Familiarity Breeds Contempt Of NY State Police
Posted on Wednesday, 25 of November , 2009 at 8:09 pm
COMMENTARY
By June Maxam
Corruption has been defined as authority plus monopoly minus transparency.
That seems to be a good definition of the New York State Police but finally the transparency of Troopergate revealed to the public some of the corruption that exists within the State Police hierarchy leading to serious questions about the overall integrity of the state’s law enforcement agency.
Yet another chapter in the infamous and seemingly never ending saga of Troopergate came to a close this week with former acting State Police Supt. Preston Felton admitting that he had created documents and transmitted sensitive information concerning former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and his use of state aircraft.
This comes on the heels of a report issued in September by the state Attorney General’s office revealing that Felton’s predecessor as the state’s top cop, former State Police Supt. Wayne Bennett, ordered the removal of an official police record from the State Police computer system, the report detailing the allegations of domestic violence between former Congressman John Sweeney and his now ex-wife.
The report says that Bennett’s decision to “sanitize” the record on the Sweeney incident was due to fears that a State Police employee had leaked the original report to the media. Of course, Cuomo’s investigation failed to uncover who might have leaked the material. The police don’t like it when their dirty deeds are exposed and they have a history of retaliating, especially against some members of the media.
It was later revealed that there were two versions of the Sweeney police report, that the State Police allegedly fabricated a second police report in an attempt to cover up the domestic violence allegations in their attempt to protect Sweeney during his reelection bid.
Bennett, like Felton, avoided criminal charges. What other reports have the State Police altered or created and who else have they victimized?
To what lengths will the State Police stoop to achieve their goals and “mission”? The end as they envision it does not justify their means—a means of criminal wrongdoing in both sanitizing records as well as creating records.
Felton, who was fired by Gov. David Paterson in March 2008, within days of Paterson taking office after the resignation of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer in a state sex scandal, has admitted that he violated Public Officers Law by acceding to requests communicated to him by William Howard, former assistant secretary for Homeland Security in the Spitzer Administration to manufacture documents to be used to smear Bruno.
A volatile report concerning Troopergate, aka the Dirty Tricks Scandal, was issued in July 2008 by the state Attorney General’s office which concluded that the Governor’s office had indeed tried to smear Bruno by utilizing the Albany Times-Union and the New York State Police.
The Attorney General’s office found no evidence that the State Police conducted actual surveillance of Bruno but determined that the investigation had raised serious issues about the State Police’s handling of documents and information concerning Bruno’s travel, at the direction of the Governor’s liaison to the State Police.
The state Commission on Public Integrity then charged Darren Dopp, Spitzer’s former communications director; Richard Baum, Spitzer’s secretary; William Howard, a top official in the state’s Department of Homeland Security and administration liaison with the State Police and former State Police Supt. Preston Felton with violations of the state’s Code of Ethics for the creation of records and transmission of information regarding Bruno’s whereabouts in New York City in May and June 2007 and his use of state aircraft and State Police personnel and vehicles.
Dopp and Howard, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security, were at the center of the Troopergate scandal in using the resources of the State Police and Felton in an effort to discredit Bruno. Dopp was suspended and later left the Governor’s office, and Howard was reassigned.
Dopp is the only one of the four who has not settled the charges against him in Troopergate. He was fined $10,000 last month by the commission for knowingly and intentionally using his official position to obtain an unlawful benefit, leaking information about Bruno, but Dopp said he would challenge the determination in court. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/10/07/dopp_fined/
The commission‘s investigation sought to determine the role of each State official who participated in the alleged misuse of the State Police to gather information or to create documents detailing the activities of Bruno when he traveled to New York City in May and June 2007. This investigation also sought and obtained evidence regarding the events surrounding the Executive Chamber‘s release of State Police documents to the Albany Times-Union for publication, and the Executive Chamber‘s attempt to interest three law enforcement authorities in an investigation of Senator Bruno‘s travel.
In its article about the Felton settlement Tuesday, the Times-Union conspicuously omitted it’s own role in Troopergate.
The evidence shows that, with and through Howard, Dopp engaged the State Police to assist him in preparing a news story concerning Sen. Bruno‘s use of State aircraft. In doing so, the commission said Dopp initiated and directed a course of conduct that caused the improper creation of documents by the State Police, that were made to appear as if they were official documents, for the purpose of providing those documents to the Times Union; and caused the improper collection of otherwise confidential information from the State Police, sometimes on a real time basis, documenting the times and locations of Sen. Bruno‘s activities in New York City during May and June 2007.
