He Was Shot in the Back By a Cop…Then Spent 18 Months in Jail

After Silvon Simmons was shot by a police officer, he was the one charged with attempted murder. Now he’s piecing his life back together.

Photos by Matt Wittmeyer

Silvon Simmons gets out of the Chevy Impala, turns and sees a burly police officer coming briskly up the driveway, .40-caliber service revolver drawn. Simmons runs for his life. The cop squeezes the trigger again and again. Simmons falls to the ground. As he lies there, helplessly, the cop towers above him, screaming, threatening to finish the job. To blow Simmons’ head off.

With minor variations, this is the nightmare that awakens Simmons every night. It’s a replay of the evening of April 1, 2016, when he was shot multiple times in his Rochester, New York, backyard by a white police officer in pursuit of the wrong black man.

“The only difference,” says Simmons, “is that in my dreams I don’t feel any pain.”

Sometimes he manages to fall back to sleep; other nights Simmons will get up for a smoke, turn on the TV, and aimlessly flip through the channels.

A deep fear of police follows Simmons, 37, in his waking hours, too, like the morning his father gave him a ride to…