Red light cameras on Okeechobee Boulevard

The West Palm Beach Police Department is throwing professional courtesy into the wind.

Patrolmen have been told Friday they’ll have to pay the city’s $125-fines if they’re caught running red-lights equipped with cameras — even while in uniform and in a squad car.

And the same goes for any other law enforcement agency circulating on the city’s territory — unless, of course, there’s a legitimate emergency!

Tired of lawmen trying to weasel out of paying, Assistant Chief Dennis Crispo last week sent a preachy letter to all other area chiefs and  Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw to lay down the law.

“Please advise your members if they are captured on camera in their vehicles running the red light at these intersections, they will be cited,” the letter reads. “The only remedy for relief will be through the traffic court system. All law enforcement personnel must understand the high standard of conduct is applied to them in order for the public to have confidence in their departments and the officers.

“This trust is a critical and precious commodity . . . and yet it is fragile and easily lost.”

For more, and the poll and the locations of WPB’s cameras, look below or click (Read more…)

Paulette Koch

Was is the stifling heat?

Or the sorry shape of the real estate market?

Tempers flared the other day at the white shoe Palm Beach office of the  Corcoran real estate firm.

Tony Beyer, 44, a local investor and philanthropist who had gone into the Royal Poinciana storefront to sign a multimillion dollar contract on a house, ended up being put in a headlock by one of the Realtors.

What happened?

Beyer apparently had words with well-known broker Paulette Koch within earshot of her son and partner, Dana Koch. Beyer called her a “bitch,” from what a spywitness tells me. And there were other niceties that Paulette perceived to be “intimidating.”

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

(Click on the Splash News photo for more)

Life goes on for newly single Elin Nordegren on the week she divorced golfer Tiger Woods and granted a cozy, softball interview to People magazine about her crowded marriage.

Still surrounded by bodyguards, the 30-year-old was just photographed exiting a pediatrician’s office near Orlando with her and Woods’ two children. (above)

Elin, meanwhile, is not the only one squawking about her world falling apart. Miss Congeniality star Sandra Bullock is scheduled to sit down with Today’s Matt Lauer Tuesday to discuss her pending divorce from philandering motorcycle builder Jesse James.

– Click here for more about the divorce

– Click here for a look at the Jupiter Island home that soon will be Tiger’s homestead

Lional Dalton (Click on the photo for his booking mug, and more)

Former National Football League journeyman Lional Dalton spent today in a West Palm Beach jail after surrendering to Palm Beach County authorities on charges of domestic violence.

The 350-pound defensive tackle, who made Boca Raton his home when he retired in 2006 after playing for the Baltimore Ravens, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans, was scheduled to post his $2,000-bail today.

The wife, 5-foot Kimberly Dalton, also was arrested last week in connection with the same incident, which occurred at their home in March.

According to court records, the Daltons have been going at it for more than a year. He filed for divorce earlier this year.

Each has asked courts to grant several domestic violence injunctions against the other. Yet, they still share a $1 million-house at the fancy Fox Hill Estates, even if a judge ordered Lional to live in the pool house. He is only allowed in the main house, where Kimberly lives, to prepare food and attend to personal needs.

Still, they run into each other every so often — and that’s not good.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

The Detters in 2000, as Wendy receives the Palm Beach Post's Distinguished Law Officer of the Year (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

The pending divorce of a husband and his wife, both West Palm Beach cops, spilled into their workplace recently.

The husband, Police Officer Steve Detter, 49, complained that his wife, Community Response Division Sgt. Wendy Detter, 48, searched his workstation for his girlfriend’s phone number then called her — while on duty.

Steve also told the brass he was worried Wendy would confront the paramour in person, and that Wendy has been checking out the girlfriend’s Facebook page from her city-owned computer.

So Internal Affairs got involved. And Wendy — winner in 2000 of The Palm Beach Post’s Distinguished Law Officer of the Year — was found to have used Facebook while on duty.

She faces a three-day suspension.

Wendy told the IA sleuths that she just wanted to print the Facebook entries of the husband’s paramour about romantic trips to use in their divorce. She added that she, not the paramour, is the victim of cyberstalking.

For more, and the poll, look below or click (Read more…)

Tyler, Monday night at the BankAtlantic Center (Click on the photo for much more)

Aerosmith took over the BankAtlantic Center Monday night in Sunrise for more than two hours of classics, blues, rock and golden oldies. And yes, there was a love fest between frontman Steven Tyler, who recently rejoined the group, and lead guitarist Joe Perry.

At one point, Tyler sang The Beatles‘ Come Together to Perry, then called Perry “My hero!” The axman last week blasted Tyler for agreeing to consider a job as judge on the next  American Idol without talking to the band about it.

