Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Broward sheriff concealed drug use
Tony admitted to once using LSD, and was rejected for a job in ’04
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony was rejected for a police job in 2004 when he admitted using LSD, the hallucinogenic drug, one time and then concealed it after that.
After Tallahassee police rejected him for the job, he didn’t disclose his LSD use when he applied to Coral Springs police the next year. His application forms asked him to reveal whether he’d used hallucinogens or ever handled that type of drug in some way. He replied, “no.”
Coral Springs hired him, giving him his first job as a cop.
It’s the latest revelation that’s arisen since it came to light this month that the sheriff killed a man as a teenager and kept it a secret for decades.
Tony has been under scrutiny for never disclosing that he shot a man dead in 1993, a killing that he says was an act of self-defense. He is under a preliminary investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the state’s top law enforcement agency, over whether he misled authorities about his past in filling out law enforcement paperwork.
Tony never revealed on a notarized form — which is meant to verify that a law enforcement officer meets the state’s qualifications — that he had been cleared of shooting the 18-year-old man dead in the 1990s, when he was 14 years old and living in Philadelphia.
He didn’t disclose the killing to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last year appointed him to his sheriff’s job. He also didn’t reveal the killing when applying to the Coral Springs Police Department.
Tony could not be reached for comment Tuesday, despite calls and a text to his cellphone. His campaign spokesman said he could not immediately comment late Tuesday.
Admitting LSD use
Tony graduated from Florida State University in Tallahassee with a degree in criminal justice in 2002.
In November 2003, he applied to the Tallahassee Police Department and admitted using LSD in 1995 and marijuana in 1995 and 1996 on his application, according to police records obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday.
The agency rejected him when he admitted using the hallucinogen, calling it “felony drug use,” although he had not been arrested. He appealed, but the agency denied him, saying it has a “zero tolerance for felony drug use.”
The chief of police suggested to him in writing that he go to another agency if he still wanted a career in law enforcement, according to records.
So Tony did.
Seeking a new job
When Tony applied for his job at Coral Springs, he left out his admitted LSD use, according to application forms submitted to that agency.
His application said he had used marijuana in the early 1990s. He also wrote “no” when asked specifically in two questions about hallucinogen use. One question asked, “Have you ever handled any other drugs (Ecstasy, prescriptions, etc.)? If yes, was it job related?” He replied, “No.”
The same questionnaire also asked him to list the times and dates he personally had used any other illegal drugs, to which he only replied, “Early 1990’s.”
Tony also provided the department with the names of five agencies that he had sought jobs with. But he left out that he had applied to Tallahassee police and that the department had rejected him, the Coral Springs police records show.
A Coral Springs investigator who did Tony’s background check described the responses he received from other agencies:
The U.S. State Department in 2002: The Coral Springs investigator determined Tony didn’t pass the written exam there.
The United States Marshals Office in 2002: Coral Springs determined that the Marshals Office didn’t contact Tony, but the notes don’t say why.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service in 2000: Coral Springs determined that agency didn’t contact Tony, but the notes don’t say why.
Fort Lauderdale police in 2004. The Coral Springs investigator determined Tony didn’t show up for a meeting with a board at that agency.
Miami police in 2005: When the Coral Springs investigator contacted the agency, it said it had no record of the application.
While applying to Coral Springs, in addition to not disclosing his admitted LSD use and his application with Tallahassee, Tony also didn’t say anything about a case regarding a bad check.
But when it showed up in his background search during his application to Coral Springs, Tony wrote a letter to then-Coral Springs Police Chief Duncan Foster to apologize. Tony explained that he had been trying to buy schoolbooks his sophomore year of college and “I had no idea until today, August 1, 2005, that I had a criminal history due to this event.”
He told Foster that he hoped “that this event does not discourage you in employing me as a Coral Springs Police Officer,” adding that he had great integrity and character.
Foster hired him in 2005, beginning Tony’s rise in law enforcement. He served with the Coral Springs Police Department until 2016.
Tony left the Coral Springs Police Department as a sergeant, leaving to develop his new business, Blue Spear Solutions, which he had started in 2015. The company says it provides active shooter response training for private businesses and public agencies.
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Tony to the sheriff ’s job last year to replace ousted Sheriff Scott Israel, who was criticized for the Sheriff ’s Office’s handling of the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland and a mass shooting a year earlier at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
After details about the shooting death were made public earlier this month, Foster told the Sun Sentinel he would never have hired Tony had he known about the killing, and his investigators’ efforts to find any problematic history in Tony’s hometown of Philadelphia didn’t yield any results.