DRUG COP HANDED 11 YEARS

A former police sergeant who put himself and other officers up for hire by
drug smugglers and became a central target in the FBI's hunt for crooked
cops was sentenced Thursday to more than 11 years in prison.

Standing in federal court, Conrad Fragozo Jr. offered no explanation for
how he came to play a leading role in a case that last year bruised the San
Antonio Police Department even as it crowned a long corruption search by
local FBI agents.

Instead, the 37-year-old apologized to the residents of San Antonio for
betraying the trust given him during his 15 years as a San Antonio police
officer.

"For 14 years I was a good officer," he said. "And only in the last year, I
failed a test I shouldn't have failed."

In court, the humbled father of three stood in stark contrast to the patrol
supervisor depicted in FBI investigative reports as a man with a mercenary
streak — ready to betray even private employers who paid him to guard their
businesses.

The reports, obtained by the San Antonio Express-News, sketch the slow
courtship between the officer and the undercover agent who posed as a
free-spending drug trafficker named "Ricardo."

Opened in 1997, the FBI investigation ended with 10 law-enforcement
officers and two civilians indicted in March 2001.

Fragozo served as a catalyst in the largest case, a cocaine-trafficking
conspiracy involving a half-dozen patrol officers as well as Fragozo's uncle.

Fragozo played the dual roles of principal leader and patsy as he
unknowingly ushered his friends, one of whom helped recruit still more
patrol officers, into the sting operation. Mostly, the officers escorted
cars they were told contained shipments of cocaine.

The FBI reports suggest Fragozo came to the agency's attention in fall 1999
when he approached a longtime friend, a woman who secretly worked as a paid
informant — earning $95,945 from the bureau over nine years, according to
Fragozo's attorney John Convery.

In September of that year, Fragozo told her he needed money and that he
wanted to steal profits from drug dealers, the informant told agents.

A month later, the informant introduced Fragozo to "Ricardo" at a strip
club. Afterward, the sergeant asked his friend if "Ricardo" was a drug
dealer. She said yes.

"To which Fragozo replied, 'Make sure and thank him for the lap dance that
he bought me,'" the report states.

By February, Fragozo had earned $3,300 protecting his first cocaine sale,
an event staged by agents using bricks of flour and drywall. Eventually, he
would receive more than $30,000 — the most among the indicted officers.

At Thursday's sentencing, as throughout the case, Fragozo's defense lawyer
described the FBI investigation as an unfair trap.

"Without the undercover agent, Conrad Fragozo may not have ever strayed
from an otherwise law-abiding life," Convery told U.S. District Judge
Edward C. Prado.

The FBI reports state that, after his first assignment, Fragozo told an
undercover agent who was posing as one of Ricardo's cronies that he worked
security at a bank. He said he could get the key to the automatic teller
machine.

That summer, Fragozo told "Ricardo" about his work with a narcotics task
force. He talked about a task-force informant and offered tips on how to
hide narcotic odors from drug-sniffing dogs. He also described a small,
relatively unguarded airport.

Any such swagger vanished in March 2001, when FBI agents arrested Fragozo
and the others. The sergeant confessed immediately and dismissed his talk
about robbing bank machines as simply an effort to impress "Ricardo.