Chief Tony Pustizzi (retired) began his career with the Coral Springs Police Department in 1988. Over his 30-year tenure, he supervised every unit within the agency with a strong emphasis on investigations, including homicide and special victims. Tony served on the SWAT team for 15 years where the last eight he was team commander. Tony rose through the ranks to ultimately become chief of police in 2012. He also served as the city’s interim city manager and retired in March 2018 as the chief of police/deputy city manager. In January 2019, Tony came out of retirement to serve as the special counsel to the new sheriff of Broward County upon his appointment by the governor of the state of Florida.
During the school massacre on February 14, 2018, where a former student entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida and killed 17 innocent people and injured another 17 students, Chief Pustizzi, along with members of his agency, arrived at the school within minutes of being notified and was instrumental in organizing a complex law enforcement approach, including stopping and capturing the killer and extracting victims from within the school was initiated.
Tony now conducts trainings nationwide on school and workplace violence preparedness and is a proud consultant for Guard911 as he is a firm believer that seconds save lives and can attest that the Hero911 app for police would have alerted his officers minutes earlier, possibly saving lives during the incident he was directly involved in. Tony’s main talking point is decreasing notification time to emergencies and the need to alert officers earlier during these senseless acts of violence and with tools like Hero911 and Guard911, we can now accomplish this.
