A trial will soon begin for a Texas legislator accused of holding donations from a Dallas police union charity “hostage.” The donations were intended to go to families of the five officers slain in the 2016 Downtown Dallas sniper attack.
Frederick Frazier (R-McKinney) serves as vice president of Assist the Officer (ATO), a Dallas Police Association (DPA) nonprofit intended to support the families of fallen police officers.
Frazier has worked as a Dallas police officer for nearly three decades. He also served on the McKinney City Council before being elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 2022.
Frazier technically still works for the Dallas Police Department (DPD) but was placed on administrative leave last June after being charged with two felony counts of impersonating a public servant. He was accused of impersonating a Code Compliance officer to direct a local Walmart to remove the campaign signs of Paul Chabot, his opponent in the 2022 Republican primary runoff election.
“Senior Corporal Frederick Frazier is a member of the Dallas Police Department,” the DPD confirmed to The Dallas Express. “He has been with the department since 1995. He remains on administrative leave.”
However, Frazier’s upcoming trial concerns a different charge. Frazier was sued in 2017 by DPD Detective Katrina Ahrens, the widow of DPD Senior Corporal Lorne Ahrens, one of the five officers killed in the Downtown Dallas sniper attack in 2016.
In the lawsuit, Ahrens claims Frazier and other Assist the Officer leaders stole donations intended for the families of those five officers. Ahrens accuses Frazier and current DPA President Michael Mata of being “ringleaders” in a “scheme to benefit themselves.”
The lawsuit alleges the ATO is “holding donations meant for Det. Ahrens and her family hostage, refusing to transfer them to her unless she agrees to the ATO’s conditions, like keeping quiet and releasing the ATO and its leaders from all liability.”
Ahrens also targets the ATO and DPA’s decision to allocate donations to a trust fund and claims they were not transparent with the amount of donations received.
“The ATO and the DPA were not equipped to handle the generous donations they received,” the lawsuit reads, as Fox 4 KDFW reported in 2017. “The ATO has refused to provide plaintiff a detailed account of the funds collected. [ATO] decided to hold the donations made to plaintiff hostage unless plaintiff agreed to their many self-imposed restrictions on how the donations would be disbursed.”
Frazier and Mata have denied the allegations. In 2017, Mata noted that Ahrens was the only person in the five families to make these accusations.
“I have a very hard time understanding why one of our own, being a Dallas police officer, would find fault with this,” he said previously, defending the decision to use a trust fund.
“We just felt we were doing the right thing by the legacy of the officers who died,” Mata continued. “It was to protect these families. It prevents them from being sued in getting towards these monies. It’s tax-free. These monies will increase in value because it’s managed money by professionals.”
Mata declined to comment further on the record to The Dallas Express.
Heidi Smith, the widow of fallen officer Mike Smith, said in 2017 that she was disappointed with the lawsuit but took no issue with the ATO or the trust fund.
The City of Dallas is also named as a defendant in the suit and did not respond to requests for comment from The Dallas Express. The City does not typically comment on ongoing litigation.
The Dallas Express also contacted Frazier for comment but received no response by press time.
Multiple parties gave depositions in this case throughout the summer, and the trial is scheduled to begin October 23.
