Sheriff ’s race rocked by revelation
When Tony was 14, he killed an 18-year-old man, says the incident was in self-defense
A newly disclosed development from decades ago — the killing of a teenager by Gregory Tony, then 14 and now the sheriff of Broward County — unleashed a torrent of dramatically different assessments Sunday.
In one view, the incident shows someone who emerged, and ultimately thrived, as a law enforcement role model in Florida, after growing up in a crime-ravaged Philadelphia neighborhood.
The other view is that Tony improperly kept his role in the killing hidden when he was hired as a
Coral Springs police officer — and again last year when he was appointed Broward sheriff by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The incident
Newspaper accounts at the time reveal that Tony, now 41, killed an 18-year-old man in 1993, when both were teenagers in the Badlands neighborhood of Philadelphia, an area known for violence and open-air drug dealing.
Details from a police report, family, friends and news accounts from the time were first reported by the Florida Bulldog investigative news website.
Tony said Sunday in an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he doesn’t remember exactly how the shooting — “the most difficult, painful experience” of his youth — played out. He knew 18-year-old Hector
“Chino” Rodriguez as a slightly older guy in his neighborhood who was involved in dealing drugs and “always carried a gun.”
Tony didn’t remember why, but an argument erupted that day, in May 1993, outside his house.
“He [Rodriguez] pulled his gun out and made threats, say
ing he didn’t have any issue shooting me and my brother . ... We ran into the house and he chased after us. Fortunately I was able to get my father’s gun,” Tony said. “Before he was able to shoot me and my brother, I was able to defend myself and shoot him.” Tony said he couldn’t just run inside and shut the door, because Rodriguez “made his way in.”
The shooting occurred outside the home, as Rodriguez “stood just off the curb,” according to news reports, which also said Tony retrieved the gun from under his father’s mattress and the bullets from elsewhere in the house. Tony said on Sunday he didn’t remember the details.
“We’re going back 27 years ago,” he said, emphasizing that authorities ultimately cleared him.
Tony’s parents made sure he received counseling, he remembered.
Even after the shooting, the violence “was just as bad,” he said. “I had to make it out of there . ... I never looked back.”
He said he sympathizes with the family of Rodriguez, but “at the same time, I didn’t do anything wrong.” He said he hated having to bring up the fact that “their loved one was trying to kill me … and was part of the worst of society.”
The police report said Rodriguez had multiple gunshot wounds to his head and body, according to the Florida Bulldog.
Maritza Carrasquillo, Rodriguez’s girlfriend and the mother of his then 5-month-old child, said witnesses told her Tony was about 6 to 10 feet away from her boyfriend when he began shooting, according to the news site. The first bullet struck Rodriguez in the stomach. Tony then shot him four or five more times in the head, Carrasquillo told the news site.
Inner city
In Philadelphia during the 1990s, the crack cocaine
epidemic consumed the community, Tony said on Sunday. He said his home was invaded; he was “brutally pistol whipped” in a robbery of his shoes. He saw a friend get shot in the face.
“It made me into who I am today. As a law enforcement officer, I’m able to ... go into some of the darkest communities of Broward County and be able to relate to the black and brown kids who are suffering from some of the same things I had to witness,” he said.
In disclosures for his job with the Coral Springs Police Department, Tony did admit he sprayed graffiti, used marijuana twice, bounced checks, received food and candy purchased with drug money, engaged in street fighting, and took $200 from his parents, during the early 1990s.
He remembered bullets flying as he sat home watching TV, and his family hitting the floor to avoid them.
But he said he also had an uncle and aunt who were police officers. “I fought to get out of there, knowing that’s what I wanted to do one day,” he said.
No disclosure
The incident hasn’t been widely known until this weekend. Helen Ferre, the governor’s communications director, said DeSantis was told Saturday by his chief of staff, Shane Strum. She said she didn’t know if Tony reached out to the governor’s office or if Strum learned about it from news reports. Until then, Ferre said via text, “the governor was not aware of this 1993 incident when Sheriff Gregory Tony was a 14-year-old living in Philadelphia with his family.”
Tony said he didn’t think disclosure would have impacted the governor’s decision. “You’re saying that I should have disclosed a horrific incident that I faced as a 14-year-old kid, where I had to survive a shooting,” he said. “... Why would I put myself in a position where I’m talking about a brutal attack that I survived, for the sake of an interview? I don’t think anyone would have done that.”
He said he spoke with DeSantis this weekend, and the governor “wanted to see me continue to push on and not be distracted with the politics down here and keep doing what’s right for Broward County.”
Tony’s employment application at the Coral Springs Police Department, where he worked from October 2005 through September 2016, contains a section that asks about “criminal and juvenile record.” Among the questions: Have you ever been arrested, charged, received a notice or summons to appear for any criminal violation?
