BERNARD B. CLUELESS

Bernard B. Clueless

Shortly after he pleaded guilty June 30 to accepting nearly $200,000 in improper compensation, most of it from a company with organized crime ties, former Correction and Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik stepped before reporters outside Bronx Supreme Court to voice a complaint.

"You know it's funny," he said, "over the last year and a half I've watched and listened as people have picked apart my 30-year career in fighting crime and fighting injustice and tried to destroy everything I've ever done."

The remark was eerily reminiscent of the reaction of another former public official from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, Laura Blackburne, in blaming her banishment from a judgeship on everyone from the media to a prosecutor who she claimed didn't caution her strongly enough against breaking the law when she enabled a criminal suspect to escape arrest.

Mr. Kerik and Ms. Blackburne are self-indulgent people who apparently believed that they were above the rules that apply to other public officials. Given their basic characters, neither could truly be described as having fallen from grace, but both seem oblivious to the fact that they alone bear the responsibility for the ruin of their reputations.

In entering his guilty plea and allocuting about his wrongdoing, Mr. Kerik emphasized that he had believed that the mob-linked firm that paid for $165,000 in apartment renovations at his home in Riverdale was "clean." If that had been true, it might have made his acceptance of the help appear less-compromising to his roles in two of the city's top law-enforcement posts, but it wouldn't have been any less illegal.

His public demeanor, both in court and in briefly speaking to reporters afterwards, was that of a man who believed too much was being made of minor transgressions. He demonstrated just how large his sense of entitlement was, and how little he appreciated what a break he had gotten.

In the two days prior to his guilty plea, the Department of Investigation - which launched the initial investigation of Mr. Kerik's conduct after a series of thorough and devastating articles by Daily News reporter Russ Buettner - announced a flurry of arrests of various individuals. Their crimes ranged from taking a $60 bribe to receiving $9,900 in rent subsidies from the city by submitting fraudulent information. Each of the offenses, including the $60 bribe, carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison.

Yet Mr. Kerik, who received nearly $200,000 from people who under city law could not give him a dime, got off with no jail time.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson and city Investigations Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn knew that this looked like a slap on the wrist, and they began their press conference following Mr. Kerik's plea by explaining why they made the deal rather than taking him to trial with the intent of getting prison time for his crimes.

DA Johnson noted that although Mr. Kerik arranged two meetings for the mob-linked firm, Interstate Industrial Corp., with city officials from whom it was seeking a hauling license, and allowed his Correction Department office to be used for one sitdown, there was no direct evidence that this help was motivated by the $165,000 home renovation. Without a clear connection, and given the statute of limitations and the hazy memories of those who knew of transactions that occurred in the late 1990s, the DA decided not to risk a trial on felony charges and the chance of acquittal.

Mr. Kerik's penalties could be viewed as the fruit of being wealthy enough to afford a tough, aggressive lawyer who convinced the Bronx DA that it was in everyone's best interests to make this deal. It could be said that Mr. Kerik's money and his past stature gave him a distinct advantage in parrying with the legal system compared to the Parks worker who got nailed for allegedly taking a $60 bribe.

On the other hand, that Parks worker was not well-known enough to have grievous damage done to his reputation by a plea bargain. The degree to which Mr. Kerik has lost face can be seen in the almost-immediate decision by Mayor Bloomberg to take away the honor bestowed on him by his political patron, ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, when he renamed a lower Manhattan jail the Bernard B. Kerik Complex shortly before leaving office at the end of 2001.

Mr. Kerik will not be prosecuted for the other transgressions he committed while in city service - most notably, his perversion of Correction Department justice for employees to protect those who were members of his "team" while persecuting those who appropriately sought to discipline members of that team and their friends.

But the revelations, including the lack of a city background check before Mr. Kerik was named Police Commissioner, make clear that Mr. Giuliani gave his former campaign driver a wider berth than he ever merited, unless loyalty trumps common sense. He is not the first Police Commissioner to ever have a mistress, but he is the first to use an apartment intended for exhausted workers at the World Trade Center site to carry on sexual liaisons with multiple mistresses.

That he could do that suggests Mr. Kerik either didn't grasp or didn't care about how his image was elevated in the days after the Trade Center's destruction. Dignity and propriety remained foreign concepts to him; he saw his new stature only as something to be exploited as much as possible.

Mr. Kerik's behavior last week was a reminder that a mug in a fancy suit is still a mug.