By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Broward Sheriff “Dr.” Gregory Tony, wrist dutifully slapped by the state commission that sets police standards, is back on top again. But how does he continue to dodge multiple landmines that would have exploded the careers of most other politicians?
That Trumpish question, or something like it, has been on a lot of lips at the Broward Sheriff’s Office since Thursday when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Criminal Justice Standards & Training Commission (CJSTC) ordered Tony receive what amounts to a written reprimand for lying under oath when he applied for a Florida driver’s license shortly after taking office in 2019.
The CJSTC rejected additional punishment recommended by an administrative law judge who heard evidence compiled by FDLE agents during a February 2024 trial. After dismissing seven other allegations of lying against Tony “as not being proven by clear and convincing evidence,’’ Judge James Kilbride’s May 20 recommendation order sustained a single allegation and said the sheriff should be reprimanded, be placed on administrative probation for 18 months and be required to complete CJSTC-approved ethics training.
Robert Jarvis is a constitutional law professor at Nova Southeastern University who co-authored a book about the history of the Broward Sheriff’s Office. In an interview, he said the CJSTC’s decision to reduce Tony’s punishment is correct.
“It wasn’t the commission’s task to find that Tony is unqualified based on that one incident,’’ he said. “It was not being asked whether Tony is fit for office, or if he should he have been appointed. They were being asked what the appropriate penalty for his driver’s license violation is a one-time omission.
“And there’s a further context, Tony has now been elected by the people,” Jarvis said. “So if the people aren’t troubled by this, then you have to ask why should the commission be troubled by this?”
TONY’S EXECUTION STYLE MURDER AS A TEENAGER
Still, the leniency shown Tony is remarkable given how the case began: after the Florida Bulldog reported on May 2, 2020, that as a youth in Philadelphia in 1993 Tony shot and killed a young man and later failed to disclose it when he applied to become a Coral Springs police officer and before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him as Broward sheriff.
Here’s what Tony told Florida Bulldog at the time: “When I was 14 years old, growing up in a neighborhood in Philadelphia filled with violence and gang activity, I shot an armed man in self-defense. The juvenile authorities reviewed my actions and cleared my name. This was the most difficult and painful experience of my life and I have never spoken of it publicly. I worked every day from that time forward to leave the violence that surrounded me in Philadelphia behind.”
While Philadelphia police records say Tony was acquitted at trial before a Pennsylvania juvenile judge, FDLE agents never located any court records from the case. Tony’s brief statement, too, was later shown to be less than forthcoming after Philadelphia police records FDLE did obtain showed that eyewitnesses said Tony wasn’t defending himself when he killed Hector “Chino” Rodriguez. Rather, they said, Rodriguez was unarmed when on the street outside Tony’s home he hurled an insult at Tony. Tony ran inside, grabbed his father’s handgun and came out shooting. An autopsy identified six bullet wounds in Rodriguez’s body, including two in the back of his head execution style.
Pennsylvania officials said the witnesses who initially spoke to police failed to appear to testify at Tony’s trial.
The year-long investigation, however, turned up other problematic matters involving Tony, including his past admissions to crimes involving his use of drugs, passing a worthless bank check, lying on an affidavit he submitted to the FDLE while he was sheriff and repeatedly lying under oath while obtaining a Florida driver’s license. Ultimately, it all boiled down to a single accusation that he lied under oath while renewing his driver’s license shortly after becoming sheriff.
But killing someone and failing to disclose it are generally considered to be disqualifying events for appointment to public office, in Florida or anywhere else. So why did DeSantis appoint Tony in the first place? Because Florida’s governor screwed up one of his first important decisions.
DESANTIS’S SCREW UP
DeSantis was sworn in as governor on Jan. 8, 2019. FDLE records say that it wasn’t until two days later, Jan. 10, 2019, that Desantis asked FDLE’s background investigations unit to do a check on Tony, then a private businessman.
Records say Tony submitted a one-page biography that neglected to mention his murder arrest, his previous admission on a police application to having used LSD and marijuana. Tony also didn’t mention that he and his wife occasionally patronized a Miami swinger’s club – a personality quirk that became a public embarrassment when nude pictures of the couple with others at the club were leaked and made international headlines shortly after Florida Bulldog’s initial story regarding Tony’s murder arrest.
Though Tony’s background check was incomplete, DeSantis appointed him sheriff anyway on Jan. 11, 2019.
