The Miami New Times has published the last radio transmission of Miami Springs Police Officer Charles B. Stafford, who was shot and killed on June 11, 1991, after chasing a suspect along the Airport Expressway near Liberty City. Stafford was 28. He remains the only Miami Springs officer to die in the line of duty.
The recording, about three minutes long, captures Stafford telling dispatch that he was eastbound on 112 and approaching 27 while following a white 1978 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. His last call came at 8:49 p.m. Backup arrived about 10 minutes later and found him struggling to breathe.
The request came in 2024 from Albert Sandoval, then assistant chief and now chief of the department, who wanted Stafford’s daughters, Natalie and Katherine, to hear their father’s voice. The reporter, a Miami New Times freelancer, had obtained the radio records while covering the case for the Miami Herald in 2021, but the audio was lost in a hard drive failure. A new round of public records requests produced the file this week.
Merrit Sims was convicted in 1994 and sentenced to death. He admitted the shooting but claimed self-defense. The Florida Supreme Court reversed that conviction in 2007, and in 2011 Sims accepted a plea deal that keeps him in prison until 2037.
The release comes as local police agencies work to strengthen ties with reporters. In Hialeah, where Stafford grew up, police spokesperson Lt. Eddie Rodriguez recently told journalism students at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Campus that media and police must “work as a team.”
