DeSantis distances self from Broward Sheriff

Gov. Ron DeSantis distanced himself Monday from Gregory Tony, the man he appointed to serve as Broward County’s sheriff 16 months ago.

DeSantis said he won’t be getting involved in a controversy involving revelations that Tony never disclosed he shot and killed a man when he was a teenager more than 25 years ago.

The Republican governor said the shooting never came up in a background check because it was deemed to be selfdefense, and he’ll leave it to Broward voters to decide who should be sheriff.

“It’s not like he’s my sheriff,” DeSantis told reporters in Tallahassee. “I didn’t even know the guy. It was not like he was a political ally of mine.”

Tony, 41, shot and killed an 18-year-old man in his Philadelphia neighborhood in 1993, an action he said was in selfdefense and for which he was absolved of responsibility. He was 14 at the time. The shooting wasn’t widely known until the Florida Bulldog posted an article over the weekend, citing a past newspaper account of the incident.

DeSantis suggested it wouldn’t have changed his decision if he had known about the killing. He said he liked Tony because he came from a “real tough upbringing,” played football for Florida State University, and had been a “great law enforcement officer.”

“It seems like he was in a very rough neighborhood, and he was trying to defend his family,” DeSantis said.

Tony didn’t disclose the incident on his employment application at the Coral Springs Police Department, where he was an officer from October 2005 through September 2016.

Duncan Foster, the retired chief of the Coral Springs Police Department, said Monday he wouldn’t have hired Tony had he known about the killing.

Tony was named sheriff as part of the fallout from the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 students and staff dead. Tony replaced Scott Israel, who the governor removed from office citing “neglect of duty” and “incompetence.”

Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was one of the 17 killed in the Parkland shooting, helped to introduce Tony to the governor. Pollack met Tony at the gym and said he liked him because it seemed like he would put “public safety ahead of politics.”

Pollack, an outspoken DeSantis supporter, recommended the governor pick Tony but he said DeSantis made the call.

“He made his own decision as governor,” Pollack said. “He did his own research and made his own decision and he put the best man for the job into the position.”

Tony and Israel, along with a group of lesser-known candidates, are running in the August Democratic primary. Broward is so overwhelmingly Democratic that the winner of the primary is virtually guaranteed to win the November general election.