Miami Police Mistakenly Search Home For Man Who Was Already In Jail, Traumatizing Little Girl And Black Veteran
A Black veteran of the Afghanistan War was at home by herself last month when she heard someone pounding on her daughter's bedroom window.
![Naomi Simmons](https://d.enstarz.com/en/full/220459/naomi-simmons.png?w=712&f=4579aa8bddf843ac19b6496ac9a09532)
Naomi Simmons went outside to investigate the source of the noise and was confronted by Miami-Dade police officers who had guns aimed at her. They informed her they were searching for Marquise Wiley, a man wanted on felony gun charges and thought to be residing in her home, as reported by 'NBC Miami.'
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However, the incident on June 14 turned out to be a significant police error that could have resulted in her death, similar to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020.
Simmons shared with local media that she had been residing in her Miami Gardens home for over a year and had never heard of Marquise Wiley. Despite this, she managed to locate Wiley's whereabouts on her phone soon after the Miami-Dade police left her home empty-handed.
It turned out Wiley was already in custody.
![Marquise Wiley](https://d.enstarz.com/en/full/220457/marquise-wiley.png?w=402&f=8a29a6318e5c1ce215ebc698d5a2a148)
The 35-year-old man, who had a long criminal record, had been in a Broward County Jail since January after being transferred from a Miami-Dade County Jail.
"I was able to find it with no resources and a cellphone on my couch," Simmons shared with 'NBC Miami.' "He was at the prison before they even came to my door."
Miami-Dade police informed the local outlet that they had checked several databases, including local, state, and federal, to confirm whether Wiley was in custody before raiding Simmons' home. However, they failed to check the Broward County Jail database, despite its proximity.
According to a document signed by Broward Circuit Court Judge Martin Fein on December 13, 2023, Wiley was "presently incarcerated at Metro West Detention Center, 13850 N.W. 41 St." This facility is located about six miles from the main headquarters of the Miami-Dade Police Department in Doral, a municipality in west Miami-Dade County.
The document also indicates that the "Sheriff of Broward County, Florida shall obtain custody of the said defendant from the above-named facility and present him/her to this court on 1/31/24." A booking report from the Broward County Sheriff's Office confirmed Wiley was taken into custody on January 3 and notes the "Dade County Jail" as the "place of arrest."
Court records reveal that Wiley pleaded guilty on May 9 to five charges related to armed robbery and received a sentence of more than ten years in prison on the same day.
Despite this, over a month later, Miami-Dade police raided Simmons' home, even though Miami-Dade court records last linked Wiley to the address they searched in 2018, as part of a restraining order filed against him that year.
Police explained that they used the address on Wiley's driver's license to obtain the warrant, despite his booking sheet listing a different address where he had reportedly lived for the past 12 months.
While police dismissed the incident as a minor error because no one was killed, Simmons, 27, was left deeply traumatized by the experience.
"I'm still not sleeping, I'm still having nightmares," she shared with 'NBC Miami.' "I already suffer from PTSD from my time in Afghanistan."
Miami-Dade police declined an on-camera interview with NBC Miami but attempted to shift the blame to the Broward County Sheriff's Office, stating they "should have checked on Wiley's status before transferring him to state custody due to his pending gun case." However, Miami-Dade County detention officers could have similarly verified his status before transferring him to Broward deputies, which might have prevented the wrongful raid on an innocent Black woman's home.
Simmons told the outlet how "frustrating and scary" the raid was "because you see all these things on the news about people that look like me men and women who are getting killed because police showed up at the wrong house."