In the process, Dopp bypassed Executive Chamber procedures concerning the release of documents under the Freedom of Information Law, the commission ruled.
While members of the public and other members of the media must wait weeks and sometimes months for a response from the State Police to FOIL requests, Times- Union reporter Brendon Lyons said that copies of itineraries of Bruno’s trips were released to the Times-Union within a matter of days following their FOIL request. In an article appearing in October, 2008, Lyons and the Times-Union took a hit at the Attorney General’s office, challenging the veracity of the AG’s July 2008 report.
The Attorney General’s office responded in a letter to the Times-Union, taking issue with Lyons’ report. The letter, written by Ellen Nachigall Biben, special deputy attorney general for public integrity, and Linda A. Lacewell, special counsel, told the Times-Union that “As the principal investigators and authors of the Attorney General’s Report, we believe your article is factually incorrect and leaves a misimpression”.
In December, 2006, prior to Spitzer’s resignation for cavorting with prostitutes, Bruno called a news conference to announce he was under federal investigation.
Bruno went from the frying pan into the fire by mid-2007 with Troopergate after it was revealed that Spitzer’s advisors got Felton and the State Police to recreate records of Bruno’s use of state aircraft and State Police personnel for his travels to New York City.
Bruno played the smoke and mirrors card to the hilt, pointing accusatory fingers at Spitzer and attacking the New York State Police for releasing the public information concerning his use of state aircraft, crying that Spitzer used the State Police to spy on him.
Bruno used the Troopergate affair to his advantage to divert the attention from himself and portrayed himself a victim while the FBI continued to investigate his business dealings through his consulting company. No doubt he directed a rumor or two, an anonymous source to his ally columnist Frederic Dicker of the New York Post to help fan the flames of allegations of “dirty cops” in the state police.
It was Bruno who began lobbying for the firing of retired State Police Col. Daniel Wiese as director of corporate security and inspector general of the New York Power Authority, an agency of political patronage, on Dicker’s May 5, 2008, radio show.
It was Bruno and Dicker who made Wiese a scapegoat in the Troopergate affair. Wiese had been suspended with pay from his $181,701 a year job with the New York Power Authority on April 3, 2008 after Gov. David Paterson announced that he had asked attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo to investigate reports that the State Police had improperly collected information on public officials for political purposes.
With his $73,259 pension from the State Police, Wiese had a hefty annual take of $254,960.
Paterson had reportedly consulted with Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver about the move and there’s little doubt that Bruno eagerly endorsed an investigation of a purported “rogue element” of the State Police if not proposed the idea.
Wiese became the main target of the Attorney General’s investigation.
In January, 2009, a federal grand jury indicted Bruno, accusing him of eight counts of public corruption. He is charged with using his office to deprive the pubic of the honest services of government, culminating a three year investigation into his business interests and his long time relationship with Jared E. Abbruzzese. Bruno Indictment
Bruno resigned from the Senate in July 2008, claiming it was time for him to “ride off into the sunset” and denying that his sudden decision to leave the Senate without finishing out his term had anything to do with the ongoing FBI investigation into his business dealings.
Bruno’s corruption trial concluded last week and the case has now gone to the jury. After one day of deliberations, the jury left the federal courthouse in Albany on Tuesday, excused for Thanksgiving, and will resume deliberations on Monday, Nov. 30.
The public’s confidence in the entire criminal justice system is seriously undermined and compromised when it is revealed that both of the last two superintendents of the State Police engaged in wrongdoing. While Felton has settled the charges against him and will not face any criminal charges or any monetary fine, Bennett and the State Police have not yet been held accountable in a court of law for falsifying police records.
The acts by Bennett and Felton constitute corruption and begs the question, how many other reports and records have been altered by the State Police? How many other things have been shoved under the rug, covered up? How many other public officers, officials and people of money and influence have the State Police protected?
Unfortunately, we believe this is just the tip of the iceberg and that there’s a lot more investigation to be done of the State Police, perhaps even on a federal level. Don’t forget the evidence tampering scandal back in the 90s when investigators were manufacturing evidence against innocent people in order to close out cases.
Familiarity breeds contempt and there’s a lot of people who have a lot of contempt for the New York State Police. 11-25-09
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © By June Maxam. This article may not be reprinted or republished without the express written consent of The North Country Gazette.
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Category: Courts, Crime, Government, New York State, Opinion, Police, Politics
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