By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony is proud of getting his doctorate in criminal justice – and vain enough to spend taxpayer’s funds to add “Dr.” and “PhD” next to his name everywhere he can think of.
Since not long after he got his degree at Nova Southeastern University in 2024 the words “Sheriff Gregory Tony PhD” have been incorporated beneath the agency’s badge-style logo. It’s omnipresent around BSO, especially at its lavish new training center where it’s painted on walls, embedded in floors and even imprinted on shower curtains in locker rooms.
Recently, the only Florida sheriff to attain a doctorate has brought his joy of educational achievement to the public. On BSO’s website, he posted a link to his 71-page doctoral dissertation titled “Measuring the Effectiveness of Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) in Law Enforcement: An Urban Analysis of the Broward Sheriff’s Office”. [The link on Tony’s biography page was removed last weekend.]
Besides providing a new sleep aid to chronic insomniacs, Tony’s treatise gives the public an unexpected look at how he attained his doctoral degree.
More importantly, it exposed what appears to be Sheriff Tony’s unlawful use of inside law enforcement information to research and write his dissertation in his quest for a PhD.
Sheriff Tony used both internal BSO databases and BSO employees to research, compile and analyze datasets containing statistics collected and keyed in by deputies and staff, according to his dissertation. That digital information formed the basis for Tony’s thesis, which was to identify how often deputies detained individuals for a psychiatric examination rather than arresting them.
“This study focused exclusively on retroactively assessing data retrieved from BSO’s internal tracking systems, creating a quantitative analysis of numbers and figures,” Tony wrote.
CODE OF ETHICS FOR PUBLIC OFFICERS
But Florida’s Code of Ethics for Public Officers and Employees, (FS 112.313 (8)], prohibits the disclosure of such inside information for personal benefit.
“A current or former public officer, employee of an agency, or local government attorney may not disclose or use information not available to members of the general public and gained by reason of his or her official position, except for information relating exclusively to governmental practices, for his or her personal gain or benefit,” the code says.
Penalties for a violation can include impeachment, removal from office and a civil penalty of up to $10,000.
BSO’s internal databases are not accessible by the public. Last week Florida Bulldog requested access to two of BSO’s internal databases, its Records Management System and PeopleSoft which manages BSO’s Human Resources.
“Those are internal databases solely for the use of Broward Sheriff’s Office employees,” BSO spokesman Carey Codd responded.
In his dissertation, Tony declared the purpose of his study was to “identify Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO) deputies’ frequency of opting to Baker Act individuals suffering a mental health crisis versus making a physical arrest.” (The Baker Act is Florida’s mental health law. It allows the voluntarily or involuntarily detention for up to 72 hours of individuals if they pose a danger to themselves or others.)
Tony said he used four “primary” BSO databases to “attain all essential data” he needed to “assess the nature of actions” taken by patrol deputies “when dealing with persons suffering a mental health crisis.”
He identified those databases as BSO’s Records Management system (RMS), Calls For Service (CFS), PeopleSoft, and Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD). Elsewhere, Tony writes that he also used BSO’s PowerDMS platform, which he described as the agency’s “primary software system utilized to track training and certification records for all employees.”
“All data points and figures in this study were collected from BSO in accordance with Florida public records laws, rules, and regulations. The use of traditional instruments such as structured interviews, surveys, or focus groups were not applicable to this study,” Tony wrote.
In explaining his methodology, the sheriff acknowledged the work of unnamed BSO officers, members of what he called his “study team” who assisted him in examining six years of BSO statistics.
“The study utilized BSO’s internal data collection systems to retroactively review calls for service between 2017 and 2023,” Tony wrote. “A designated officer with authorized security clearance downloaded an anonymized dataset from across sections of internal BSO databases. The designated officer removed any identifying information and replaced it with a unique ID to capture multiple calls responded to by the same officer. The study team did not have access to information that links the unique ID back to any identifying information of the officer.”
TONY’S NOT TALKING
As sheriff, Tony has supreme authority at BSO. He can hire and fire personnel at will. But such authority invariably creates the appearance, though not necessarily the fact, that the employees who did research for their boss’s thesis did so out of either a fear of retaliation if they did not cooperate or the possibility of a reward if they went along. The sheriff’s dissertation doesn’t say if his “study team” did their research during their regular shifts or after hours, or say if they earned extra for that research and if so who paid?
BSO’s databases were employed to “select” the “participant population” for Tony’s study: 1,500 BSO deputies.
PeopleSoft, described by Tony as “BSO’s human resources enterprise resource planning system,” used “deputies’ gender, race, ethnicity, age, years of service, crisis intervention team (CIT) certification date and the type of call for service (mentally ill or suicide)” to “assess if any patterns exist within a particular segment of the participant population.”
On Monday and Tuesday, Florida Bulldog asked Sheriff Tony via email if he ever notified those unwitting 1,500 deputies that he had used their “anonymized” personal information in his educational monograph. Further, we asked how many BSO employees were on his “study team,” and their rank. Tony did not respond.
In his dissertation, the sheriff made it clear he was aware that his public position afforded him special access to “sensitive” law enforcement data. And to the Nova Southeastern professors who reviewed his work he posited it as a unique plus that made his work stand out, without mentioning that Florida law forbids public officers like him from having such insider access.
“Researchers seeking to examine the effectiveness of CIT training are often limited in gaining access to police departments’ or sheriffs’ offices’ internal data related to training or CFS (calls for service),” Tony wrote on page 54. “Consequently, they must attempt to gain information and study participants from numerous regional law enforcement agencies who are willing to contribute or share sensitive data. This study utilized BSO as the single source participating agency.”
Sheriff Tony acknowledged “the men and women of the Broward Sheriff’s Office” for their “cooperation, support and assistance in collecting data for this research,” but provided no information about the nature and extent of their work on his dissertation.
He thanked none of them by name.
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