We're getting back into local crime reporting. Because of the sensitive nature of these reports, most of it will be content for paid subscribers only.
Below are details on 18 incidents with threats, drugs, sexual assault, child cruelty, drugged driving, violence, and more. People involved include a woman from St. Andrews Country Club, a man from Lexington Estates, young people connected to West Boca High, Olympic Heights and Spanish River as well. And of course, a raid in the Sandalfoot trailer park.
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The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office arrested Agustin “Froggy” Gonzalez of Albatross Road in Delray Beach (off Dixie near The Wick) for solicitation of a minor, traveling to meet a minor, and at least one other charge. Gonzalez is a “two time Emmy Award winning Director of Photography.” It appears he won Emmys in 2018 for “News Promo – Image” and another for Lighting, both for KMGH-TV in Denver.
Detective Malory Wildove was online undercover as part of a task force. She began a conversation with someone identified as “Froggy”, told him she was only 15 years old, and the conversation continued over the course of a month with sexually explicit details including offers of cash for sexual acts, culminating in a meeting in West Palm Beach where Gonzalez was arrested.
Gonzalez’ professional website is: dpFroggy.com and he is on Facebook as well where comments related to his arrest are starting to appear.
Partial screenshot from the dpfroggy website
Detectives believe there could be additional victims.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-458-TIPS or you can remain ANONYMOUS by downloading our new app “PBSO” for your Apple or Android Smart Phone and using the “See Something” feature. The app can also be downloaded from www.pbsoapp.com.
Single point of entry is one of the latest stupid ideas in school security. After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting happened next door to our community, the clamor for school security grew louder. The same Broward officials whose incompetence failed to prevent the shooting have been elevated by the media as experts.
Broward Schools superintendent Robert Runcie is touted in the Miami Herald with his plan: “The goal of the new measures is to create a single point of entry at schools.” Runcie is the “leader” whose “Promise” program kept Nikolas Cruz from being criminally prosecuted before the shooting. Criminal prosecution, even just with probation, might have prevented Cruz from getting and keeping guns.
Anyone who understands guns and game plans a school shooting can see the idiocy of single point of entry. Consider the photo below:
Imagine this area filled with 2000 students trying to get into the building and then picture how this looks to a psychopath with a rifle 100 yards away. It’s that stupid.
We had the joy of experiencing other stupid safety measures Thursday at the West Boca High football game against Palm Beach Lakes. Game time for all county high school football games was moved from 7 pm to 6 pm. Other than making it difficult for working parents to see their kids at the games, this accomplishes nothing. We also experienced the “clear bag only” policy which meant no camera bag for this journalist. I offered to let them search the bag, but they declined and I had to put it in my car. Yes that’s only a minor annoyance for me, but it’s also a minor annoyance for thousands of others.
$300K wunderkind Donald Fennoy heads the Palm Beach Schools. He admitted that these moves do nothing to address the shooting outside Palm Beach Central: “The measures announced Sunday would likely not have changed the outcome, Fennoy conceded.”
I’m not the first person to write about the stupidity of the school security mania. Lenore Skenazy, the free range children advocate, aptly described it as Security Theater for Schools. For those unfamiliar with the term: “Security theater is the practice of investing in countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to achieve it.”
Skenazy put it this way: “Schools are piling on the procedures as if the fact that someone, somewhere experienced a terrible tragedy once means that everyone, everywhere is at risk of terrible tragedies all the time.”
Fear makes folks irrational, which explains why any of these measures morphed into bona fide rules. But now that we’ve had a little time to think, it’s time to re-examine them with the kind of clearheadedness an 11-year-old recently showed.
“They want everyone to go in and out of the same door,” her mother explained. Whereupon the daughter wondered, “Won’t that just make it easier for someone who wanted to shoot or bomb people, because everyone will be in the same place?”
Whenever someone criticizes security measures, we hear the inevitable cry: “We have to do something!”. First of all, no we don’t. And second, we don’t have to do something stupid.
All these security measures cost money, which means less money to spend on things that might actually help, like good teachers. But don’t worry folks. Whatever we do, no administrator will be left behind.
