FDLE probe finds Broward Sheriff Tony lied about past on forms. But state won’t prosecute
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony lied about his past on law enforcement job applications and on a form to renew his Florida driver’s license, state investigators found after an 18-month investigation into allegations raised during a vicious election campaign in 2020.
But the sheriff won’t be charged because a case involving the shooting death of a man in Philadelphia was too long ago and the records were too difficult to find, Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators and a state prosecutor concluded in a report released on Monday. The witness to Tony’s statement in a more recent incident — a clerk in a driver’s license office in Lauderdale Lakes — also could not reliably recall a key exchange.
Tony — originally appointed to the job in 2019 by Gov. Ron DeSantis after he suspended former Sheriff Scott Israel in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting — could not be reached for comment Monday night. Though the sheriff, who was elected to the seat after defeating Israel in a bitter campaign that brought Tony’s past to light, won’t face any criminal charges he could still face an ethics investigation.
Anthony Kunasek, a special prosecutions chief for the Fort Myers state attorney who was charged with overseeing the case, concluded there was not enough to pursue a case.
“As a result, this agency review is denied with the suggestion that FDLE submit all the material generated from its investigation to the Florida Commission on Ethics for review,” Kunasek wrote in a three-page memo that accompanied the 20-page FDLE memo detailing the findings.
The probe by FDLE public corruption found that Tony, as a 14-year-old, was charged with murder and carrying an unlicensed firearm when he lived in Philadelphia. When the issue became public during his last campaign, the sheriff argued the case was self-defense and told the Miami Herald it was “the most horrific thing I ever experienced.”
FDLE investigators searching Tony’s history wrote they were stymied by the Philadelphia District Attorney who refused to speak on the record, the courts, which said records of the shooting had been expunged, and Pennsylvania state police, who could not find any record of the shooting.
They did find, however, that Tony was deceptive in a 2005 application to become a Coral Springs police officer. He answered “no” to a question asking if he’d ever killed anyone. He also checkmarked “no” when asked on the Coral Springs application if he’d ever been arrested for a crime, “no” to a question asking if he’d ever fought with a weapon and “no” when asked if he ever injured or killed anyone.
Asked what the most serious thing he ever did was, Tony responded “fighting,” according to state investigators. Investigators did uncover records that showed Tony was found not guilty when the shooting case was tried late in 1993.
The FDLE report concluded that “Sheriff Gregory Tony provided false information and concealed material fact...
“Furthermore it was determined that Sheriff Gregory Tony made a ‘false affidavit perjury’ when he knowingly and willfully swore to or affirmed the false statements” he made in the driver’s license application in Lauderdale Lakes in 2019.
The FDLE close-out report also included an explanation of the decision not to pursue criminal charges from the office of Fort Myers State Attorney Amira D. Fox. DeSantis had given oversight of the case to Fox’s office after agreeing to a conflict of interest claim from Broward County prosecutors.
Kunasek, Fox’s special prosecutions chief, wrote that the statute of limitations had run out on some allegations and there was not enough evidence to make a case over a 2019 driver’s license renewal form. Despite Tony’s license having been suspended in Pennsylvania about 30 years ago, the Lauderdale Lakes clerk who took the sheriff’s statement couldn’t testify “without reasonable doubt” whether she had asked the sheriff if his license had been suspended.
“It precludes the state from being able to prove the criminal allegations beyond a reasonable doubt,” the report concluded.
Longtime critic and police union president Jeff Bell — who Tony fired last week for making false claims about BSO lacking protection gear during the pandemic — said he was stunned by the state attorney’s decision not to prosecute.
“What message does this send?” asked Bell. “We all know what the sheriff did. You work your whole life trying to believe there is a standard of justice. It’s just a double standard.”
It wasn’t clear who forwarded the allegations to the FDLE, though much of the information found by the FDLE report was publicized during the August 2020 primary against Israel and others that Tony won. Bell denied it was him, though the union fought hard and publicly in its attempt to keep Tony from taking office.
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 7:46 PM.
