Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
1993 police report surfaces
Document outlines how 14-year-old Tony shot, killed man; campaign calls record vindication
A police report from 1993 has surfaced, outlining how Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony shot and killed a man in Philadelphia when he was 14.
For 27 years, the sheriff has kept the killing of 18-year-old Hector “Chino” Rodriguez a secret. It’s a revelation that came back to haunt him while he’s in a heated highprofile campaign for election this August.
The report briefly summarizes the circumstances of the killing, apparently contradicting some details that Tony offered in the past week of what happened all those years ago, a case he says was self defense.
Tony has said he never was arrested because he was a juvenile at the time he killed Rodriguez. The report, though, says he was arrested a day after the killing when he turned himself in after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Tony was held as an adult until a week later when the case was moved to juvenile court and his bond was set at $15,000. Seven months later a judge found Tony not guilty after a trial, the report says.
Where the shooting happened is another factor. Tony told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he and his brother had run inside their home when the 18-year-old chased them. He said he ran into his house to get a gun, Rodriguez followed him and so he shot him.
The 1993 report, initially obtained by the Miami Herald, says the scene of the homicide was in front of Tony’s house.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is reviewing whether Tony may have violated the law when he failed to disclose on official law enforcement paperwork that he was arrested or detained by a police agency in the past. Tony also didn’t tell Gov. Ron
DeSantis about the killing when he was tapped to be the sheriff by the governor last year.
Florida law allows anyone with an expunged record to keep such details confidential, but there are several exceptions when one must disclose a past case, including when the person is “a candidate for employment with a criminal justice agency.” One affidavit filled out by Tony in January said any untruthfulness on the form would be a second-degree misdemeanor.
Tony’s campaign said 27-year-old report shows the sheriff was acquitted of the killing, as he has been saying. It also has said that his acquittal means he has no criminal history, so the campaign maintains he filled out the law enforcement forms properly.
“We are happy to see the release of the police report from the time of the incident,” his campaign said. “There is now absolute confirmation of what we have been saying all along: that Sheriff Tony defended himself and his brother’s life, and that after witness testimony heard by a judge, he was found not guilty.
“Further, it is confirmation that Sheriff Tony has no criminal record. With this concrete evidence fully vindicating the Sheriff, it is time to stop these desperate attempts by opposing campaigns to retry Sheriff Tony based on a traumatic incident from when he was a 14-year old boy, and move on to focusing on the real issues that affect the future and safety of Broward County residents.”
The killing of Rodriguez was investigated by Leon “Luby” Lubiejewski, who retired after a 39 year-career with the Philadelphia Police Department. He said a private investigator who wanted to interview him about the case recently gave a copy of Tony’s report to him.
Lubiejewski said he has no recollection of the case and because he is retired, he no longer has access to case files. Lubiejewski said the report was filed by him or at the very least under his direction. For reasons that are unclear, Tony’s name is spelled Toney in the report.
Court officials in Pennsylvania have said court records about the 1993 killing are no longer available, leaving what happened in court unclear over the past week.
That’s because youths in Pennsylvania are eligible to have most records expunged whether or not they’ve been cleared of a crime, including a killing, said Riya Saha Shah, the executive director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia. The only crime that someone convicted may not have expunged are serious sex crimes, said Shah.
For youths found not guilty, records are generally automatically expunged, effectively erasing the existence of the case from the public record. When a case is to be expunged, all records are to be destroyed.
Judges also may order that a case be sealed. The distinction is notable because the record, though still not readily available to the public has not been erased. Tony’s campaign consultant, Eric Johnson, had said last week that the records were sealed. But on Monday, Johnson clarified that he has no knowledge as to what happened to the court file and that he was speaking in general terms about what typically happens in such cases.
News of the 1993 killing has stunned South Florida since it broke a little more than a week ago. Days later racy photos of Tony from a party-like event also surfaced. Tony’s campaign say the matters amount to a smear campaign.
Javier Basnuevo, a lawyer who specializes in employment law, said his advice to his clients on such matters of checking boxes when asked about criminal history is to always be truthful.
“Tell the truth, we can deal with it,” he said. “I tell them, ‘The moment you start lying, I cannot help you anymore,” Basnuevo said.
Though another lawyer, Bob Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University, doesn’t see it that way and said he’d happily argue a case such as Tony’s in court.
Tony, he said, did not have an obligation to disclose anything about his arrest and the shooting because it was ruled that it was done in self defense, Jarvis said.
“The most you can say is he wasn’t as forthcoming as he should have been and he could have saved himself a lot of grief,” Jarvis said.
But had Tony been forthcoming, Duncan Foster, the former Coral Springs Police Department chief, said last week that he would not have hired Tony had he known about the killing. “All things being equal, there are more qualified candidates who did not have involvement with the criminal justice system to the extent that he did,” he said last week.
Lubiejewski, the retired Philadelphia homicide investigator, said background checks should be thoroughly done. In Philadelphia, “when someone applies to the police department, an extensive background investigation is conducted as to your identity, all the way back to your grandparents,” he said. “If you lie on the application, you are denied employment.”
“There is now absolute confirmation of what we have been saying all along: that Sheriff Tony defended himself and his brother’s life.”
Statement from campaign of Sheriff Gregory Tony