Busts Fewer City Staffers
DOI Touts Rise In Corruption Arrests

By RICHARD STEIER

The Department of Investigation over the past five years has increased arrests to record levels even though it last year arrested 19-percent fewer municipal workers than in 2002.

ROSE GILL HEARN: Points to improvements.

Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn cited two factors to explain the decline and the shift in who has been arrested: the corruption-prevention lectures that have deterred municipal thievery while encouraging whistleblowers to report wrongdoing, and a focus on those in the private sector who offer bribes as well as the employees who accept them.

Trumpets Independence

"We at DOI have instilled confidence in the public and amongst city employees that DOI is effective and independent in carrying out its oversight role," Ms. Hearn said. "I commend Mayor Bloomberg for his commitment to integrity in city government."

Left unstated in that last comment was that Mr. Bloomberg has given her a much freer hand to probe wrongdoing than ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani extended to his Investigation Commissioners. Critics of the former Mayor have said that recent successful DOI prosecutions of some of his top former aides reflect his own laxity on internal corruption as much as they do Ms. Hearn's vigilance.

SID SCHWARTZBAUM: Mayor makes a difference.

Among those who she and Federal prosecutors have extracted guilty pleas from are Bernard B. Kerik, Mr. Giuliani's former Police and Correction Commissioner; Russell Harding, whom the ex-Mayor appointed President of the Housing Development Corporation despite his lack of background in that field; and Anthony Serra, who was rewarded for his political work on Mr. Giuliani's behalf despite a string of violations of Correction Department rules He rose to the agency's third-highest uniformed position before being convicted of improperly using department employees and equipment for his own benefit.

IG Looked Away

Assistant Deputy Wardens'/Deputy Wardens' Association President Sidney Schwartzbaum said the limitations under which Mr. Giuliani probers worked when it came to internal corruption also extended to the Correction Department's longtime watchdog, Michael J. Caruso. Ms. Hearn frequently defended Mr. Caruso until she fired him 10 months ago; he has filed a lawsuit claiming that he was discharged because he refused to offer false testimony against Mr. Kerik.

"Michael Caruso did not perform his job as Inspector General," Mr. Schwartzbaum said. "When he was informed of political corruption, abuse of power, the suborning of perjury and a policy of protecting the connected - including cases of domestic violence that I warned him about - he did nothing. Michael Bloomberg has given Rose Gill Hearn the independence to properly do her job, although she missed the mark on Mike Caruso. That's why DOI is doing better than it was under Rudy."

Need Smoke Detectors

Even so, he said, the agency is not sufficiently staffed to investigate what he described as "the new Prohibition" inside the jail system: the smuggling of cigarettes to inmates, by both visitors and officers. Ms. Gill Hearn had noted that last year six Correction employees were arrested for allegedly smuggling tobacco, narcotics and other contraband into the jails - the first cigarette-related arrests there since the smoking ban was implemented at Rikers Island four years ago. Mr. Schwartzbaum said those arrests don't reflect the prevalence of the cigarette smuggling.

The arrests of non-city employees have risen by 52 percent since 2002, with 294 persons taken into custody for improprieties, the DOI report stated. Ms. Gill Hearn said she believed that mass arrests made early in her tenure, including 21 city Tax Assessors and 18 Plumbing Inspectors, had deterred other city workers from seeking to break the law.

DOI has also become increasingly involved in making corruption cases against public officials. Besides Mr. Kerik, who pleaded guilty last year to receiving nearly $200,000 from individuals doing business with the city, the agency helped bring pending cases against former Assemblyman and AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council President Brian M. McLaughlin, State Senator Efrain Gonzalez, and Assemblywoman Diane Gordon.

Ms. Hearn noted in a Jan. 12 phone interview that the tip that led to Ms. Gordon's indictment came from an audience member at one of DOI's anti-corruption lectures, adding that this was a frequent occurrence.