‘I’m Still Having Nightmares’: Miami Police Banged on Little Girl’s Window, Pointed Guns at Black Veteran In Search of Her Home for Stranger Who Was Already In Jail

Naomi Simmons, a 27-year-old Black woman who served in the Afghanistan War, was sitting at home alone one night last month when somebody began banging on her daughter’s bedroom window.

She stepped outside to see what the commotion was about and was met by Miami-Dade police officers pointing guns at her face, telling her they were looking for a man named Marquise Wiley, who was wanted on felony gun charges and believed to be living in the house, according to NBC Miami.

But the June 14 incident turned out to be another blunder by police that could have easily gotten her killed, as has happened in so many previous such cases, including the Breonna Taylor shooting death in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020.

Simmons told local news that she had been living at the Miami Gardens home for more than a year and had never met Wiley or known anything about him. Nevertheless, Simmons was able to track down Wiley’s whereabouts from her phone shortly after Miami-Dade police officers left her home after not finding him.

Turns out he was already in custody.

The 35-year-old man with a lengthy rap sheet had been sitting in a Broward County Jail since January after having been transferred from a jail in Miami-Dade County.

“I was able to find it with no resources and a cellphone on my couch,” Simmons told NBC Miami. “He was at the prison before they even came to my door.”

Miami-Dade police told NBC Miami they checked several databases, including local, state, and federal, to determine if he was in custody prior to raiding Simmons’ home, but they obviously neglected to check the Broward County Jail database despite it being a neighboring county.

They also neglected to see that Wiley had already been in custody in the Miami-Dade jail system in December while still having an active warrant — which Atlanta Black Star was able to confirm in minutes through the Broward County public accessible database to court documents.

The document signed by Broward Circuit Court Judge Martin Fein on Dec. 13, 2023, states that Wiley is “presently incarcerated at Metro West Detention Center, 13850 N.W. 41 St.” This center is about six miles from the main headquarters of the Miami-Dade Police Department in Doral, a municipality in west Miami-Dade County.

The document further states 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 he was taken into custody on Jan. 3 and lists the “Dade County Jail” as the “place of arrest.”

Court records also show he pleaded guilty on May 9 to five charges related to armed robbery and was sentenced to more than ten years in prison that same day.

More than a month later, Miami-Dade police decided to raid Simmons’ home even though court records from Miami-Dade’s court system last connect Wiley to the address they raided in 2018, according to a restraining order a woman filed against him that year.

But police say they were just going by the address on his driver’s license, which is how they obtained the warrant, even though he has a completely different address listed on his booking sheet from December, which states he has lived at that address for 12 months.

While police wrote off the incident as a minor blunder because nobody had been killed, Simmons was left traumatized by the experience.

“I’m still not sleeping, I’m still having nightmares,” she told NBC Miami. “I already suffer from PTSD from my time in Afghanistan.”

Miami-Dade police refused an on-camera interview with NBC Miami but tried to point the blame at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, saying they “should have checked on Wiley’s status before transferring him to state custody due to his pending gun case.” But under those guidelines, Miami-Dade County detention officers could have also checked on his status before handing him over to Broward deputies, which would likely have prevented them from raiding the home of an innocent Black woman.

“Frustrating and scary 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,” she told NBC Miami.

‘I’m Still Having Nightmares’: Miami Police Banged on Little Girl’s Window, Pointed Guns at Black Veteran In Search of Her Home for Stranger Who Was Already In Jail