But if last night’s SoFla concert proved something, with a runway that extended far from the stage into the audience providing a great platform for Tyler: If Tyler were to end up lending his star-power to a dying reality TV show like AI for one or more seasons, the band can mothball its instruments.

Even at 62 — and showing it — Tyler is such an electric showman that without him, there ain’t no Aerosmith. Which may explain why the band played a spirited soulful rendition of the classic blues tune Baby, Please Don’t Go!

– Click here for pbpulse’s take

Crazy? Steven Tyler

Don’t assume for a minute that all’s well in the re-formed Aerosmith, which blows into the BankAtlantic Center tonight. (Good tickets are still available)

Band members are getting increasingly restless over frontman Steven Tyler’s bid to become a judge on — Gasp! — the world’s fanciest karaoke contest, American Idol.

“I found out on the Internet like the rest of the world,” axman Joe Perry told the Boston Herald. “We’d like to plan our lives, you know!”

That’s not it. Perry confronted Tyler about AI in the dressing-room after a show last weekend, and Perry said Tyler replied: I’m not allowed discuss it!

“After working with me for 40 years, he couldn’t tell me about this?” Perry said. “Why so secretive?”

Last year. Tyler told the band at the last minute that he’d be leaving to focus on “Brand Tyler.”

I’m told, however, that the on-stage harmony is just fine after the group re-united with Tyler earlier this year. The tour is entering its third week.

For the playlist, look below or click (Read more…)

Three days after former WPBF-Channel 25 anchorwoman Lisa Hayward was arrested for DUI, her husband, Miami’s WSVN-Channel 7 reporter Derek Hayward, ended up seeing the inside of a jail cell on suspicion of domestic violence.

According to the arrest report, Derek, 59, was nabbed by Coconut Creek cops Saturday night after a spat with Lisa as they drove home from a restaurant with their children, sons who are 10 and 13.

Derek Hayward's mug shot, courtesy Coconut Creek Police (Click on the photo for more)

An insider tells me the Haywards were arguing about Lisa’s recent arrest when things really got heated up. Derek, who drove, admitted he grabbed his wife by her shirt as she sat on the passenger’s seat, then kicked her and the children out.

Lisa's booking mug (Click on the photo for more)

He was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor. There was no evidence he hit her.

Known for his British accent and hard-hitting tabloid-style reporting, Hayward has been a permanent fixture on the SoFla media landscape for 20 years, always at the Fox affiliate.

He and Lisa have been married for 17 years. He once described how scared he was when, in 2008, Lisa stopped responding to phone calls and vanished for several hours after a public appearance. Derek and the Channel 25 brass were alerting police departments alongside I-95 when she popped up about 1 a.m. Her cell’s ring was on silent, and she didn’t realize she’d been receiving frantic calls.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Lemoine

Judge hopeful Ken Lemoine’s history as a West Palm Beach Police officer is a colorful one.

His personnel file — he rode the thin blue line from 1986 to 1993, before he became a lawyer — is stuffed with incident reports that include joyriding on a city-owned forklift and shooting himself in the leg.

“I also received a police combat cross for a fire fight,” Lemoine said, “and letters from members of the public saying how good of a job I was doing. I once was officer-of-the quarter. Nobody’s talking about how I would chase the bad guys in bad parts of the city in the middle of the night.”

When it comes to the negatives, however, the 48-year-old dismisses them as “20-year-old things.”

“Frankly, I don’t even remember some of these,” he said.

According to city archives, Lemoine once described himself as “bored” while working the night shift at the old West Palm Beach Auditorium. So he took a forklift on a joyride. Of course, he crashed and damaged it.

“He got on the lift,” reads the incident report, “and was running it up and down when it hit the cement overhang. Officer Lemoine knows it was wrong . . . (and he received) a copy of the bill for the repairs.”

Cost him $313.50!

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Nichols

A brawl involving former television weatherman and anchorman Bob Nichols at a Lake Worth country club – you read right, a genteel country club – ended with the arrest for battery of a club worker.

Nichols, formerly of WPEC-Channel 12 and WPTV-Channel 5, and other members were having a drink at the Sherbrooke Golf & Country Club bar when they objected to the spicy language of club employee Gino DiFonzo, the son of manager Pauline DiFonzo. The country club is owned by local philanthropist Mac Schwebel.

“He was swearing in front of female members,” Nichols said about Tuesday’s incident. “So I went outside.”

But then, so did DiFonzo.

And when he exited, DiFonzo claims he overheard Nichols badmouthing him.

What happened next? Look below, or click (Read more…)