Cop guilty of obstruction in beating case

Sergeant acquitted of falsifying records

For a few moments, Boynton Beach Police Sgt. Philip Antico and his supporters thought a jury was about to clear him of federal criminal charges that he tried to cover up how officers under his command beat up unarmed suspects after a police chase.

With his head bent low over the defense table, Antico listened as the clerk began to announce the verdicts in court Friday.

Supporters were sighing with relief as they heard the first two verdicts of “not guilty” to charges of falsifying police records. But gasps of shock greeted the announcement that jurors had found him guilty of obstructing justice by lying to the FBI.

Antico, 37, kept his head down and gave no visible reaction in court. But his wife sobbed in the front row and several officers who were in court to support him rubbed tears from their eyes.

Antico, who will remain

free on bond while he awaits sentencing, left the courthouse flanked by supporters from the Boynton Beach police department. He looked shaken and did not respond to requests for comment.

The offense carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. He has no prior criminal record and will likely receive a much lighter punishment.

His attorney Gregg Lerman said he hopes Antico won’t serve any time in prison and says he could be sentenced to probation.

“He doesn’t deserve to serve a day in jail,” Lerman said.

Colleagues call Antico “Spider-Man” because he had always wanted to be a cop and “wanted to be a superhero for his community,” Lerman said.

As a convicted felon, Antico will not be allowed to continue to work as a police officer, the defense said. He has worked in law enforcement for 15 years.

Antico, 37, is the fourth law enforcement officer to go to trial this month in federal court in West Palm Beach on criminal charges linked to the August 2014 beatings of three suspects after a high-speed car chase.

Antico, who has been suspended with pay while the case was pending, did not participate in the chase or the beatings. He issued orders over the police radio and later approved the officers’ reports.

He was the supervisor in charge of nine Boynton officers who took part in the chase, which went up and down Interstate 95 and surrounding neighborhoods at speeds that reached 100 miles per hour.

When the chase finally ended, in Lake Worth, an overhead Palm Beach Sheriff ’s Office helicopter recorded video that showed several of the officers beating, kicking, kneeing, punching and using stun guns on the driver and two passengers.

A separate federal jury deliberated last week in the trial of three of those officers who were accused of using excessive force on one of the passengers and falsifying their reports after they realized they had been recorded. Jurors acquitted former officers Ronald Ryan, 50, and Justin Harris, 35, of all of the charges against them.

But that jury found Officer Michael Brown guilty of two charges — one count of violating passenger Jeffrey Braswell’s civil rights by using excessive force and one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence for holding his department-issued gun in the same hand that he was using to hit Braswell.

Brown, 48, who is also free on bond, faces a maximum punishment of 15 years in federal prison. Sentencings for Brown and Antico have not yet been scheduled.

Attorneys for both men said they will try to persuade U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg to throw out the convictions.

Prosecutors Susan Osborne and Donald Tunnage told jurors that several of the nine officers filed reports that gave innocuous or misleading accounts of how they handled the two men and one woman who were arrested in the early hours of Aug. 20, 2014.

A week later, after Antico found out about the Sheriff’s Office video and watched it with Brown, prosecutors said Antico allowed the officers to change their written reports a number of times to add made-up details to try to justify the amount of physical force they had used. He was acquitted of those allegations.

When FBI agents questioned Antico, six months later in February 2015, about what had occurred, they said he gave a number of “false and misleading statements.” Those lies included telling agents that all of the final reports had been written by officers on Aug. 20 and had not been altered, according to the charges.

Antico knew he had allowed the officers to make significant changes over a period of days, including adding allegations that all three suspects had resisted, authorities said. The officers had not made those allegations before Antico and Brown saw the video.

“I never had an issue with these guys not being accurate in their reports,” Antico said during one of his video-recorded statements to the FBI.

Jurors watched video of the arrests and parts of his four-hour videotaped interview with FBI agents.

The jury also saw photos of the three occupants of the car. Those photos showed that driver Byron Harris’ head was bandaged, his eyes were swollen shut and his face looked puffy. Passenger Jeffrey Braswell’s face looked bruised and scratched. The other passenger, Ashley Hill, did not have visible injuries in her photo.

Antico told agents that he should have gotten another officer, Matthew Medeiros, to correct what he called a “grammatical error” when the officer wrote that Hill’s face had hit the officer’s hand during the arrest.

After they interviewed Antico, agents discovered the police department’s computer software kept track of changes that were made to officers’ reports and they say the audit trail showed Antico was lying. Agents testified they were left wondering why Antico and the officers were lying and what their motivation was.

Prosecutor Susan Osborne told jurors that Antico was part of a coverup to try to conceal and justify a “beatdown” of suspects by the other officers.

“Instead of doing what he should have done, he chose wrong,” Osborne said.

She said Antico “tarnished his badge” and broke the trust that society places in police officers when it gives them the power to arrest other people.

“What is clear here is that the defendant lied to cover up what his guys did,” Osborne said in closing arguments.

Defense attorney Lerman told the jury that Antico, the only supervisor on duty during the 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. shift, did his best to tell the FBI the truth when he was questioned.

Lerman told the jury that the incident had been very stressful for all of the officers and for Antico. One of their fellow officers, Jeffrey Williams, was critically injured when he was clipped by the fleeing car and then struck by one of the police cars. Williams recovered and has returned to work.

Antico was the only supervisor on duty for that night shift, Lerman said. Antico went to the scene where Williams was injured but also had to monitor the officers who were pursuing the car as it raced, at speeds of up to 100 mph, from Boynton Beach north to West Palm Beach, then south to Lake Worth.

Jurors, some of whom looked upset, declined to comment on their verdict in the Antico case. The eight women and four men deliberated for 81⁄2 hours over two days.

They sent two notes to Rosenberg, the first late Thursday and the second early Friday, saying they were deadlocked on one of the charges.

After she read them another instruction encouraging them to try to reach a verdict on all three charges, they deliberated for another 21⁄2 hours and reached their final decision.

Boynton Beach previously settled two civil lawsuits filed by the driver and one of the passengers. Byron Harris was paid $600,000 and Hill was paid $40,000.

Antico