Johnny Simms, the 22-year-old who shot and killed two police officers in Miami, had a spotty school record, a long criminal history, and a future that was tattooed all over his body.
From the Miami Herald:
Hunting a violent career criminal wanted for murder, Miami-Dade police detectives knocked on the door of a Liberty City duplex Thursday morning. The man’s mother let them in.
But Johnny Simms, a tattooed thug fresh off his most recent prison stint, refused to face justice, jumping out from another room with his pistol blazing at point-blank range.
Police bullets felled the fugitive — but not before he shot and killed veteran detectives Roger Castillo, 41, and Amanda Haworth, 44.
The career criminal’s bloody last stand rocked South Florida’s law enforcement community, which has counted six other officers killed in the line of duty in the past five years.
“I know I’m supposed to say we’re all children of God and that things happen,” said an angry and tearful Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus. “But that guy is evil. He murdered two of my people today.”
The shooting was the first double police murder in South Florida since Miami-Dade detectives Richard Boles and David Strzalkowski were gunned down at a trailer park in 1988, and the first time a female officer was shot to death on the job in Miami-Dade. …
And more about Simms’ history:
According to interviews with law enforcement officials, and police and court records, Simms, 22, had been in trouble since he was a teen. Officers first arrested him at 14, for larceny. In all, Simms was arrested 11 times before he was an adult on charges including burglary and auto theft, state records show. He received house arrest in some cases, while others were dropped.
His tattoos mirrored his lifestyle: a gun, flames, and the words “savage” and “10-20 Life.”
In October 2005 and December 2005, Simms was arrested for separate armed robberies, one with a pistol and the second with a rifle. Prosecutors did not file charges in either case.
In 2007, Simms — who also goes by “Sims” — went to state prison for a different 2005 armed robbery and auto theft. He was released in February 2009 on probation.
Simms violated his probation when he was again arrested in June 2010, this time for robbery with a deadly weapon and selling cocaine. He pleaded guilty and Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Julio Jimenez sentenced him to one year in prison plus five years’ probation.
But Simms served only one month because he had earned credit for time served earlier in a Miami-Dade jail. He was released in September 2010 on five years of court-mandated “administrative probation,” a low-level form of supervision that does not require regular check-ins with authorities.
Simms hadn’t been out a month before he was again implicated in a violent act.
According to Miami homicide detectives, Simms shot and killed Cornelious Larry, 27, on Oct. 16 in the parking lot of an Overtown apartment complex, 1535 NW First Pl.
Miami police say Simms shot Larry to death after the man began yelling and cursing at Simms’ sister. Simms fled on a bicycle. Detectives searched for him for 12 days before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Diane Ward signed an arrest warrant. The charges: first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Simms had been on the lam since.
Miami police last week spotted him driving a rented car in Allapattah, according to law enforcement sources. He bailed out of the car, which was traced back to his family.
Detectives had been in touch with his relatives, trying to get him to turn himself in.
Tipsters had placed Simms in several houses in Liberty City. Miami homicide detectives turned to the county police warrants bureau, which has a squad specially trained to arrest fugitive career criminals, Loftus said. He said the assignment was routine.
“These are warrants people,” he said. “They do this everyday. They have an elevated level of expertise.”
Miami police Cmdr. Delrish Moss, a spokesman, agreed: “It’s not unusual for us to be assisted by county warrants in arresting the most dangerous criminals. The criminals we’re dealing with don’t see the difference between the uniforms or jurisdiction — they just see cops.”
Castillo’s and Haworth’s squad, wearing body armor labeled “Police,” were dispatched to a duplex at 6112 NW Sixth Ct., in a gritty section of Liberty City just west of Interstate 95.
To get to the front door, detectives needed to walk down a narrow pathway bordered by a wire fence on one side and the duplex on the other.
Simms’ mother lived at the home with some of his siblings. Sources familiar with the investigation said the detectives knocked on the door, and Simms’ mother let them inside.
Just inside the living room, investigators believe, Simms jumped out of another room, firing his gun.
Haworth was shot in the head inside the home. Beecher was not hit. Castillo was shot dead just outside, in the walkway.
Plasencia, who had been behind the duplex, ran back around and — under fire — shot Simms dead in front of the door.
Witnesses said they heard three or four gunshots. “It was like `Pow, pow, pow, pow,’ ” said T’Shai Bey, who was at an auto body shop beside the building. “I could see smoke. I thought it was fireworks.”
Bey walked over to the duplex and peered through the wire fence. It was partially blocked by plywood, she said. In the yard: two bodies pointing in different directions.
“Women were screaming. Babies were crying,” Bey said. “A lady came running out of the house asking for a cellphone. She kept saying “I don’t want my son to die. I don’t want my son to die.’ ”
Meanwhile, Miami Herald columnist James Burnett says some people are learning the wrong lessons from Simms’ violent life and death:
…Renita Holmes, better known in Liberty City and Overtown as Biggie Mama, warned me that we haven’t learned enough because some people still can’t seem to acknowledge that violent criminals are not just the boogeymen of dreams and nightmares but rather individuals who live among us.
Let’s be clear that by “we” and “us” I mean people — humans — not just black people.
That should go without saying, unless you believe there is a cause-and-effect relationship between skin color and behavior. And if you believe that, then what can I say but Sieg Heil?
Even so, a small but persistent group of you write and call me each week with questions that almost always begin “Dear Mr. Burnett, why do black people . . .?”
Once and for all, regardless of how that question ends, unless it involves my actions, I don’t know.
… Holmes is the would be neighborhood peacemaker who has risked her life by approaching drug dealers and screaming in their faces to “beat it!”
I watched Holmes angrily lecture a group of teenagers who were joking as though nothing had happened shortly after the Castillo and Haworth shootings.
“Castillo treated y’all like a big brother when he was out here,” she said. “You know this! Show some respect!”
And Holmes is the woman who is told after nearly every neighborhood tragedy that the perpetrators were pretty good guys.
`AN ALRIGHT KID’
I’m a sucker for a challenge, so I went back to Simms’ neighborhood earlier this week to test Holmes’ theory.
“You talkin’ ’bout that stickup kid?” Tremont Jackson asked me outside the Marathon service station a few blocks from the Simms family home. “I heard he was an alright kid.”
Even though he robbed neighbors at gunpoint? I asked. He did it a lot — at least 14 arrests for burglary, theft and robbery.
“You know, sometimes kids get caught up in stuff,” Jackson said.
Trina Greer, 18, told me outside a nearby tire shop, that Simms “was a good kid. He never bothered nobody.”
But what about the people he robbed? You know that’s what he did . . . a lot, right?
“That was different,” Jackson said. “I heard about his dirt. But he never bothered me.”
Hmmm.
SHORT MEMORIES
“It happens every time,” Holmes said. “People have short memories. Short! Some of the people you talked to probably have cousins or next door neighbors who have been victims of armed robbery. And they still can’t say there are people around here who are problems, who are making it unsafe for everyone else.”
Holmes is right, you know. She compared the matter to a 12-step recovery program. And by that measure, where violent criminals are concerned, too many folks in Miami are stuck on Step 1, unable to admit they have a problem.
