Broward Sheriff Candidate Rejects Incumbent’s Race Complaints

admin — Sat, 23 May 2020 01:49:19 +0000

Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony’s claims that race is behind attacks from his opponents is falling flat with one of those opponents.

Al Pollock, like Tony, grew up as a black male in a heavily policed neighborhood, near Liberty City in Miami, that had its share of drugs and violence.

The big difference, Pollock says: he did not lie on his application to launch his police career.

Just a few days after taking office in 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis removed Sheriff Scott Israel and installed Tony without doing a complete thorough background check, having failed to uncover Tony was arrested and charged with murder when he was 14. He was found not guilty after claiming self defense, but did not disclose the case when asked if he’d ever been arrested, charged or even detained as a suspect — which he clearly was.

DeSantis also did not investigate Tony’s prior attempts to be hired as a cop. Had he done so, he would have learned Tony denied using hallucinogens on his Coral Springs police application, after being rejected by Tallahassee police because he admitted a felony drug history of using LSD when he was 16.

“This is a gift that was given to this guy,” Pollock said of the governor’s appointment. “This guy didn’t earn anything.”

Pollock, Tony, Israel and others face off in the Aug. 18 Democratic primary, which usually produces the ultimate winner in Democrat-heavy Broward County.

Pollock, who retired as a BSO commander after 40 years with the agency, said lying on a police application is a fireable offense — and that Tony’s race has nothing to do with it.

Walking the streets outside his childhood home, Pollock recalled, “there was drugs, there was murders. I had two murders on this street I grew up on. But I did not become part of the problem, we became part of solution.”

Tony would argue he is part of the solution, too, having emerged from the Badlands of North Philadelphia and graduated from Florida State University, before being hired as a cop in Coral Springs — albeit after omitting his arrest and drug use histories from the application.

Tony has complained those revelations, in the Florida Bulldog and South Florida Sun-Sentinel, were the work of opponents painting an unfair, racially tinged caricature of the person he really is.

“My political opposition is out there and what they are using this to do is to say that a 14-year-old black kid doesn’t have a chance in this country. Even when they did nothing wrong,” Tony said.

“Fourteen-year-old black kids do have a chance in this country,” Pollock countered. “All we got to do is … tell the truth. There are 5,000 men and women employed at the Broward Sheriffs Office today who told the truth. If they lie, Tony will have terminated them.”

“For him to sit back and talk about race? That’s a non-factor. It’s about experience and knowledge,” Pollock said, adding it also about character.

Pollock claims Tony not only lied to get his one and only police job — before DeSantis appointed him sheriff — but also “broke the law because of untruthfulness.”

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has launched a preliminary investigation into whether Tony committed a crime when he swore in an affidavit that he had never had a crimnal record sealed or expunged.

Tony claims he has no criminal record because he was found not guilty. But police agencies are given legal access to sealed, expunged and juvenile records when vetting people applying to be police officers.

Tony said his opponents “want to use this as a political tool to outline me as black kid in the inner city with a gun.”

“That’s an insult,” said Pollock. “Nobody puts a gun in your hand. Nobody puts drugs in your hands. You choose to put that in your own hands.”

Pollock, 66, does have one incident of discipline in his BSO file.

He was suspended for 15 days in 2010 for helping a Miami Dolphins player accused of domestic violence leave the jail undetected, then taking him in his police vehicle to the Dolphins training facility and to the player’s house, after making sure the victim was not present.

“We all make mistakes in life, but I didn’t lie about it. I did not lie,” Pollock said when asked about the incident. “I was disciplined, moved on with my life and i was promoted afterwards.”

He also was found by a federal jury to have falsely arrested a woman, leading to a $60,000 judgment against the sheriff’s office, that was later settled. The jury also found Pollock did not act with malice or in bad faith.

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Broward prosecutors drop domestic violence charge against ex-Dolphin, Hurricane Walton

admin — Wed, 13 May 2020 17:56:01 +0000

Prosecutors on Wednesday dropped the domestic violence case against former University of Miami and Miami Dolphins running back Mark Walton, six months after his most recent arrest — one that might have ended his NFL career.

Walton had been charged with aggravated battery on a person known to be pregnant. The alleged victim? His live-in girlfriend.

The Dolphins moved quickly to cut Walton, who was on a zero-tolerance policy with the team after a string of early 2019 arrests in South Florida. He was actually serving a league-imposed suspension for those incidents when arrested on the most recent charge. The Dolphins quickly released him.

Cops at the time said Walton pushed his girlfriend, five weeks pregnant, against a wall “and punched her several times in the face and head.” Walton denied touching the woman “at any point in time,” his attorney, Michael Gottlieb, said following Walton’s November bond hearing.

“He’s a great young player,” Gottlieb told the Miami Herald on Wednesday. “He came up in a tough area of Miami without a good father figure and he’s had a little bit of trouble. But by and large everything he’s had has been dismissed. I’d really like to see a team take a chance on him. … I know that he can overcome this.”

Walton’s November arrest was his fourth of the year. The previous charges — misdemeanor marijuana possession, misdemeanor battery, reckless driving, resisting an officer without violence and openly carrying a weapon — were either dropped of pleaded down. And even that plea deal was thrown out because a judge made an administrative error.

Walton was also accused of striking his girlfriend, Jasmin Thompson, months before the November arrest, but police never could make a case against him.

Just because the legal case has been resolved doesn’t mean that Walton will be welcomed back into the NFL. Even if a team believes he’s straightened out his act, the league could still administer its own punishment, particularly since he’s been disciplined before. The matter remains under review, NFL Network reported Wednesday.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Adam Beasley has covered the Dolphins for the Miami Herald since 2012, and has worked for the newspaper since 2006. He is a graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Communications and has written about sports professionally since 1996.
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Broward Sheriff Candidate Rejects Incumbent’s Race Complaints

Broward prosecutors drop domestic violence charge against ex-Dolphin, Hurricane Walton