‘Homicide report’ from shooting death seems to contradict Broward sheriff’s statemen

[Unregistered]

I said, "GOOD MORNING!!
See? I told you I had no criminal record.
Now get back to work!"

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...242633251.html


‘Homicide report’ from shooting death seems to contradict Broward sheriff’s statements

By Charles Rabin and

David Smiley
May 11, 2020 06:00 AM, Updated 11 hours 18 minutes ago


A 27-year-old police report documenting the details of the case against Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony — who as a 14-year-old shot and killed an 18-year-old in Philadelphia — confirms his acquittal of any crime in the incident.

But the Philadelphia police “homicide record,” obtained Sunday by the Miami Herald, also appears to contradict several statements made by the sheriff over the last week to explain why he had never disclosed the shooting on law enforcement job applications or to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appointed him to the post — among them that Tony was never charged with a crime or arrested and that he had shot the man inside the Tony family’ home.

The report states that Assistant District Attorney Arlene Fisk initially approved charges of murder and two lesser charges, that an arrest warrant had been signed and issued, and that his bond was set at $15,000. The case was later moved to juvenile court.

One key detail also differed from Tony’s recollection of the shooting, which he says was an act of self-defense. It says Tony, identified in the report as Gregory Scott-Toney, shot Hector Rodriguez “in front of” his home home but notes that by the time investigators got there, the bleeding man had been driven by others to the hospital with multiple bullet wounds to his head and body.

In a statement provided to the Herald Sunday, Tony’s re-election campaign focused on the final line of the report, which was amended over time to include notes about the case. It states Tony was “found not guilty of all charges at trial after testimony by witnesses” on Dec. 15, 1993, after the case was moved to juvenile court.

“We are happy to see the release of the police report from the time of the incident,” the statement 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.”

The statement did not address the discrepancies between the report and Tony’s memory. The sheriff had told the Miami Herald last week that he shot Rodriguez after Rodriguez pulled out a gun and chased him and his brother inside their own home. He has repeatedly said that he does not believe he was arrested or charged with a crime — and therefore was not required to disclose the incident on police records — because he had been tried and acquitted in Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system.


The shooting and the existence of the homicide record, first reported last week by the independent news organization the Florida Bulldog, was the first of two potentially damaging disclosures for Tony in an already bitter race for Broward sheriff. Days later, a British tabloid published revealing photos of the 41-year-old sheriff and his topless wife at pool parties promoted by a South Florida organization that hosts “underground erotic theme events, pool parties & group vacations for beautiful, bi-sexy women and adventurous couples.”

Tony, who blames his political opponents for the revelations, didn’t disclose the shooting to Coral Springs police when he was hired in 2005, or to DeSantis, who appointed Tony in January of 2019 after suspending former Sheriff Scott Israel, who is now running against him.

Tony insists he doesn’t remember the trial. He and an attorney who represented him at the time, Marc Neff, also believe the documents from the case had been made confidential when the case was transferred to Philadelphia’s family court and have since been destroyed.


The attorney who represented Tony at trial, Joel S. Moldovsky, died in 2015, according to an obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Since the revelation about the shooting, Tony’s campaign says it has been unable to obtain any documents about the case, including the police report. But now-retired Philadelphia homicide detective Leon “Luby” Lubiejewski — whose name appears as the lead detective on the 1993 report — said he was given a copy of the homicide report on Saturday by another former Philadelphia detective who now works as a private investigator.

The investigator, Lubiejewski said, told him he was hired by one of the police unions that represents deputies in the Broward Sheriff’s Office. Calls to Broward’s largest police union — which recently gave Tony a vote of no-confidence —were not returned on Sunday.

Lubiejewski said he can’t recall any details from the almost three-decade old shooting, but he vouched for the authenticity of the homicide report.

“There’s no doubt about it. It’s an official homicide document,” he said. “The department has them going back to at least the ‘60s.”

