Augusta County business shut down by police

By Jimmy LaRoue

Published: July 17, 2008

They weren’t buying what Byron Fritz was trying to sell.
When Fritz, 39, drove to the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office and met with an officer there — and then in a subsequent conversation with Sheriff Randy Fisher — authorities became suspicious.
Fritz, of Stuarts Draft, had come to the sheriff’s office July 3 — according to a search warrant — to sell law enforcement gear as part of his fledgling business, Augusta Public Safety Supply on Stuarts Draft Highway in Broadmoor Plaza in Stuarts Draft.
Brian Jenkins, an investigator with the sheriff’s office, said in the search warrant that Fritz brought numerous items with him when he met with an officer in the sheriff’s office that day, presenting several business cards containing a photograph of a Virginia State Police marked unit. He said, too, that Fritz talked over the phone with Fisher four days later about being a clothing and equipment supplier for the sheriff’s office.
The dealings with Fritz raised immediate red flags with Fisher, according to the search warrant. Fisher found that Fritz had been convicted in Portsmouth Circuit Court of impersonating a police officer in 1994 and was a five-time convicted felon. Those convictions included weapons violations, forging a public record and forging a seal.
Fritz, according to a Virginia Beach court order in his 1994 conviction, was barred from dealing in law enforcement gear and could not drive white vehicles.
Further investigation found that Fritz also spoke with Corp. Derek Almarode and visited him in May 2006 at the Staunton Augusta Waynesboro Regional Firing Range to drop off several toy police cars,  according to the search warrant. The officer recalled Fritz driving a white, police-style Dodge Intrepid equipped with radio antennas and warning lights, the document said. That, according to the warrant, is in direct violation of a court order.
The sheriff’s office recovered a plethora of police gear. In a three-page listing attached to the warrant, it found, among other things, a blue Glock training gun, three belly chains, three stun guns, seven handcuffs, 14 strobes, 37 badges and 41 pepper spray cans.
The search also recovered a 2001 white Dodge Intrepid and a 2007 red Dodge Charger.
Sgt. A.C. Powers of the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office says Fritz’s business has been shut down.