“That’s the real issue,” said Jarvis. “Is Tony fit to be a police officer, much less a police chief? The answer is no, he never was. He never should have been appointed. He clearly had a very checkered past. This falls squarely on the governor and the governor’s not properly vetting him. I don’t think that can be said enough times.”
Nor did DeSantis ever act to fix his error by removing Tony as sheriff, as he did with other state officials he was unhappy with. Not when DeSantis learned that Tony hadn’t told him about his arrest for murder, or later when the FDLE submitted its damning 20-page report laying out in Tony’s numerous transgressions in detail.
And Broward taxpayers have paid the costly price, literally, for the Republican governor’s folly about Tony – who he told CNN in December 2023, as he ran for president, “had a great life story” and was his favorite Democrat.
DESANTIS’S SCREW UP HAS COST BROWARD MILLIONS
Take last year, for example, when Tony proposed an outlandish 48 percent budget hike for BSO in 2024-2025 to more than $1 billion, including $24 million to finish paying for three helicopters he ordered after he was only authorized to buy one helicopter.
Broward County commissioners initially said no way. But in September, after Tony’s uniformed police and fire command staff packed the commission’s chambers in intimidating numbers, they caved and gave him a huge $84-million budget increase to $765 million. That included taking Tony off the hook for having to pay for the two extra, unauthorized helicopters.
“They took him out of that scrape. Ridiculous,” said Jarvis. “They should have said, ‘We’re not getting you more money. In fact, we’re gonna make you have to really justify every dollar.’ ”
That, of course, didn’t happen. Nor was there much accountability when county audits uncovered tens of millions in overspending by Tony on his pet project, BSO’s new training center. A second audit found Tony overpaid Davie-based ANF Group $1.4 million to build the place. Perhaps not coincidentally, ANF Group contributed $30,000 to Tony’s Broward First political action committee.
Commissioners set themselves up for those embarrassments in September 2019 when they approved a memo of understanding that gave Tony total control for building the training center that was originally estimated to cost $34 million. The audit determined the cost to the county is in fact more like $74 million. Commissioners vowed never to make the same costly mistake again. What about their successors?
So after all that, and more, how does Gregory Tony manage to hold onto not only his elected job as sheriff, but his status as a sworn police officer licensed to wear a uniform – decked out with an unprecedented five stars on the collar – and also carry a badge and gun?
INNOCENT, LUCKY OR ‘CORRUPTION GOING ON’
It’s clear DeSantis won’t remove him. The governor has removed other elected officials for lesser offenses. And Broward’s voters seem to like Tony, warts and all.
“I guess there are three possibilities,” said Jarvis. “One is that he’s innocent and he’s a victim every time. The second is he’s just incredibly lucky. And the third is that there’s corruption going on – that he’s being helped in improper ways behind the scenes in a way that we have not yet uncovered.
“It’s like John Gotti,” added Jarvis, invoking the case of the late New York Mafia boss nicknamed ‘The Teflon Don.’ “How did Gotti win all those trials? Was he every time a victim? Was he every time lucky? Or as we later found out, was he every time bribing the jury?”
Today, Sheriff Tony still has at least one more landmine to get around.
In 2022, Florida’s Commission on Ethics, a constitutional body that investigates complaints alleging breach of the public trust by public officers and employees, found probable cause to believe Tony provided false information about himself – not disclosing his “drug use history and an arrest for homicide” to the governor before his appointment as Broward sheriff.
The order was unusually strong for a commission that’s long had a lackluster reputation. It pointedly rejected the recommendations of the commission’s own prosecutor – the commission ‘advocate’ Assistant Attorney General Melody Hadley — who recommended that no probable cause be found against Tony.
The commission’s order was signed by chairman John Grant, who like most other commissioners at the time are now gone, replaced by commissioners like vice chair Tina Descovich, a co-founder of the controversial Moms for Liberty group.
Like the CJSTC’s probable cause finding against him, Tony appealed the ethics commission’s findings, too. The case is currently assigned to Department of Administration Judge John Van Laningham.
The most recent docket entry is a Nov. 8 order continuing to hold the case in abeyance until the CJSTC case was finished. The two sides were advised by the judge to update him on the status of that case by Feb. 14 so the ethics commission’s case can proceed.
Lucky for Tony, the ethics commission prosecutor who thought his case should be tossed will now be prosecuting the case against him before Judge Van Laningham.
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