Lubiejewski said he knew the private investigator and former Philly cop who knocked on his door Saturday, basically trying to jog his memory of the old homicide case.

“But I have no recollection of the incident at all,” he said.

Tony says his own memory also remains fuzzy about the shooting. He has described Rodriguez as a known drug dealer and has disputed newspaper accounts in 1993 that he and Rodriguez were friends, though Rodriguez’s then-girlfriend, Martiza Carrasquillo, wrote on Facebook last week that Tony and his brother “would go over the Rodriguez [home] and eat at their table” prior to the shooting.

She said witnesses told her Tony shot her boyfriend from “the top of the steps of his front door.”


The records from almost three decades ago have become a lightning rod in the lead up to the August primary for Broward Sheriff, Tony’s first election as he tries to retain the position assigned to him 16 months ago by the governor. DeSantis named Tony to lead Broward’s most powerful elected post after removing Israel in the wake of a critical report involving the Valentine’s Day 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead and 17 others severely injured.

The homicide report has raised questions about the governor’s vetting process and also about whether Tony accurately filled out employment documents before he was hired in Coral Springs and after he was appointed Broward sheriff.

On his application to become a Coral Springs cop in 2005 the sheriff checked off “no” in boxes next to questions asking if he’d ever been arrested or detained by police or if was ever the subject or a suspect in any criminal investigation. He worked there for 11 years. And last January he filled out an “affidavit of applicant” for the FDLE’s Criminal Justice Standards Training Commission, in which he said that he’d never had a criminal record sealed or expunged.

Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for the FDLE, said last week that her agency is reviewing a complaint it received involving the affidavit of applicant.

The 1993 shooting didn’t show up during a quick background check by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement before Tony’s appointment as sheriff. And it also didn’t appear when Tony was hired by the Coral Springs police. Also last week, Tony’s former boss in Coral Springs, retired Chief Foster Duncan, said if the sheriff had been more forthcoming, he wouldn’t have hired him.

Though not commenting specifically about the Tony case, Lisa Douple, the administrative deputy public defender for Bucks County, just outside of Philadelphia, said that under Pennsylvania law if someone is initially charged as an adult and a judge agrees to transfer the case to juvenile court, “all the adult charges would be quashed.”

Douple said if a juvenile is found not guilty, “all records are destroyed. Fingerprints are destroyed. Everything is destroyed.”


Douple, a defense attorney, said she didn’t believe it was even necessary to disclose an accusation to a future employer after a juvenile has been cleared of any wrongdoing. “If I’m found not guilty, why should it affect me the rest of my life? I did something wrong, but it wasn’t criminal,” she said.

Tony and his campaign have labeled the release of information on the 27-year-old shooting death and the critical look at his job applications as a smear campaign conducted by political opponents. He’s facing a host of challengers in the August primary, chief among them, former sheriff Israel, a former North Bay Village police chief and a veteran of several nasty political campaigns. The winner will oversee almost 5,600 employees in law enforcement, corrections and fire rescue.

Tony’s campaign told the Miami Herald that the police report 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 campaign said.py

[Unregistered]

<<Douple, a defense attorney, said she didn’t believe it was even necessary to disclose an accusation to a future employer after a juvenile has been cleared of any wrongdoing. “If I’m found not guilty, why should it affect me the rest of my life? I did something wrong, but it wasn’t criminal,” she said.>>

Doesn't know what she's saying, therefore, you are admitting that you did something wrong, but it wasn't criminal.

How about saying, "he did nothing wrong because it was in self-defense, therefore, it wasn't criminal" ?

I said, "GOOD MORNING!!
See? I told you I had no criminal record.
Now get back to work!"

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...242633251.html


‘Homicide report’ from shooting death seems to contradict Broward sheriff’s statements

By Charles Rabin and

David Smiley
May 11, 2020 06:00 AM, Updated 11 hours 18 minutes ago


A 27-year-old police report documenting the details of the case against Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony — who as a 14-year-old shot and killed an 18-year-old in Philadelphia — confirms his acquittal of any crime in the incident.

