An incensed Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony announced Friday the reinstatement of three detention deputies recently arrested over a fight with an inmate, describing the decision to charge them as evidence of “public corruption and favors for friends.”
The three deputies, Denia Walker, 37, Cleopatra Johnnie, 47, and Sgt. Zakiyyah Polk, 44, were arrested on felony aggravated battery charges last week following an investigation by the Broward State Attorney’s Office. The three women were processing Samantha Caputo, 38, who had been arrested on a DUI charge, when an argument ensued and she flung her bra at one of the deputies, according to jail footage and arrest warrants. Polk then pushed her backwards and the altercation then became physical, though most of it occurred off camera.
Caputo said she lost consciousness during the fight, suffered multiple injuries and was in fear for her life, according to the warrant. Polk, the sergeant, was also injured with a bite to her thumb that fractured bones, Tony said.
At a news conference Friday, Tony was flanked by the deputies’ private attorneys as he repeatedly condemned the State Attorney’s Office over its charging decisions both in the jail fight and in other cases while suggesting that prosecutors treated Caputo differently because of her name and connections. He did not elaborate on what those connections were.
“This is most certainly a miscarriage of justice and exhibits signs and symptoms of public corruption in itself. Favors for friends,” Tony said, adding that there are individuals who “are selectively charged and those who are not. Is it their last name? Is it they’re a power player or influence in this community?”
The Sheriff’s Office will foot the bill of the three deputies’ criminal defense. All of them were reinstated to full duty Friday, Tony said.
Broward State Attorney Harold Pryor rejected Tony’s comments in a lengthy statement Friday afternoon, saying “attempts to verbally bully my office or sway public opinion prior to trial will not deter us from seeking justice and striving to do the right thing.”
“I strongly encourage the Broward Sheriff’s Office to provide us and the residents of Broward County with a detailed and specific account — in writing — of the allegation the Sheriff alluded to at the media conference,” Pryor said. “Let me assure the residents and dedicated law enforcement officers of Broward County that I will provide complete transparency regarding this matter while also complying with the ethical rules that discourage prosecutors from commenting on the facts and circumstances of cases we are prosecuting. My prosecutors and I will continue to try all criminal cases in the courtroom, based on facts and evidence — not in the media.”
Tony had reporters watch segments of the jail footage from the Oct. 4, 2022, incident to show that the deputies acted professionally. All of the deputies “demonstrated only the level of force necessary” to get Caputo into compliance, Tony said.
Caputo’s attorney, Phil Johnston, did not immediately return a voicemail Friday. He had previously told the Sun Sentinel that watching the video in slow motion shows one of the deputies “catch (Caputo) in the throat with open hand” before they sprayed her with pepper spray. She was kicked and punched several times, according to a warrant, and shocked with a Taser twice, Johnston said.
BSO nursing staff treated Caputo immediately after the incident. She had significant bruising underneath her right eye and a bruised and swollen face, according to the warrant for their arrests. At a hospital after she was released, she learned she had a skin infection where she had been shocked with a Taser.
Caputo stated that she “never returned any form of physical aggression, and did not strike or bite” the deputies, according to the warrant.
But the Sheriff’s Office said that Polk’s thumb was bitten so hard that it fractured her bones. She also had to take a pill for a month due to an infection, according to her attorney, Eric Schwartzreich.
Caputo had been charged with aggravated battery following the fight, but the State Attorney’s Office dropped those charges, as well as the original DUI charge, another decision that Tony suggested was selective treatment.
He likened the charges against the deputies to investigations he himself has faced by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The state agency concluded that he repeatedly lied or made misleading statements on official documents.
Asked why he was holding a news conference a week after the media reported on the arrests of his deputies without announcing them himself, Tony pointed to the two years it took to charge the deputies involved.
“What has been going on over the last two years at this case that sat on someone’s desk, that all of a sudden it’s time to charge these deputies inappropriately with aggravated battery?” Tony said. “Yes, it’s time for us to speculate. Don’t forget the fact that we are also investigators, folks.”
Tony also went through the numbers of potential criminal cases involving his deputies that he has sent to the State Attorney’s Office, arguing that prosecutors have repeatedly declined to charge them.
One case mentioned repeatedly by Tony was that of Ronald Thurston, a former deputy charged with striking a high school student in February. Prosecutors had previously declined to charge Thurston over a prior incident after BSO had turned over an internal affairs investigation to them.
“I don’t care if it’s the Caputos, the Thurstons, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Trumps or the goddamn Obamas,” Tony said. “It doesn’t matter when you’re in Broward County. Everyone’s going to be held to the same standards.”
In response, Pryor pointed to the fact that Thurston is currently facing charges brought by the State Attorney’s Office and said that his office’s selectivity “indicates how seriously we take the process of reviewing the evidence on a case-by-case basis … irrespective of an individual’s name or perceived status.”
Pryor also said the two-year gap is because the State Attorney’s Office only began its investigation into the deputies in 2024, after her attorney filed a motion to dismiss the battery charge. He latched onto Tony’s use of “speculate,” saying he was “very disappointed that the Sheriff said that he was speculating when he made vague comments alleging public corruption by my agency. However, as a prosecutor, I am held to a higher ethical and moral standard and will not speculate about this important matter.”
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