Police union president tipped off drug suspects, Florida cops say. ‘I got you bro’
The president of a Florida police union faces public corruption charges after he’s accused of tipping off drug suspects to a criminal investigation.
Fredrick Lise, a nine-year veteran of the Clearwater Police Department, was arrested Aug. 6 on four counts of disclosure or use of confidential criminal justice information and four counts of unlawful use of two-way communications devices, officials said.
Lise’s attorney information isn’t available in court records.
‘Enabled them’
Lise was friends with two people who were being investigated by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office as part of a drug trafficking operation, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in an Aug. 6 news conference.
The 32-year-old narcotics detective is accused of helping 39-year-old Matthew Turner and 42-year-old Henry Smith traffic significant amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and heroin.
The investigation that Lise is accused of interfering with ended in the arrest of Turner and Smith on an array of drug trafficking charges in Pinellas County July 19, records show.
McClatchy News reached out to their attorneys Aug. 6 and did not receive an immediate response.
“Lise enabled them to do what they did,” Gualtieri said.
As a narcotics detective, Lise had access to databases that allowed him to receive alerts about other agencies investigating people in the system, including Turner and Smith, according to an arrest affidavit.
In March, Lise received an alert that Smith was being investigated and told him so, deputies said. Smith began giving Lise the names of people he had recently sold drugs to in an attempt to figure out how the sheriff’s office knew to investigate him, deputies said.
Lise is then accused of looking up these names in the law enforcement database and asking deputies with the sheriff’s office for more information on the investigation.
“I got you bro,” Lise is accused of telling Smith.
Gualtieri said Lise endangered undercover detectives by giving this information to suspects.
Lise then came up with an “elaborate” plan to have Turner and Smith act as confidential informants for the police department and buy drugs from someone else to get that person caught, which would garner them goodwill with law enforcement, the sheriff said.
“Alright I bought you some time but we gotta put some work in this week to show you’re actually working,” Lise texted, according to the affidavit.
Later, he met with the pair to tell them additional details about the sheriff’s office’s investigation, according to court records. He told them about deputies’ phone tapping and physical surveillance that led the men to change their phone numbers and frequently switch cars to scramble the sheriff’s office investigation, officials said.
Lise went as far as to warn Turner to leave town, according to deputies.
After Turner and Smith were arrested, they told deputies that another law enforcement officer gave them “sensitive information” about the investigation, according to an arrest affidavit.
Investigators then turned their attention to Lise.
‘Corrupt cop’
The narcotics detective was the president of the Florida Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 10, the police department’s union, for roughly the last three years, according to Clearwater Police Chief Eric Gandy.
“He represents hundreds of Clearwater officers and their interests,” Gandy said. “When we look at these criminal cases, it appears he put the interests of drug traffickers over those interests of his own officers.”
Lise is currently on administrative leave, the chief said. Both the chief and the sheriff condemned his actions.
“Lise has betrayed everything that a law enforcement officer stands for,” Gualtieri said. “At the end of the day he’s a corrupt cop and needs to go to prison.”
Clearwater is part of the Tampa Bay area.
This story was originally published August 7, 2024 at 11:26 AM with the headline "Police union president tipped off drug suspects, Florida cops say. ‘I got you bro’."