The Associated Press
MIAMI — A police officer pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping escort what he thought was a heroin shipment in a corruption sting where undercover FBI agents posed as mobsters.
Detective Thomas Simcox is among four Hollywood police officers charged in the case and the third to plead guilty to drug conspiracy. The fourth, Sgt. Jeffry Courtney, 51, is to plead guilty Thursday in Fort Lauderdale.
Authorities allege that after meetings with the ''mobsters’’ that were audiotaped and videotaped, Simcox, Courtney and Kevin Companion provided protection using rental cars as the load was driven from Miami Beach to Hollywood on Nov. 30. Stephen Harrison was at the Hollywood location to keep watch on a truck that was to take the heroin north, according to court documents.
Aside from the drug escort, the four officers were involved in protecting what they thought were illegal gambling games and operations involving purported stolen diamonds, watches and cigarettes, according to the affidavit.
Under a plea agreement, Simcox, 50, agreed to resign, surrender his law enforcement credentials and repay the FBI $16,000 he got for the drug escort and other corrupt activities. Like Companion and Harrison, who pleaded guilty last month, he is to be sentenced in July to between 10 years and life in prison.
Simcox and his attorney, Bruce Udolf, declined to comment after the hearing.
The undercover probe was shut down prematurely because of a leak, but Hollywood Police Chief James Scarberry has said no one on his senior command staff was responsible for wrongdoing.