Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
By James Bennett III
The young black man who was issued a trespass warning outside Residence Hall One in a Nov. 7 encounter with police, sparking protests from a Student Government senator, has had several brushes with the law.
Pinellas County court records show that Joshua Isaiah Simmons, 21, has been charged with trespassing in three other incidents, loitering and prowling, misuse of the 911 system and possession of marijuana.
He pleaded no contest or guilty to all six charges — all of them non-violent misdemeanors. He has served several days in the Pinellas County Jail since 2017, records show, and he owes $3,569.02 in unpaid fines and court costs.
Simmons was being questioned by two university police officers about 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 7 when the senator, Karla Correa, came out of RHO with several friends and confronted the officers – who are white – for the way they were treating him.
The officers handcuffed and detained her for obstruction of justice, and she and a friend – Naya Payne – responded by filing a complaint against the officers, whom they accused of racism.
When The Crow’s Nest advised her of Simmons’ criminal record last week, Correa said she stands by her decision to intervene on his behalf.
“I do stand by my decision to make sure that the police did not act out of accordance after the man (Simmons) said that he was not okay,” Correa said in an email on Nov. 22.
“I would do this for anyone who said that they weren’t okay while they were (with) the police,” she said. “I would stay to make sure everything is okay, always.”
“Everyone is entitled to being treated safely and respectfully by the police,” Payne said in an email on Nov. 24. “I stand by Karla’s decision to not “obstruct justice,” but to make sure that justice was being upheld
“Karla will always be 100 percent right in making sure that these officers were performing their duties correctly and in a way that didn’t endanger this young black man.”
In a written report on the Simmons trespass case, university police officer Michael Wasserman said he saw Simmons walking around the parking garage about 11:16 that night.
He spoke to Simmons near the Peter Rudy Wallace/Florida Center for Teachers building, Wasserman wrote, but Simmons – who was chanting something – ignored him.
When Simmons tried to get into RHO about 11:30, Wasserman wrote, he and officer Patrick O’Donnell confronted him.
Simmons said he wasn’t a student at the university but wanted to see what the inside of the building looked like, Wasserman wrote. Simmons also said he knew someone who lives in RHO but could not name anyone specifically.
The officers were questioning Simmons just outside RHO when Correa says she intervened because Simmons told her he was not OK.
She acknowledges telling police that she knew Simmons, even though she doesn’t. She denies she interfered with the officers and accuses them of being “very violent” with her as she was being detained and handcuffed for obstructing the investigation.
University police Chief David Hendry says UPD has referred the Correa case to the university’s Office of Student Conduct, which investigates alleged violations of the campus code of conduct, and to the Pinellas-Pasco state attorney’s office for possible prosecution under state law.
Past incidents at RHO
Several times in recent years, non-residents have breached the security at RHO and put its residents in danger.
In February, a 19-year-old man slipped into RHO by following a resident through the locked entrance. Once inside, he waited for a female resident he had briefly dated to return to her room.
When she did, police said, he dragged her to a stairwell by her hair and battered her, then forced her into her car and drove her to a secluded area, where he battered her again.
Two months later, another non-student, 21, followed his former girlfriend into RHO and battered another student there, police said.
In 2014, police said, the knife-wielding, intoxicated boyfriend of a female resident of RHO entered the building with her after threatening two students on the sidewalk outside.
When students inside RHO saw the 31-year-old man and his knife, they alerted police, who put the building on lockdown and arrested the man.
In 2011, a 47-year-old man slipped inside RHO as a student was leaving. Earlier that night, police said, the man had robbed a downtown Subway at knifepoint.
Two RHO residents persuaded the man to leave, and he was arrested shortly thereafter.
In February 2016, another non-student was arrested after he masturbated behind a female student and touched her in the parking garage elevator.
Simmons’ past brushes with the law
In police and court records, Simmons, the man in the Nov. 7 trespass case, is identified as a transient with a record of odd behavior.
A week before the incident outside RHO, Simmons was arrested for loitering and prowling in an empty house about a mile west of the USF St. Petersburg campus.
Earlier this fall, he was arrested for trespassing at St. Anthony’s Hospital when he refused to leave after seeing a doctor there; for misuse of the 911 system when he called the number five times to try to turn himself in for theft; and for possession of marijuana. He called authorities about the marijuana because he wanted to go to jail, police said.
In 2017, he was arrested for trespassing twice – once when he refused to leave a Walmart and once when he entered an occupied home in Gulfport.
This story was corrected on 2/16/2020. The incident happened on Nov. 7, not Nov. 8.