The State Attorney’s office for Palm Beach County, run by Dave Aronberg, botched the murder prosecution of Tilus Lebrun, who killed West Boca’s Jimmy Karaloukas at the victim’s Jimmy the Greek restaurant.
Lebrun was just found not guilty by reason of insanity on Monday on all charges including subsequent incidents of felony battery on law enforcement officers.
Insanity is established when:
(a) The defendant had a mental infirmity, disease, or defect; and
(b) Because of this condition, the defendant:
1. Did not know what he or she was doing or its consequences; or
2. Although the defendant knew what he or she was doing and its consequences, the defendant did not know that what he or she was doing was wrong.
Mental infirmity, disease, or defect does not constitute a defense of insanity except as provided in this subsection.
(2) BURDEN OF PROOF.—The defendant has the burden of proving the defense of insanity by clear and convincing evidence.
West Boca News obtained a copy of the psychologist’s report that was prepared for the prosecution. The report starts off with the question asked by the prosecution:
“Whether Mr. Lebrun was legally sane at the time of the offense.”
If you read the statute, that is not the correct question. It is overly simplistic. The psychologist should have been asked to address the language of the statute.
It seems clear that the psychologist would have answered yes to part (a) of the statute – that Lebrun had a mental disease. But the bigger issues are in part (b). Did Lebrun know what he was doing? If so, did he know that what he was doing was wrong?
Those two questions are not addressed in the prosecution psychologist’s report. But the evidence shows Lebrun knew what he was doing. The probable cause affidavit reflects a statement he made right after he was arrested:
The unanswered question is whether Lebrun knew that what he was doing was wrong. For that we know under Florida law that it was his burden (or his lawyer’s) to prove that by clear and convincing evidence. This is a high standard to meet for the defense.
There’s a recent example of this in a case out of Orlando, Rodriguez v. State. In that case Rodriguez had the same diagnosis as Lebrun (paranoid schizophrenia) and the insanity defense was similarly based on hallucinations and delusions. The jury found Rodriguez guilty* even though seven defense expert witnesses testified he was insane and the prosecution did not offer an expert witness.
The appeals court noted in Rodriguez that:
the jurors were free to consider Rodriguez’s hallucinations and delusions as evidence of whether he suffered from a mental infirmity, disease, or defect, [but] they were only permitted to consider whether this condition caused Rodriguez at the time of the offenses to not know what he was doing or the consequences of his actions, or whether he knew that what he was doing was wrong.
Due to blunders by Aronberg’s office the victims and their families were deprived of a fair hearing on this important issue. An Orlando jury faced with similar facts denied the insanity defense. Lebrun’s insanity defense should have been determined by a Palm Beach County jury.
*Although the Rodriguez case was reversed on appeal (on a technical legal issue related to jury instructions), Rodriguez pled guilty before the second trial. He was sentenced to 30 years and later committed suicide in prison.
Devaris Frederick of Hollywood FL. This photo is from the FDLE offender database.
A wild incident took place on Saturday at the Sandalfoot Publix here in West Boca Raton. Devaris Frederick of Hollywood Florida allegedly stole a woman’s purse while in the line waiting to pay the cashier. He ran out of the store and into a waiting U-Haul van. Comically as the van drove off, witnesses say Frederick fell out of the back door of the van.
Narrative from the PBSO probable cause affidavit. We redacted the victim’s name.
Witnesses then chased Frederick, tackled him, and held him down until deputies from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office arrived. Deputies also found a crack pipe in Frederick’s possession, but no lingerie.
FDLE records indicate Frederick has a substantial criminal history including two lengthy stays in some of the finest all-inclusive resorts the State of Florida has to offer.
Broward County court records reveal Frederick had just been released from jail on a pending felony grand theft charge with an electronic monitoring agreement that means he should have had a GPS device on his ankle. It was not mentioned in the probable cause affidavit. He may be returning to a state prison in the near future.
Broward County mugshot of Devaris Frederick
We are hoping to get video from this incident, either from PBSO or possibly from locals who were reportedly recording on scene.