But the Philadelphia police “homicide record,” obtained Sunday by the Miami Herald, also appears to contradict several statements made by the sheriff over the last week to explain why he had never disclosed the shooting on law enforcement job applications or to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appointed him to the post — among them that Tony was never charged with a crime or arrested and that he had shot the man inside the Tony family’ home.

The report states that Assistant District Attorney Arlene Fisk initially approved charges of murder and two lesser charges, that an arrest warrant had been signed and issued, and that his bond was set at $15,000. The case was later moved to juvenile court.

One key detail also differed from Tony’s recollection of the shooting, which he says was an act of self-defense. It says Tony, identified in the report as Gregory Scott-Toney, shot Hector Rodriguez “in front of” his home home but notes that by the time investigators got there, the bleeding man had been driven by others to the hospital with multiple bullet wounds to his head and body.

In a statement provided to the Herald Sunday, Tony’s re-election campaign focused on the final line of the report, which was amended over time to include notes about the case. It states Tony was “found not guilty of all charges at trial after testimony by witnesses” on Dec. 15, 1993, after the case was moved to juvenile court.

“We are happy to see the release of the police report from the time of the incident,” the statement 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.”

The statement did not address the discrepancies between the report and Tony’s memory. The sheriff had told the Miami Herald last week that he shot Rodriguez after Rodriguez pulled out a gun and chased him and his brother inside their own home. He has repeatedly said that he does not believe he was arrested or charged with a crime — and therefore was not required to disclose the incident on police records — because he had been tried and acquitted in Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system.


The shooting and the existence of the homicide record, first reported last week by the independent news organization the Florida Bulldog, was the first of two potentially damaging disclosures for Tony in an already bitter race for Broward sheriff. Days later, a British tabloid published revealing photos of the 41-year-old sheriff and his topless wife at pool parties promoted by a South Florida organization that hosts “underground erotic theme events, pool parties & group vacations for beautiful, bi-sexy women and adventurous couples.”

Tony, who blames his political opponents for the revelations, didn’t disclose the shooting to Coral Springs police when he was hired in 2005, or to DeSantis, who appointed Tony in January of 2019 after suspending former Sheriff Scott Israel, who is now running against him.

Tony insists he doesn’t remember the trial. He and an attorney who represented him at the time, Marc Neff, also believe the documents from the case had been made confidential when the case was transferred to Philadelphia’s family court and have since been destroyed.


The attorney who represented Tony at trial, Joel S. Moldovsky, died in 2015, according to an obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Since the revelation about the shooting, Tony’s campaign says it has been unable to obtain any documents about the case, including the police report. But now-retired Philadelphia homicide detective Leon “Luby” Lubiejewski — whose name appears as the lead detective on the 1993 report — said he was given a copy of the homicide report on Saturday by another former Philadelphia detective who now works as a private investigator.

The investigator, Lubiejewski said, told him he was hired by one of the police unions that represents deputies in the Broward Sheriff’s Office. Calls to Broward’s largest police union — which recently gave Tony a vote of no-confidence —were not returned on Sunday.

Lubiejewski said he can’t recall any details from the almost three-decade old shooting, but he vouched for the authenticity of the homicide report.

“There’s no doubt about it. It’s an official homicide document,” he said. “The department has them going back to at least the ‘60s.”

Lubiejewski said he knew the private investigator and former Philly cop who knocked on his door Saturday, basically trying to jog his memory of the old homicide case.

“But I have no recollection of the incident at all,” he said.

Tony says his own memory also remains fuzzy about the shooting. He has described Rodriguez as a known drug dealer and has disputed newspaper accounts in 1993 that he and Rodriguez were friends, though Rodriguez’s then-girlfriend, Martiza Carrasquillo, wrote on Facebook last week that Tony and his brother “would go over the Rodriguez [home] and eat at their table” prior to the shooting.

