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.
We could be looking at some rain in our future.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We are in a very prone area. We do have that development in the Gulf, it’s projected to come in around the Tampa area, but that’s always subject to change with that. We should expect to have some decline in weather about the middle of the week, nothing catastrophic, but wind and rain, which you always have to be conscious of. Make sure you have an extra line or two on your boats. But we’re looking pretty good here. I am standing at the brand new Monroe County Emergency Management Center. This is quite impressive. I’ve been in the building before, as you imagine, but today is the official grand opening, where we’ll have some words said by the fire chief. I think I’m on toe to say a few words, County Administrator and emergency management director, and then we’ll get a chance for people haven’t seen it to tour this beautiful building. S many people were instrumental, people past and present, past commissioners who are no longer on the board, or past people who no longer work here, or whatever. This has been in progress for years. This is took a long time to design, to get through all the building permitting process, to mostly find the funding, $30 million, most of the money derived from grants and state emergency managements and FEMAs. People think that money is easy. Oh, just get a grant. No, it’s not that easy. There’s so many people trying to get this little pot of money. So we’re excited for a lot of reasons. Clearly, the need to have a dedicated EOC during hurricane season. Here, the sheriff’s office is finally going to have its own dedicated department, EOC next to it, which is nice to have integrated with EOC and fire rescue as orders and directions come in for activities instead of being sent via phone or other communication devices, it’d be nice that we can be embedded right with the decision makers. Because what happens is that decisions come out from emergency management. Well, someone called the ball, but someone has to send the play in. And who sends the play in is going to be our 911 dispatch center, whether it be to police, fire, rescue, whatever it may be, we need to have uninterrupted communications, make sure the same message received is the same one that’s being sent, and then get timely responses to our people. But our people have to feel comfortable that they’re going to be able to survive a storm and they don’t have to evacuate and they’ve got proper space. So we went from the last dispatch center, which had five consulates, that’s five locations people could work out of, this new one has nine. So we have room for expansion. Or during a crisis, if we have to bring extra staff in, and we’ve got room to put more staff in other key locations to help the burden of a crisis. Post hurricane is when you really get the biggest impact of what’s called SAR mission, search and rescue. That’s when start getting inundated with phone calls, people needing help, people with questions, problems, questions, concerns, all your police fire rescue services, all the other police fire rescue services, which come in from other communities to help you. Our fire rescue sheriff’s office capacity could expand, five fold, which means, five fold of communications, radios, traffic, trying to monitor, track dispatch, know where they’re at. It’s a lot to run a 911 dispatch center on a regular day for service. The Sheriff’s Office runs, we do on a normal day year, no storms involved, 277,000 calls for service a year. Every two minutes we handle a call for service.”
The EOC will keep personnel safe and keep things coordinated and will be used year round.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Also embedded is the Fire Rescue has moved their entire Fire Rescue command staff operation has a good part of the building is Monroe County Fire Rescue, so they run their buildings here. So you’ll be seeing Monroe County Fire Rescue Services operated full time, emergency management, full time during the course of year, training, preparations, preparedness, meeting rooms, obviously back to the sheriff’s office, dispatch center. So there’s a lot going on in this building, and it’s well needed, well overdue. If any community needs a building like this, it’s Monroe, who’s in the most vulnerable area, low lying areas, flood zones and impact of potential storms. We need it probably more than any other county. We just can’t go somewhere. We just can’t drive quickly to get out of harm’s way like other counties can shift to another county or two pretty easy.”
