Public Safety
Sheriff Chip Simmons: “Get a Job” — His Blunt Take on Escambia’s Teen Gun Violence
In a wide-ranging conversation on “We Don’t Color on the Dog,” Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons pushed back on a teenager’s account of his shooting, defended his skepticism toward new youth programs, and detailed how older shooters are recruiting minors to carry their guns.
The Story Doesn’t Match the Evidence
Sheriff Chip Simmons told me that his office isn’t buying a 16-year-old’s account of how he was shot in the county. The teen claims he was standing in his own doorway at 1:30 a.m. when a passing car opened fire. The evidence tells a different story.
Deputies recovered shell casings in the driveway — physical evidence that undercuts the drive-by narrative. Simmons said his office is still working to determine what actually happened, though he noted the boy’s injuries are non-life threatening and he’s recovering.
“We found shell casings in the driveway, which indicate that there’s almost no way that a car speeding by could have done that. So something else took place, and we’re trying to get around to that.”
Numbers Are Down, But “One Is Too Many”
Despite a string of high-profile shootings, including the downtown Fourth of July weekend shooting, Simmons said the county’s overall shooting numbers are trending in the right direction.
- Shooting numbers are down substantially over the last three years
- Even further down compared to the crack cocaine era of the 1980s and ’90s
- Simmons said his office watches closely for retaliation, which he called “one step below” a turf war
- He said his deputies aren’t seeing hard evidence of an active turf war right now
Still, Simmons was quick to add that the numbers don’t ease his concern about the individual cases making headlines.
A Skeptic on New Programs
I pressed Simmons on whether mentorship programs need to expand, pointing out that the Sheriff’s Office’s own Blazer Academy fills up fast and caps out because it depends on one-on-one attention.
Simmons said he wants proof before backing new spending. He wants to know that any new program will actually reach the at-risk kids driving the violence — not just well-behaved kids who were never at risk to begin with.
“I want to know what you’re going to do. Show me why you think that this will target the correct individuals.”
He pointed to a hard truth: some of the people his office arrests are already career criminals by age 24, some carrying automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Simmons said most of the shooters his office sees aren’t 14-year-olds; they’re late teens and early 20s, old enough, he argues, to know better.
Simmons’ message to at-risk kids: “How cool is that life? You’ve ruined the life of another person that you shot, and your own life has been shattered because now you’re on the run or you’re in jail.”
Kids Recruited to Carry the Gun
In the downtown shooting case, surveillance video captured a 16-year-old handing a gun to shooter Nicholas Safford before Safford opened fire. That wasn’t a coincidence.
The younger the gun carrier, the lighter the charge, which is a calculation Simmons said has long shown up in law enforcement circles, with older suspects leaning on minors to hold weapons or take the fall because juvenile court carries lighter consequences.
Simmons cited a similar case at Oakwood Terrace, where a woman handed a gun to a shooter and then attempted to discard a second weapon. His office charged her too.
“If you help a felon, you become a felon.”
Pick Your Friends Better
Simmons said much of what the Blazer Academy teaches younger teens—ages 13 to 15—comes down to old-school advice: choose your company carefully, because kids can end up in dangerous situations without knowing it.
“You may be in the backseat of a car and have no idea where someone’s going. Someone may do something you weren’t aware of, and now you find yourself in this situation.”
He said he wishes courts could still mandate that low-level offenders enter mentorship programs like Blazer Academy or Lumon May’s youth initiatives, a tool he said used to be more readily available within the system.
How to Apply for Blazer Academy
- Watch the Sheriff’s Office social media for application announcements
- Email the Public Information Office (PIO) — link available on the Sheriff’s Office website
- Ask to be added to the notification list for the next opening
- The program fills quickly and only runs a limited number of sessions per year
Simmons said the academy has already run multiple sessions this year and won’t open again until early next year, citing the intensity of the program and limited staffing to run it.