She said witnesses told her Tony shot her boyfriend from “the top of the steps of his front door.”

The records from almost three decades ago have become a lightning rod in the lead up to the August primary for Broward Sheriff, Tony’s first election as he tries to retain the position assigned to him 16 months ago by the governor. DeSantis named Tony to lead Broward’s most powerful elected post after removing Israel in the wake of a critical report involving the Valentine’s Day 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead and 17 others severely injured.

The homicide report has raised questions about the governor’s vetting process and also about whether Tony accurately filled out employment documents before he was hired in Coral Springs and after he was appointed Broward sheriff.

On his application to become a Coral Springs cop in 2005 the sheriff checked off “no” in boxes next to questions asking if he’d ever been arrested or detained by police or if was ever the subject or a suspect in any criminal investigation. He worked there for 11 years. And last January he filled out an “affidavit of applicant” for the FDLE’s Criminal Justice Standards Training Commission, in which he said that he’d never had a criminal record sealed or expunged.

Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for the FDLE, said last week that her agency is reviewing a complaint it received involving the affidavit of applicant.

The 1993 shooting didn’t show up during a quick background check by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement before Tony’s appointment as sheriff. And it also didn’t appear when Tony was hired by the Coral Springs police. Also last week, Tony’s former boss in Coral Springs, retired Chief Foster Duncan, said if the sheriff had been more forthcoming, he wouldn’t have hired him.

Though not commenting specifically about the Tony case, Lisa Douple, the administrative deputy public defender for Bucks County, just outside of Philadelphia, said that under Pennsylvania law if someone is initially charged as an adult and a judge agrees to transfer the case to juvenile court, “all the adult charges would be quashed.”

Douple said if a juvenile is found not guilty, “all records are destroyed. Fingerprints are destroyed. Everything is destroyed.”


Douple, a defense attorney, said she didn’t believe it was even necessary to disclose an accusation to a future employer after a juvenile has been cleared of any wrongdoing. “If I’m found not guilty, why should it affect me the rest of my life? I did something wrong, but it wasn’t criminal,” she said.

Tony and his campaign have labeled the release of information on the 27-year-old shooting death and the critical look at his job applications as a smear campaign conducted by political opponents. He’s facing a host of challengers in the August primary, chief among them, former sheriff Israel, a former North Bay Village police chief and a veteran of several nasty political campaigns. The winner will oversee almost 5,600 employees in law enforcement, corrections and fire rescue.

Tony’s campaign told the Miami Herald that the police report 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 campaign said.py

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Seems like this was all Jeff. Sorry Jeff doesn't look like this worked out for you. It's not Tony's fault you have the life you have. Go have some breakfast

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Though not commenting specifically about the Tony case, Lisa Douple, the administrative deputy public defender for Bucks County, just outside of Philadelphia, said that under Pennsylvania law if someone is initially charged as an adult and a judge agrees to transfer the case to juvenile court, “all the adult charges would be quashed.”

[Unregistered]

I shot the kid five times in the head, So sad he has a lot of hate in his heart

[Unregistered]

Seems like this was all Jeff. Sorry Jeff doesn't look like this worked out for you. It's not Tony's fault you have the life you have. Go have some breakfast

I think more likely it was the PBA trying to get little scotty back...

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I think more likely it was the PBA trying to get little scotty back...

Nice try Jeff. You own this f#ucking fiasco. Wear it like a badge on honor. No turning back now you f*cking burned the boats


you all better stop paying your dues

[Unregistered]

Why would we stop paying our dues? The overwhelming majority of deputies, sergeants and lieutenants want this guy gone.

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you all should hold a confidence vote in Jeff? You guys are okay with your dues going towards 20yr+ investigations that find that someone was found not guilty?

[Unregistered]

Yes, because what you fail to realize is that he lied on his paperwork and that is the real story here.....idiot.