Scams have been in our county for a while, some old and some new.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We just continue to see scams every week, and we keep trying to educate our listeners, when in doubt, don’t send money. When in doubt, ask somebody. When in doubt, call who they say they are, hang up and call back, whether it be Sheriff’s Office, whether it be IRS, whether it be electric company, water company. Anytime someone says, send me payments through a green dot card, Bitcoin, some other form of payment, we know it’s a scam. The sheriff’s office gets hit a lot with these scams where we’re the target, saying that they’re from the sheriff’s office, you didn’t make a court appearance, or you didn’t show up for jury duty. Pay money. You can’t pay your way out of that stuff. The latest one we’re seeing now is they’re sending you a very hard email. It is brutal in your face. It’s no sugar coating. It’s saying that I’m a professional hacker. I’ve hacked into your phone. I’ve also hacked into your camera on your phone. I’ve been monitoring you and your activities. I’ve recorded several things that you’ve been involved in that are very disturbing and embarrassing. Got your entire contact list on your phone. You’ve got whatever it may be, 30 hours, they’re giving you a set time to send me $3,000 to my Bitcoin account. Here’s my bitcoin account number. I’m serious. I’m not playing games with you. You send me the money, or else. I’m going to devastate your life and don’t even try to call the police or else, and they’re scaring people. This is fear intimidation, and it doesn’t work on most people, but it just takes one, which there’s always one that gives into it, is concerned about something they may have done, or maybe that they were recorded, or believing someone that they’re sending an email. So I’ve had multiple people call me. I tell them same thing, we believe it’s a scam. I would not send them the money. You have to make a decision for yourself. But at the end of the day, I’ve got to presume you’ve done nothing that you are concerned about being videotaped in the first place. Well, no, I said, there you go. But we try to tell people, look whether it be sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not. Or if it sounds too ridiculous like this, it’s probably not legit either is. Again, don’t make a rash decision. Hang up. Call your local police authorities on any questions you may have. Or if it’s about a business, we say, electric company or Co Op, call their customer service directly and say, do I owe money? I understand you’re going to cut my power off. Is that true? I got this here. And 99.9% of time when you check, you’re going to hear the same response from whoever it may be is going to say, that’s a scam. Ignore it. Don’t respond. Don’t pay it. Don’t give them any money. Don’t get don’t go to Walgreens and get green dot cards, and they want to use Bitcoins. Those are really hard for us to track. People say can’t you just track it down? It’s hard to track down a Bitcoin account, almost impossible. Most of these scams come from overseas. It doesn’t happen in Monroe. If you didn’t send the money, there’s no crime that didn’t necessarily get committed and how do I arrest someone who’s in India? It’s tough. The bigger thing to remember is scams are prevalent each and every day, people want what we have, our money from hard work. We just can’t give it to them and don’t give in to fear. You want to act out of logic, not emotion. Emotional thinking is, oh I’m in trouble and they got the goods on me. I’ve got to pay, or else. I’ve got a warrant for my arrest. No, that’s emotional thinking. Logical thinking is, stop. Just take a breath. Think about this. Did you do anything you’d have a warrant? Did you get a summons? Does this sound legit? Green Dot cards, Bitcoin monies? The logical thinker is going to say, no, this is a bunch of crap, and the logical thinker is either going to dismiss it, or, at the most, is going to call somebody for verification that they’re on target when they say, this is garbage.”
A man was arrested recently for aggravated assault and battery on Stock Island.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is up there by the golf course, the fence line on US 1. A lot of the homeless population hand out in that area during daytime, they sit under the shade trees and drink. That’s a congregation location. It’s not uncommon for these people who are drinking, who maybe a lot of them have mental illness or other stuff, substance abuse issues, to get into an argument over stupid stuff. One guy got into an argument with another guy over dumb stuff, which escalated into him pulling a knife and threatening the safety of the other individuals. We got called about an armed individual out there with a knife. So we sent dispatch, our officers were there right away. We were on the scene like immediately, almost. We found several of the people there were holding branches, limbs and whatnot, trying to ward off this person and fend them off with trees and branches. So that’s a scary situation, but again, our response time is under two minutes, so we’re there so fast, and thank God, when we gave him lawful commands, he complied with them. Sometimes people don’t, which would cause us to have to escalate into non lethal weapons, tasers or pepper sprays. But here, by giving a lawful commands, we’re thankful that he complied with our lawful commands and did what we said, which was to drop the knife. He dropped the knife, we then were able to separate people, secure him, put handcuffs, detain him for investigative reasons, to figure out what was going on. We want to make sure that while we secure him, that he’s not the victim defending himself. There’s Stand Your Ground laws, but what we determined was that he was the aggressor that pulled a knife on these other individuals would have to try to defend themselves again him with branches and sticks and twigs and whatnot. After determining that he was the aggressor, we did arrest him for the aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the assault being the threat with after violence, with the ability to carry it out, and the weapon being the knife in this case.”
There was a man arrested at 20th Street as well as resource violation in other areas of the Keys.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We’re busy doing so much. That 20th Street, is an area where the homeless population in Marathon subsides and hangs out and lives in tents for most part, about the old boot Key Bridge, we’ve been having a lot of calls to service there lately, we’ve been doing daily extra patrols out there. We just can’t be there 24/7, but we did have an altercation there, which resulted in violence, between a metal pipe and individuals and threats and being struck in the arm. One of the individuals needed medical attention. We got there, the suspect was gone, but we identified him. We investigated with the witnesses on scene and what took place. We eventually located him. He acknowledged to be in the location, but presented himself as the victim, defending himself. At the end, we determined he was the aggressor and committed the act of violence. So we did arrest him. Then the resource cases are very important to us, while it’s not the primary responsibility of the sheriff’s office, it’s really the Fish and Wildlife Commission, but these are still active attacks on our environment, which we have to protect it from poachers, people that destroy it. It’s important to me that we try to protect these resources between our commercial fishing industry, between our tourist industry, between our locals who want to go out and dive and shoot a fish or two, maybe get a couple of lobster for dinner, but also our locals who want to teach their kids and grandkids to dive, get fish and to enjoy what this Keys are all about. So we have to protect these resources all call costs. So my troops go on a regular basis. We have our officers checking the bridges, the shorelines. We have patrol boats out there trying to help aid and assist FWC. We want to be a good partner, and we’ve got to be out there on a regular basis.”