FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony was rejected for a police job in Tallahassee in 2004 after he admitted to having used a psychedelic drug, according to the Sun Sentinel.
The report published Tuesday night said Tony did not disclose that he had used LSD on his application to join Coral Springs Police in 2005, a job he ultimately received.
“I hate to say this, but for every time there is a minority candidate for any position of power, the first thing they want to do is portray you as having a gun in your hand or a needle in your arm,” Tony said.
Duncan Foster, the Coral Springs Police Chief when Tony was hired, said he would not have been hired if they had known Tony used the drug.
“We had no knowledge he’d applied to Tallahassee PD,” Foster said. “We certainly had no knowledge that he had experimented with hallucinogenics, which would have been an instant cause for not hiring him.”
This is the latest issue that has been reported since it was revealed that Tony shot and killed a man in self-defense as a teenager in Philadelphia, and he did not disclose that on his job application, either.
When the application asked Tony if he had ever been arrested or the subject of any investigations, he checked no to both, but he was arrested for the shooting before being acquitted.
During a Wednesday radio interview, Tony said the findings are all part of a smear campaign.
“It’s not about what I had to endure in terms of trauma 27 years ago when I had to shoot and kill an armed man,” Tony said. “It’s not about an application that I filled out 17 years ago. It’s about serving this community, and I refuse to partake in this political slandering.”
Tony said in a statement to 7News, “Because I’ve made a priority of cracking down on excessive force and bringing accountability back to the agency, my disgruntled political opponents are trying to dredge up incidents from my past to stop me.”
Said Tony during the radio interview, “If the approach is, ‘We are going to break him,’ let me be clear: I am unbreakable, and I will continue to fight for this community.”
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.