Ex-Sharon Hill cop pleads guilty to trading confidential information for cocaine from dealer

A former Sharon Hill police detective admitted Tuesday that he provided confidential information to a drug dealer in exchange for cocaine, using his inside knowledge as a member of the Delaware County Drug Task Force to help the man evade arrest.

Vincent Procopio pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a computer, criminal use of a communication facility, hindering apprehension, and related crimes. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Deborah Krull on Oct. 7.

His attorney, Meaghan Wagner, said after the hearing that Procopio accepted responsibility for his actions as a means of continuing “to move forward in a positive direction in his life.”

“Meanwhile he continues to work on his sobriety every day and celebrates eight months sober on Sept. 7,” she said.

Before he resigned after his arrest in April, Procopio, 34, of Newtown Square, had worked for Sharon Hill for four years. He was at Academy Park High School on the night 8-year-old Fanta Bility was killed by a stray bullet amid a shooting caused by three of his colleagues.

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.

The two regularly exchanged text messages, including one in which the detective, on his way to Sunday Mass, asked the dealer for a bag of cocaine.

And Procopio instructed the man to tell any police officer who stopped him that he was the detective’s cousin, prosecutors said.

In a statement announcing Procopio’s arrest earlier this year, State Attorney General Dave Sunday, whose office is prosecuting the case, decried Procopio’s actions, saying his “selfish, criminal acts also stain the reputations of many public servants who make sacrifices for their communities every day across the Commonwealth.”

As part of the same investigation, another Sharon Hill officer, Domenic Dellabarba Jr., was arrested for allegedly providing confidential information to the dealer.

Dellabarba, 27, is charged with obstructing the administration of the law and related crimes, and his case is pending in Delaware County Court.