Have you ever been detained by any law enforcement officer for investigative purposes or to your knowledge have you ever been the subject of, or a suspect in, any criminal investigation?
Tony checked “no” in response to both questions. Responding to a question asking if he has “ever been fingerprinted for any reason,” he wrote that he was, for “law enforcement academy.” The first page of the application says: “Any applicant intentionally giving false information will be subject to disqualification or termination of employment.”
He had been charged in the shooting in 1993, according to news accounts at the time, as well as criminally charged with passing a bad check in Leon County in 2002, a charge that was dropped. In 2005, he wrote a letter to the Coral Springs police chief about the Leon County criminal history he’d omitted on his job application. “I am very embarrassed and ashamed that I have to write this letter because of my youthful irresponsibility,” the letter says. He said he’d written a check to cover college books and when he later found out the check had bounced, he paid fees at the courthouse. But he said he didn’t know “that I had a criminal history due to this event.”
Tony said he was not arrested in the Philadelphia incident and does not think he was technically “charged with a crime.” He said his case was sent through the juvenile system that uses a different process and wording. His denial conflicts with news reporting of the incident at the time. Newspapers reported that he was initially charged as an adult, he was initially held without bail, and a judge later ordered a trial.
“There’s no record,” Tony said. “... I wish there were.”
So he said he hasn’t ever disclosed it on job applications. His wife knew, yes. But he didn’t think he should talk about it with employers, even in law enforcement.
“There’s nothing that I had ever done that was a crime,” he said. “Do you walk into an interview and express being a 14-year-old victim or do you go in and speak on the 27 years of professionalism that you’ve established?” The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has not opened an investigation into Tony, agency spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said Sunday. “There would have to be an alleged crime,” she said.
Plessinger said she didn’t know why the fatal shooting didn’t come up when the agency vetted Tony for DeSantis. “We’d have to look into the kind of background check that was done.” If Tony lied on his application forms and failed to disclose his past to the governor, a special prosecutor should be appointed to conduct a criminal investigation, said Eugene O’Donnell, a law professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
O’Donnell, a former New York prosecutor and police officer, said it is “a wholesale indictment of the vetting that was done. It’s remarkable that the governor of one of the largest states in the country doesn’t have a more robust, exhaustive review process.”
Political implications
The disclosure comes 15 weeks before the Aug. 18 Democratic primary, which will determine who is the county’s next sheriff. Tony is in a competitive race with former Sheriff Scott Israel, along with a group of lesserknown candidates. Broward is so overwhelmingly Democratic that the winner of the primary is almost certain to win the November general election.
Tony said his political opposition is “trying to retry a 14-year-old black kid, and that is dangerous to this community, not just for the sake of politics, but how can any young black or brown person in this community trust a law enforcement leader who would look at this as a political tool to retry a 14-year-old black kid. I think it’s sad.”
The disclosure could have an impact, said Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies who specializes in politics and voting at Nova Southeastern
University.
“The problem he has isn’t the event itself. He was acquitted. There’s a story to be told there. It could even be the reason he decided to become a cop. Instead, he didn’t tell anybody,” Zelden said, recalling the old line from the Watergate era that “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” that causes trouble for political figures.
It would have been smart for Tony to disclose it himself and use it a positive story of perseverance and emerging from a bad situation in a bad environment said Zelden, the author of “The American Judicial System: A Very Short Introduction,” scheduled for publication in 2021 by Oxford University Press.
“With things like this, it’s better if you are the one who brings it forward,” Zelden said. “I could understand why he would not want to talk about it ... But if you’re going to be a politician, these things come out, and hiding things is not a good idea. That’s what brings politicians down. This is the reality that politicians face.”
Tony said on Sunday there are no other big surprises voters will learn about him. “There’s nothing else that’s going to come to light,” he said.
Gun violence
Tony became sheriff in January 2019. Days after taking office, DeSantis removed then-Sheriff Scott Israel and appointed Tony.
The governor cited incompetence and neglect of duty in connection with problems with Israel’s performance before, during and after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, in which 17 people were killed, and the 2017 mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, in which five people were killed. DeSantis’ ouster of Israel and appointment of Tony, which was upheld in October by the Florida Senate, was supported by many family members of people
killed at Stoneman Douglas. Many are among Tony’s strongest supporters in the upcoming primary, and some have contributed money to his campaign or helped with campaign fundraising.
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed at Stoneman Douglas and has become a prominent activist against gun violence, said Sunday he was aware of what’s been reported but hadn’t had time to immerse himself in the details.
“He’s our sheriff. I support him, and that’s really all I can say right now. I just really don’t have all the details,” Guttenberg said.
Hunter Pollack, whose sister Meadow was killed in the high school massacre and whose father Andrew helped convince DeSantis to appoint Tony, decried what he said was a political attack on the sheriff.
Sun Sentinel columnist Steve Bousquet contributed to this report.