Suffolk County, which has known frequent governmental scandals through the decades, may or may not see a new big one erupt. But, meanwhile, some are charging that a rush to judgment is happening.
“It’s like a lynch mob not interested in innocence or guilt, just the strength of the tree branch and thickness of the rope,” Suffolk County Legislator Thomas Barraga has declared about recent demands made by some county officials that other county officials resign.
The backdrop is a federal investigation into corruption in the criminal justice system in Suffolk. More about this probe will become clear if and/or when the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (which includes Suffolk County) comes forward with what case or cases it might make.
Barraga was a state assemblyman for 23 years before being elected to the county legislature in 2005. He said “neither the D.A. nor the county executive has been charged with anything, so what gives other elected officials the right to call for their resignation?”
Also urging a “more cautious” approach to the situation is DuWayne Gregory, presiding officer of the Suffolk Legislature and thus the second highest official in Suffolk County government after the county executive. Says Gregory: “I’m of the mindset to trust but verify, not distrust and vilify.” Interestingly, he is the polar-opposite politically of conservative Republican Barraga, a Democrat in the highest governmental post an African-American has ever achieved in Suffolk.
Central to what’s been happening is James Burke, chief of the Suffolk County Police Department until his resignation and then arrest in December on an indictment brought by the office of the U.S. Attorney.
“I find the corruption of an entire department by this defendant is shocking,” said U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Wexler at an initial hearing for Burke. Then in February, Burke pleaded guilty to beating up in a precinct house a suspect who broke into his police vehicle and orchestrating a police cover-up of this. He’s now in jail awaiting sentencing.
Widely reported on has been an anonymous letter from “several long-time members” of the Suffolk Police Department relating Burke’s misdeeds.
“These have been personally witnessed by the writers or by first-hand witnesses. These are not speculation, rumors or tall tales; they are facts,” it said. It was sent to Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and his transition team in December 2011, just after his election, in an effort, to save the incoming “administration from scandal and embarrassment.”
The letter described Burke as a “prolific spinner of facts” and “a master of winning people over and gaining their trust. He can and has had very high powered people do his bidding.”
Despite the letter and information it contained, Bellone appointed Burke police chief. Bellone says he discounted the letter because Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota, for whom Burke worked as chief investigator and with whom he was close, discounted it to him.
Bellone’s shift of blame to Spota expanded dramatically last month with his demand that Spota resign amid what has been a succession of investigative articles in Newsday highly critical of the Suffolk D.A.’s office. These have included articles describing the D.A.’s office as not taking appropriate action upon receiving evidence on wiretaps of crimes.
Also calling for the D.A. to resign has been Suffolk Sheriff Vincent DeMarco. And several county legislators have demanded that both Spota and Bellone resign.
Spota shot back that Bellone’s demand “is not based on anything but a personal vendetta against me for investigating and prosecuting people that he is close to.” Spota specifically cited Bellone’s “multiple” pleas “in the presence of other prosecutors” on behalf of his “childhood friend” Robert Stricoff and Donald Rodgers, the county’s information technology commissioner.
“I refused [to] discontinue my ongoing investigation” of Stricoff and financial improprieties when he was chairman of the Democratic committee in Bellone’s hometown of Babylon, Spota said. That investigation has since been “referred to the chief law enforcement counsel for the state Board of Elections….And I did prosecute Rodgers…He pled guilty to official misconduct and offering a false instrument.”
As to the Newsday reporting, Spota maintains it is “fundamentally flawed.” Since taking office in 2001, “I have tried my very, very best to do what is right… I have prosecuted probably over 100 public officials. I never shied away from one of them,” he said.
What might happen? A wrinkle involves what directions Burke — with his ability to spin and at ”winning people over”— might send federal authorities. By making a deal with the office of the U.S. attorney and pleading guilty, he avoided a possible 20-year prison sentence if he went to trial. Ironically, it was Burke when he was a high Suffolk law enforcement official who started and continued a feud with the office of the U.S. Attorney that resulted in years of conflict between that office and the Suffolk D.A.’s office.
