A 34-year-old man arrested this week on charges of impersonating a police officer appears to have spent months building an online following by posing as law enforcement at crime scenes across Mobile, according to court records and social media posts reviewed after his arrest.
Tyonne Frazier was booked into Mobile Metro Jail shortly after 4 a.m. on Wednesday after being taken into custody near the intersection of Government Boulevard and Satchel Paige Drive, where Mobile police were investigating a shooting. Jail records show he was charged with impersonating a peace officer, carrying a pistol without a permit, and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
According to an arrest warrant filed in district court, officers on the scene noticed Frazier wearing a reflective vest marked “POLICE” and a badge clipped to his belt. The warrant states he was seen walking through the area “as if he was investigating the scene” of the shooting, though he reportedly never spoke with any of the actual officers working the case. He was ultimately identified as an outsider when an officer at the scene, David Reyes, realized he did not recognize him.
Investigators say the April 25 arrest was not an isolated incident. A review of Frazier’s public Facebook account turned up a string of videos and photographs, some dating back several months, showing him wearing police-style gear and, in several instances, inserting himself into active law enforcement responses around the city.
In one livestream posted in February, Frazier can be heard telling viewers he was responding to a domestic assault call at Windsor Apartments, describing details of the dispatch call and the people involved while a police scanner plays in the background. The footage shows his car pulling up near two marked Mobile police cruisers, after which he is seen in a yellow reflective vest and a shirt reading “POLICE,” walking the parking lot and narrating the scene for his online audience while uniformed officers spoke with a woman on a nearby balcony.
“Apparently we have a domestic situation with a black male and black female,” Frazier says in the video, adding that he intended to “patrol the area” to look for the man accused of assaulting the woman.
Another video posted in January shows Frazier using a radar gun from inside his vehicle to check the speed of passing motorists before tailing one of them, at one point referencing a real Mobile police narcotics operation that had taken place days earlier. It is not clear from the footage whether the driver was ever stopped.
The earliest known video, posted to YouTube and shared to Facebook in December, shows Frazier dressed in a police-style uniform handcuffing one man and questioning another about drinking in public before revealing on camera that the encounter was staged as a prank.
Frazier’s Facebook page also includes a photo of a Ford Mustang fitted with aftermarket blue lights similar to those used on patrol vehicles, along with claims that he had completed the Mobile Police Department’s Citizens Police Academy, a biannual program that allows members of the public to observe police training and operations. A department spokeswoman disputed that claim.
“We have no record of anyone by his name attending the Citizens Academy,” said Mobile police spokeswoman Charlette Solis. “We checked all the rosters back to Class 1 from 2001, and he is not a member of the Mobile Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association.”
Court and jail records show Frazier has faced a number of prior arrests in the Mobile area on charges including drug possession, theft, forgery and probation violations.
Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste acknowledged that Frazier’s repeated appearances near active police calls had not drawn department scrutiny sooner, saying the case had not been a top priority amid a recent increase in shootings across the city. He said the department is now looking more closely at the extent of Frazier’s activity.
“It was alarming to us, and there are some things that we’re looking deeper into,” Battiste said. “We’ve got him detained, and we don’t expect him to get out any time soon.”
It remains unclear how many crime scenes or police calls Frazier may have responded to over the months captured in his social media posts, or whether anyone he encountered believed him to be a genuine officer. The case remains under investigation.