Politics
Davie candidate says she was hacked after ‘pick up guns’ comment draws Broward Sheriff’s complaint
A Davie Council candidate’s Facebook comment this week told residents they needed the courage to take up arms against “the forces that ruin” America.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO) is now looking into the post, which the candidate denies writing as it appeared.
Toula Amanna, a restaurateur seeking the District 3 seat on the Town Council, posted a comment laying out three requirements for residents who want their lives to improve.
The first was studying the issues. The third was organizing with like-minded people.
The second was armed confrontation, or as she put it in all-caps, “To have the courage to pick up guns and fight in public, in person against the forces that ruin a city, a state and the entire country.”
The comment ran beneath a post about Deerfield Beach’s charter referendum in DFB — What’s Happening on The Island, a private Facebook group of roughly 7,900 members.
Reached by phone Friday, Amanna confirmed in a 20-minute interview that the comment was hers and said she edited it after Florida Politics contacted her.
The gun language, she said, was not.
“I’ve never spoken about guns. I don’t know guns. I have no guns. And I’m very anti-gun,” she said. “I can’t believe someone would write that. It wasn’t me.”
A screenshot of the comment, captured before Friday’s edit and reviewed by Florida Politics, includes the passage. Facebook labels comments that have been altered, but the screenshot carried no such marker, Amanna acknowledged.
Amanna attributed the language to hackers who she believes compromised her phone and computer. She said her phone and computer were hacked — likely by Deerfield Beach’s government, she said, noting that she has an active lawsuit against the city over multiple properties she owns — and that she’s “working with an ex-FBI agent” to rectify the issue.
Asked for proof that she had raised the issue to anyone about her phone and computer being hacked, Amanna said she had evidence but couldn’t share it with Florida Politics, since she plans to bring it up in federal court.
Amanna did not dispute the remainder of the comment, which ran several hundred words. It faulted Deerfield Beach activists as ineffective, said residents who couldn’t name what they’re voting on should stay at home and opined that to “overthrow” the city’s “existing Deep State City Government” would require a charismatic leader capable of rallying people — someone she didn’t see on the scene.
Chaz Stevens, a noted political activist, artist and blogger who first flagged the post, took the comment to BSO. In a Sept. 16 letter to Captain Adam Hofstein, Chief of the agency’s Deerfield Beach district, Stevens asked the agency to generate an incident number and forward the material to BSO’s threat-management unit for a behavioral assessment covering Amanna’s access to firearms.
The letter, copied to City Manager Rodney Brimlow and Mayor Todd Drosky, also asked BSO to brief deputies assigned to City Commission meetings and municipal buildings.
A Deerfield Beach deputy took the report the next day and issued a case number, Stevens said.
“City Hall is a workplace,” Stevens wrote in a Sept. 17 post on his Substack. “It is also the room where residents show up to argue, petition, complain, and vote on the business of their community. People should be able to walk through that door without wondering whether somebody’s call for armed confrontation will stay confined to Facebook.”
Stevens said he does not know whether the language crosses a criminal line, but told a deputy that “threat assessment doesn’t wait for certainty or tragedy.” He pointed to a Wisconsin case in which prosecutors charged a Waukesha County man with making a terrorist threat over an email to a school Superintendent that mentioned pellet guns going off. Authorities there acted on the implication alone, he noted.
Amanna, whose legal name is Panagiota Lazarou-Amanna, according to state voter records, has a long and contentious history with Deerfield Beach. She operated the Deerfield Beach Café at the city’s pier until the city evicted her following litigation that left the business roughly $700,000 behind on rent.
A lender later moved to foreclose on three Davie restaurant buildings tied to her and her husband over a $7.02 million mortgage.
She is also an ally of Dan Herz, who lost the 2025 Deerfield Beach Mayor’s race and faces a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge over a March incident at City Hall, where he allegedly shoved a door past its normal range of motion, damaging it.
Stevens challenged Herz’s residency in court ahead of that election.
Amanna is one of three candidates challenging incumbent Davie Council Member Susan Starkey in the Nov. 3 General Election, alongside Stephen Korka and Jordan Nelson.
Amanna was a registered Democrat until 2020, when she switched to Republican. She then re-registered with no party affiliation in 2021.
Davie’s municipal races are nonpartisan. The town’s election is Nov. 3.
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