DATE: Thursday, September 18, 1997          TAG: 9709180326

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   97 lines

BOGUS POLICEMAN CAN'T EVEN HAVE A WHITE CAR, BEACH JUDGE DECREES

Bryon F. Fritz has spent most of his adult life pretending to be a police officer working the streets of South Hampton Roads.

He had the car, the electronic equipment, the weaponry and the clothing. He made traffic stops and pursued alleged criminals. He wrote tickets and made arrests, some of them during the Labor Day riots of 1989.

Although much of what he did was illegal - Fritz had occasional run-ins with real police and several convictions for impersonating officers - he always managed to continue his pseudo-police patrols.

But on Wednesday, Fritz's law-enforcement fantasy may have finally come to an end. Circuit Judge Edward W. Hanson Jr. accepted an inventive legal agreement designed to put the 29-year-old wannabe policeman out of business once and for all.

The court agreement prohibits Fritz from owning any police badges, patches or insignia that refer to police, detectives or law enforcement. It also prohibits him from representing himself as an associate with any law enforcement agency.

It even bars him from owning or driving a white car.

The logic: A white vehicle could be confused with an unmarked police car by an unsuspecting person.

Finally, the agreement, developed by prosecutor David Laird, requires that Fritz sign away his Fourth Amendment rights and submit without cause to searches by police officers until Sept. 17, 2000. That will allow police to make sure Fritz is following the other requirements of his plea agreement.

If he violates the agreement, he could go to prison for several years, his attorney said.

It's a punishment that many would consider minor. But for Fritz, it will mean a complete alteration of his lifestyle.

``He loves law enforcement, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it,'' said his attorney, Richard J. Conrod, on Wednesday after Fritz's hearing. ``In his case, he needs to stay away from it. . . . Law enforcement for him is a fantasy.''

But it was a fantasy that was incredibly detailed. Fritz cruised interstates and streets in his white 1989 Chevrolet Caprice, equipped with red and blue lights in the front grille, flashing ``lollipop'' lights in the rear, a Motorola police radio, police scanner, official-looking license tags and a nonfunctioning police radar detector. A police uniform he got from a mail-order catalog always hung on the rearview mirror.

Sometimes Fritz wore a black windbreaker that read ``investigator'' and flashed a badge and an ID card resembling a state trooper's that identified Fritz as a detective.

Fritz claimed he knew just how far to go. By studying the law in libraries, he said he knew his legal limits.

It worked almost without a hitch until Fritz ran through a toll booth on the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway in 1993. He was spotted by State Trooper Tim Rice, who began an intensive investigation of Fritz that resulted in his conviction on charges of impersonating a police officer in Virginia Beach.

He was eventually brought up on similar charges in Portsmouth and Chesapeake.

But the run-ins seemingly had no influence on Fritz's fascination with law enforcement. Soon after his release from jail in 1994, Fritz got a job writing tickets at the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach: He was hired by a contractor to enforce metered parking at the Oceanfront.

He was fired after a sheriff's deputy recognized him and told city officials.

Fritz first gained notoriety during the Virginia Beach Labor Day riots in 1989 by helping convict Melvin Moore of the only felony during the racially charged weekend. Fritz was an off-duty security guard who arrested Moore under questionable circumstances.

Moore's conviction was overturned after The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star reported that Fritz had a history, since 1986, of forging documents and pretending to be a police officer.

Most recently, Fritz's penchant for forging documents extended beyond his pretend life in law enforcement. In December 1996, police found a court document that Fritz forged after officers were contacted by his former girlfriend.

The document included a phony state seal and the forged signature of Judge Jerome B. Friedman. It claimed that Fritz had been acquitted of an embezzlement charge in 1994.

The truth was just the opposite. Fritz was convicted by Friedman of embezzlement and given a three-year suspended sentence.

Fritz had used the document as part of a job application.

When police searched Fritz's belongings, they also found a forged certificate of achievement, supposedly awarded to Fritz by ``Govenor Chuck Robb.''

Fritz was convicted of forging the document earlier this year, and on Wednesday Hanson revoked the suspended jail sentence for embezzlement given to Fritz by Friedman.

Conrod, Fritz's attorney, said Wednesday that his client would spend about nine months in jail. Conrod also is trying to get Fritz into a counseling program.

``He needs to learn that you don't have to find refuge in a fantasy, but that you can find fulfillment in reality,'' Conrod said. ``He is not a police officer, and he needs to quit pretending he is one.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Bryon F. Fritz's law-enforcement fantasy of long standing may have

finally come to an end in Circuit Court.

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