{"id":192516,"date":"2026-03-15T15:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T15:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/192516\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T15:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T15:26:07","slug":"tampa-police-officer-on-leave-after-firing-gun-during-narcotics-related-foot-chase-department-says-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/192516\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa police officer on leave after firing gun during narcotics-related foot chase, department says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A Tampa police officer is on paid leave after he used his weapon on a suspect in a narcotics case during a foot chase, the department announced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">TPD says the incident happened around 11:30 p.m. Saturday when the officer responded to the area of South Howard Avenue, where two suspects were involved in &#8220;narcotic-related activities&#8221; in a nearby alleyway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Officials said one suspect, 24-year-old Marco Fragoso, left the scene on foot and dropped a small bag of narcotics as the officer began chasing him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">After eventually losing sight of Fragoso, the officer reportedly found him hiding next to a vehicle in a driveway on South Albany Avenue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Tampa police say Fragoso motioned toward his waistband, leading the officer to fire one round towards him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Fragoso was not hit by gunfire, was not injured and was taken into custody. The officer was also not injured.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Fragoso was charged with possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia, tampering with physical evidence and resisting arrest without violence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The officer has been placed on administrative leave, per Tampa Police Department protocol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tampa police officer is on paid leave after he used his weapon on a suspect in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[33581,23689,89694,13415,135,137,136,9822],"class_list":["post-192516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-administrative-leave","tag-foot-chase","tag-marco-fragoso","tag-narcotics","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-tampa-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}