species which are not allowed to possess because they’re endangered, being a goliath grouper and then the Channel Five Bridge again, an individual with short rung lobster. This is ongoing. We just scratched the surface of the impacts of this ongoing poaching and how it destroys, potentially, our environment, our future, and it’s difficult and challenging at best.”
A burglary case also happened last week on Stock Island.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That was a known persons. A person broke in trying to get their phone, which is in the house. Once inside the house, the occupant house is pretty aggravated this person broke into a window trying to get their phone. It turned into a heated argument. The person who broke in the house to get their phone from the house got into a physical argument, and verbal and then physical with the occupants, turned into a battery, a fight. So again, this was not a random act of someone breaking in to burglarize a home, which doesn’t make it better, but I always tell our listeners, when we do have these type of stuff, they’re generally going to be known persons involved, even this sexual battery, as sad as it is, these are known people who hang out, do stuff together. They’re at the house together, and some reason, their phone got left in there, and don’t know why they had to break in to get their phone, but we did get a call, did diffuse it, get some medical attention provided to the victim in his case, got the story figured out, what took place. Ultimately, we arrested this person for burglary and the battery that the person at the house wanted to pursue charges against someone who, one time, was their friend. But it’s interesting to see a lot of these cases, again, that we talk about every week, are generally going to be somehow known people, family members, friends, co workers, some type of relation. We just don’t have many random acts of violent related matters, which is great. We don’t want it to happen, but we sure don’t want it to be random acts.”