Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sheriff ready to move past election
Tony: It was one of most ‘racist and derogatory’ races in Broward history
Sheriff Gregory Tony survived a tough election challenge with the help of a police reform platform, a Democratic mega-donor and his main opponent’s tarnished reputation.
Tony’s narrow victory over his predecessor Scott Israel in Tuesday’s Democratic primary wasn’t easy. The race turned nasty, and Tony won by close to 5,000 votes.
Tony thanked voters Wednesday for rejecting the negative attacks and embracing his platform of holding bad deputies accountable, beefing up training standards and getting politics out of law enforcement.
He summed it up this way on Wednesday during a news conference at the Broward Sheriff’s Office headquarters: “This has
been the most racist and derogatory election probably in the history of this agency.”
Tony is heavily favored to win in the Nov. 3 general election against Republican Wayne Clark and independent Charles E. Whatley.
Tony beat four other lesser-known candidates in the primary, including Al Pollock, a retired BSO colonel.
Israel, 64, cruised to victory four years ago in a landslide, but that was before the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 students and staff dead.
Israel was in charge when the agency botched tips about the Parkland gunman and failed to rush into the school to confront the shooter. That ultimately led to Israel’s downfall. Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Israel in January 2019 and appointed Tony as sheriff.
Families who lost loved ones in the shooting stood behind Tony and supported his campaign.
Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was killed, said he thinks Israel never owned his mistakes, and that hurt him with voters. Israel rose to national prominence in part because of a CNN interview in which he bragged of the “amazing leadership” he had provided.
“Our loved ones who were killed at Stoneman Douglas don’t get the second chance the former sheriff was asking for,” said Montalto, president of the school safety group Stand with Parkland. “I wish they could come back to us every day. The community needs to unite behind Greg Tony as sheriff.”
Montalto said Tony succeeded in earning his trust, along with the trust of other Parkland families.
Tony also tapped into the national protest movement against police brutality and highlighted that he had fired deputies accused of using excessive force. Tony clashed with union leaders, but he said that was because he wasn’t afraid to tackle a system that too often shielded bad deputies from accountability.
Hunter Pollack, one of Tony’s supporters, said he thinks that message resonated. Pollack lost his sister, Meadow, in the Parkland massacre.
“It was expected,” Pollack said of the result. “Broward County finally had a sheriff who is putting public safety over politics. A sheriff keeping teachers safe in schools and cracking down on police brutality and firing bad cops.”
Money was another advantage Tony had in the race. Tony and his political action committee raised about $1.5 million, compared with the roughly $600,000 received by Israel.
Much of Tony’s backing came from S. Donald Sussman, a wealthy financier, Democratic mega-donor and registered Broward County voter. Sussman poured more than $800,000 into Tony’s election effort, campaign finance records show.
Sussman has a history of giving extensively to Democratic candidates he likes, including to 2018 Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and presidential contender Hillary Clinton.
Tony has challenges ahead. He still must get past Clark, the Republican candidate. Broward County is heavily Democratic.
Clark, a 46-year-old attorney from Plantation, is hoping to make the case that he’ll bring nonpartisan change to the agency.
Tony remains locked in a battle with the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association, a union that represents about 1,400 deputies,
Jeff Bell, the union’s president, said Tony has refused to meet with him.
“Not one union endorsed the sitting sheriff,” he said. “Morale is lower than I have ever seen it. There are a lot of people waiting to put in retirement paperwork based on primary election results. I think you are going to see a lot of people leave early now.”
Bell’s union endorsed Pollock, but he said he expected Israel would win the race. The union voted no confidence in Tony and Israel.
Many of the attacks against Tony focused on a 1993 shooting.
Tony faced scrutiny for not divulging to DeSantis and on police applications that he killed an 18-year-old man when he was a teenager living in a tough neighborhood in Philadelphia. Tony was found not guilty in the killing, and he says it was done in self-defense.
Tony called the revelations a “smear campaign” focused on incidents in his childhood that were “not relevant to performing the task at hand.” The shooting happened when Tony was 14.
Tony said he’s ready to move past the hard-fought campaign and get to work uniting the community.
“I want this entire community to rally and understand that this patch on my shoulder says Broward County,” he said. “There is no division in that.”
“I want this entire community to rally and understand that this patch on my shoulder says Broward County. There is no division in that.”
Sheriff Gregory Tony