WPBF-Channel 25 anchor Paul LaGrone goofing around with son Jacob on the set of the morning news (via Facebook)
WEST PALM BEACH — The uncanny timing of a child neglect investigation against WPTV-Channel 5 reporter Katie LaGrone and her husband, WPBF-Channel 25 anchorman Paul LaGrone, is making some wonder if WPTV’s recent series on the high number of shootings of civilians by Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office deputies had anything to do with it.
What’s more, Gossip Extra has discovered that one of the LaGrones’ neighbors is a controversial PBSO deputy who shot a suspect last year in Lake Worth in an incident that is now under FBI investigation.
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We reported yesterday that two DCF workers, accompanied by a West Palm Beach Police officer, dropped in on the LaGrones last week on a complaint that they allow their 6-year-old boy to roam the streets unsupervised.
Katie LaGrone admitted that she does allow son Jacob to hang out outside routinely, within view or earshot.
But, she said, she was totally blindsided by the fact someone called DCF instead of expressing their concerns to her.
A DCF spokeswoman said the agency is still looking into the allegations and is prohibited by law to provide more details — including who dropped a dime on the LaGrones.
The police report shows the allegations were reported “anonymously.”
But our discovery that PBSO Deputy Russell Brinson lives in a townhouse on the same block as the LaGrones in the Land of the Presidents section of the city is troubling at best.
Katie LaGrone (WPTV photo)
In an interview yesterday, Katie LaGrone refused to speculate about which neighbor called DCF but acknowledges that Brinson, the target of 18 complaints for brutality in his three years at PBSO, lives in the development.
Brinson shot a running suspect three times on a Lake Worth street a year ago. The suspect survived but Brinson was singled out by other deputies for brutality toward Hispanic immigrants, and the FBI has been reviewing the incident.
Brinson is still working for PBSO.
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has had a tense relationship with the press for the past several years and has shown a pattern of increasing aggressiveness toward reporters and organizations that, he believes, endeavor to portray him in a negative light.
Three years ago, Gossip Extra was tipped off by an insider that a member of Bradshaw’s entourage investigated the background of this website’s employees but couldn’t find anything nefarious.
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw (via Facebook)
Then, PBSO mounted a full-fledged sting operation inside its Internal Affairs bureau to ferret out a deputy who, PBSO brass thought, was leaking information to Gossip Extra.
In time, a sergeant was fired — and the leaks continued.
In late 2012, PBSO turned its attention to pbsotalk.com, a boutique website that caters mostly to deputies. Users are allowed to post anonymously gossip and facts about the agency.
Founder Mark Dougan was also investigated criminally for wiretapping, but the case did not come to fruition.
PBSO’s second in command, Chief Deputy Mike Gauger, filed a defamation lawsuit against Dougan. That case is pending.
In 2013, Bradshaw’s focus shifted to radio. At the time, WSVU-960 AM broadcast The Beat, a weekly program about policing hosted by former Riviera Beach Police Commander Rick Sessa.
Sessa was critical of PBSO and the then-State Attorney Mike McAuliffe. Weeks before the station shut down The Beat, two of the show’s advertisers, Harley-Davidson of Palm Beach and Ed Morse Honda, ended their sponsorship deal.
Sessa was told neither advertiser thought it was a good idea to advertise on a show that antagonized Bradshaw.
Last year, PBSO started going after corporate-owned media.
The sheriff ordered the shut down of the agency’s booking blotter after The Palm Beach Post reported that jail officials don’t publish the mugshots and names of deputies and police officers who are arrested.
The blotter reappeared four days later without as much as an explanation after judges, bail bondsmen and lawyers complained they, too, were affected by the shutdown.
In April, media organizations that included WPTV and Katie LaGrone quantified the violence displayed by PBSO deputies arrests, leading to the shootings of more than 100 civilians since Bradshaw was first elected.
“I’m not going to go there,” Katie LaGrone said when asked if she believed someone within PBSO put DCF up to investigating her family. “All I can say is that we were blindsided.”
Bradshaw does not comment on stories that appear in media companies that he thinks are against him, including Gossip Extra.
Other stories you might find interesting:
— FBI raid PBSO archives in brutality investigation
— Hey mainstream media, time to wake up to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw strange view on the media
