I first formally met Sgt. Frechette when he came into the M.E.R.G.E. unit as our Sgt. of Team #1 as 8100 in 1977. Before coming into our unit he had been on special assignment to IBM on an undercover investigation concerning fraud and theft of IBM’s trade secrets/patents. He had been assigned this case when a representative from IBM came to our department and met with Chief Murphy about internal theft going on within their organization and Chief Murphy subsequently assigned Sgt. Frechette who had been working Robbery/Homicide at the time to go to work undercover inside IBM’s  San Jose office. Over a period of several months Frechette figured out who the culprits were and solved the case for IBM.

      When Frechette, better known as “Frenchie” came into the MERGE unit as a team Sgt. he had formerly been a member of the H-Cars before his promotion to Sgt.

The H-Cars was the precursor to the MERGE unit. Capt. Bill Brown was the man mainly responsible for setting up these units within the SJPD. Capt. Brown was a legend back in his day and “Frenchie” was one of his top boys.

       I worked for Sgt. Frechette from 1977 until 1981 in the MERGE unit. He was the best supervisor I had during my time on the PD and I had some good ones during my time in MERGE. They have all passed on now with the passing of “Frenchie”; God Bless Them.

       “Frenchie” lead from the front when it was time to be lead from the front. (I might add, so did Capt. Brown) Case in point: In one incident at St. James Park when the KKK came to town our team along with the S.O. was assigned security in the park area. While we were double timing in formation with “Frenchie” in the lead in the park, some “low life” threw a full 12oz. can of soda from the top of a 2 story building hitting “Frenchie” on his helmets face shield and exploded. He lost about a half a step and continued with the rest of us in formation behind him. The culprit was later apprehended, having had to receive treatment at VMC before being booked into jail.

       On other occasions when a command post needed to be set up; Frenchie was good at giving us our assignments and then coordinating things as needed to cover our backs (keeping people off our backs and letting us do our job). He was always right there, when we needed him.

       I also counted Dick as a close friend over all these years since we worked together on the PD. After he retired from the PD, he went to work for IBM and was eventually promoted to one of their top positions in the industrial security area reporting directly to the CEO in the New York office. He spent many years before that working out of IBM’s Hong Kong Office in China before retiring from IBM out of the New York office

In closing I considered Dick “Frenchie” Frechette among those few that make the grade of a “foul” weather friend”. RCS #1495