Cop charged with leaking secrets to the press

SUNRISE — A Sunrise police sergeant accused of leaking secrets to the news media was formally charged Friday with eight felonies and two misdemeanors.

Roger Krege, 45, was originally arrested in December, when his own department accused him of using his now ex-wife as a go-between to pass the name of a confidential informant to a South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter. Prosecutors say he illegally copied the list of informants.

Krege is a former police union president who joined the Sunrise Police Department in 2001.

“The defendant knew that Mrs. Krege was going to identify the confidential informant to the reporter,” Sunrise Police Maj. Joseph Capuano wrote in an arrest warrant that was filed in the summer of 2019. He provided the information anyway, Capuano wrote, “thus putting the informant’s life in grave danger.”

The timing of the allegations being investigated appears to coincide with the 2014 Sun Sentinel investigation “Cops, Cash and Cocaine.”

The series exposed how undercover Sunrise police were luring big-money drug buyers into the city from across the United States, negotiating the sale of kilos of cocaine in family restaurants, then busting the buyers and seizing their cash and cars.

Publication of the articles prompted the department to relocate its Vice, Intelligence and Narcotics unit. The articles did not disclose the name of any

confidential informants.

The eight felonies included organized scheme to defraud; unlawful copying of an article containing trade secrets; disclosure of confidential criminal justice information; an offense against intellectual property; and four counts of official misconduct. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of five years in prison.

Krege’s first court date has not been scheduled. The Broward State Attorney’s Office said he has been out on bond since his arrest last December and is expected to remain free as the case heads to trial. His first court date has not been scheduled.

Prosecutors declined to charge Krege with the most serious offense he was facing, racketeering, a first-degree felony.

Krege has been on leave without pay since his arrest.

“It took Sunrise Police detectives six years to attempt to put together a racketeering case and the State rejected that charge,” said Krege’s lawyer, Robert Buschel. “Sadly, the state awarded a consolation prize for trying. After going through the court system, there will be nothing standing but the former union president who served his members well and a man who took the political hit for all of them.”