Ex-Sharon Hill cop sentenced to probation for feeding information to drug dealer in exchange for cocaine
Vincent Procopio said Friday that he betrayed his fellow officers and the oath that he took by helping a drug dealer avoid arrest.
A former Sharon Hill police detective who befriended a prolific cocaine dealer and helped him evade arrest to fuel his own drug habit was sentenced Friday to two years of restrictive probation.
Vincent Procopio, 34, explained to a Delaware County judge how he built, and ultimately lost, his law enforcement career.
He said his reputation as a thorough detective who handled murder and high-level drug investigations was irrevocably destroyed by substance abuse, which he said he used to self-medicate PTSD.
He told Judge Deborah A. Krull that his shame for what he had done motivated him to plead guilty in August to drug possession, unlawful use of a computer, criminal use of a communication facility, hindering apprehension, and related crimes.
“I betrayed my fellow officers, my friends in the district attorney’s office and the entire law enforcement community, and, most of all, the public,” Procopio wrote in a statement read in court by his attorney, Meaghan Wagner.
“This was something I should never have engaged in as a police officer,” he said. “I disgraced the badge and the oath I took.”
Procopio made specific references to the fatal shooting of 8-year-old Fanta Bility by three of his fellow Sharon Hill officers in 2021. He said he was present at Academy Park High School when the shooting took place, helped transport Fanta to Mercy Fitzgerald Medical Center, and performed CPR on her there before she was pronounced dead.
That experience permanently damaged his mental health, he said. He didn’t seek help, and begun a pattern of self-destructive behavior that led him to befriend the dealer at the center of his criminal prosecution.
Krull, in handing down her sentence, credited Procopio for taking accountability for his actions, and for his prior years of public service. And she said she understood that Fanta’s death had a profound impact on everyone in the county.
“I say that not to excuse your behavior, but to say I certainly understand the path you chose,” she said.
Procopio and the dealer, whom investigators did not identify, met through mutual friends in 2025, according to court filings. The dealer told police Procopio approached him, saying he “wanted in” on his drug-smuggling operation.
Over the course of the next year, the dealer would give Procopio $100 baggies of cocaine in exchange for information from police databases, including whether undercover officers planned to make drug busts in the area where he was operating and whether there were any warrants for his arrest.
The narcotics, prosecutors said, were for Procopio’s personal use and “wholly unrelated to his law enforcement duties.”
The scheme unraveled when the dealer was pulled over in Chester in December with 63 grams of cocaine in his car. He called Procopio for help, and Procopio made calls on his behalf, telling officers in Chester the man was a friend and was in the process of signing up to become a confidential informant.
Procopio later told investigators he knew the man had sold drugs, but said he had recently stopped. He said he never saw the dealer sell cocaine and had never bought cocaine from him.
Prosecutors said that Procopio’s statement was a lie, and that Procopio had deleted text messages between him and the dealer that made that clear.
Procopio and the dealer had developed a jocular relationship, they said. On the day they met, the detective snorted a line of cocaine with the dealer inside his truck. He later went to the man’s home, where they “stayed up all night doing cocaine,” according to the affidavit of probable cause for Procopio’s arrest.
Assistant Attorney General John Hamme, who prosecuted the case, acknowledged Friday that Procopio had been cooperative with the investigation, and credited the former officer for his ongoing treatment — Procopio will be nine months sober in November.
But Hamme said his actions still required punishment.
“Cases such as this one make it difficult in the future for Delaware County law enforcement to handle and manage the population, as trust has essentially been broken,” Hamme said.
Wagner, Procopio’s attorney, said after the hearing she was pleased that the sentence “took into account all of the tremendously positive steps [Procopio] has taken to move forward and build what is now his new life.”
