Former Oklahoma Sheriff’s Deputy Pleads Guilty to Making False Statements to the FBI

WASHINGTON—Dennis Frisbie Jr., 33, former deputy with the Muskogee County, Oklahoma Sheriff’s Office who was assigned as a detention officer at the Muskogee County Jail (MCJ), pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to one count of making material false statements to the FBI.

“Law enforcement officers who make false statements erode the trust of the people they have sworn to protect,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Roy L. Austin Jr. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to prosecuting members of law enforcement who impede investigations of police misconduct.”

According to court documents, during the summer of 2011, FBI agents interviewed Frisbie as part of a federal investigation into allegations of inmate abuse at MCJ. Subsequently, on July 10, 2011, and then again on July 12, 2011, the defendant falsely reported to the FBI, both verbally and in a handwritten statement, that he been shot in the shoulder by an unknown subject in retaliation for his cooperation with this federal investigation. As a result of what the defendant reported, the FBI halted its investigation out of concern that potential witnesses were in physical danger.

However, in September 2011, the defendant admitted that he had lied to the FBI and that he had not been shot by an unknown assailant. Instead, the defendant admitted that the gunshot wound was self-inflicted. The defendant acknowledged that he knowingly and willfully lied to the FBI and these lies were material, in that they directly affected the federal investigation into allegations of abuse at MCJ.

A sentencing date has not yet been set.

This case was investigated by the Muskogee Resident Agency of the Oklahoma City Division of the FBI and is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Fara Gold and Dana Mulhauser of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.