I may have said before.  I will say it again.  For the last time.  One day the full and true story of two decades of Corruption in Kings County will be written.  And at that time  District Attorney Joe Hynes will be fingered as the single person most responsible for the sleaziness of these years.   Joe Hynes is my greatest disappointment. I don’t need to be reminded that I have supported Hynes from the first time he ran for office, through last year.  And at the same time I have no apology for choosing against John Sampson last year.  It was like making a decision between prostate cancer and a massive heart attack.
As often has to be done in politics, I went with the lesser of evils.  It was easy.

In reviewing the tragedy that is Joe Hynes, think of it like this.  In the worst school district of New York City, where schools are disorderly and chaotic, there is going to be one building where a conscientious principal is completely in control and children are behaving and learning as though they were in a suburban private school.

In the middle of a crime infested and drug-riddled precinct there will be blocks kept a safe haven by decent cops who are determined to have it so. In Housing Projects as dismal, dreary, and filthy as the Pink Houses, there are children who will become doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, nurses, millionaires, and rocket scientists, because their parents refused to let them surrender to their shabby environment.

The District Attorney is like the parent in a project apartment, the principal in a school, and the cop on the beat.  He sets the tone in the Borough. It is the District Attorney who sends out the message with respect to crime.  Not only to petty criminals in the streets, but to criminal  judges in the Courts, and criminal political leaders.   The District Attorney is like the honest Sheriff in the old Western movies who prohibits bandits, gun-fighters, and rustlers from “bringing their guns to town.“  The bad guys know that they will have head-on confrontation with the sheriff and can only enter over his dead body.

That is what Brooklyn needs and deserves in a District Attorney.  A man of courage and integrity who would have said  to people like Vito Lopez, Jeff Feldman and their ilk.

LISTEN UP, NOW. THIS IS MY BOROUGH.  THESE ARE MY COURTS.  I AM NOT GOING TO LET YOU DEFECATE IN KINGS COUNTY.  YOU ARE DISRESPECTING ME AND MY OFFICE AND I AM NOT GOING TO LET YOU GET AWAY WITH IT. I WILL STICK TO YOU LIKE WHITE ON RICE. AND I AM GOING TO GET YOU. I AM GOING TO INDICT YOU, TAKE YOU TO TRIAL, AND LOCK YOU UP, ALL WITHIN TWO YEARS. I AM GOING TO MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF YOU.  SO CUT IT OUT.  NOW!!!!

Joe Hynes is incapable of demanding respect from crooked elected officials. He is the dead body of a Sheriff  lying on the ground where characters like Vito Lopez and Jeff Feldman step over him and go about their business.   Joe is the cop drinking coffee and eating a bag of donuts in his cruiser while guys are peddling dope on the street corner. He is the school principal doing the crossword puzzle in his office while kids are running wild in the halls.  He is the Assemblywoman trolling for votes in a Housing project that looks like a public bathroom at the end of a long weekend. But of course, like all other failures, Joe Hynes  has excuses and explanations for the disaster around him.  And sure…I don’t understand.  And guess what, Joe?  I really do not want to understand why you cannot get the job done that you were hired to do.

How much respect does Joe Hynes command?  How bad is it?  Get this.

Jeff Feldman, husband of a judge has been indicted and is  facing trial for bribery and extortion. Jeff  is cited in a decision by a Federal Judge as one of the arrogant, insulting, gross Party bosses  playing a leading role in the crooked process of  selecting  Supreme Court judges for Kings County. It’s there in Judge Gleeson’s decision for everyone who wants to read it. And maybe someone will set up a link.

Yet Jeff Feldman played a leadership role in the nomination of State Supreme Court judges this year. And Jeff Feldman’s name was boldly and shamelessly placed on the petitions of every candidate endorsed by the Kings County Democratic organization.

Think of it this way.  Imagine deceased Mafia bosses John Gotti and Paul Castellano selecting the judges for Kings County State Supreme Court.  And why not?  Extortion is where these guys make the big bucks.  Extortion is the same crime Jeff Feldman and Clarence Norman were accused of attempting. Extortion!!! Imagine a candidate for judge out there with a sheet of  green paper saying that she was supported and recommended by John Gotti.  That’s what it amounts to. And just about every candidate for judge would have been willing to carry the name of Jeff Feldman if the Bosses had endorsed them and told them to do so. That’s the level to which the Kings County  has reached.

If Joe Hynes had been District Attorney in the old days, Gotti and Castellano wouldn’t have had to do their business in smoke-filled basements with armed goons. They could meet on the steps of  Borough Hall.  BP Marty Markowitz would send them out some pastry and maybe Joe Hynes himself would have walked over the few blocks to congratulate  them when they made their selections.

And why not?   With Joe Hynes around,  a lawyer who had been head of the Brooklyn Bar Association was taking bribes to sell off Court property to insiders at a bargain price.  Right on the steps of the Supreme Court(or was it Borough Hall).

And not far from Hynes’ office a Dinner Club for judges and a select group of lawyers was under surveillance by Federal agents.  It’s clear that the Feds did not trust Joe Hynes’ office to clean up corruption in Brooklyn.  And the City Inspector General who worked with the DA’s office to set up a sting on Diane Gordon should have taken a clue from that episode and done the video-taping without including Hynes’ leaky office.

And then, there’s Vito Lopez, the County Leader whose name appears prominently in Judge Gleason’s decision. Several individuals were named as having attempted to coerce Judge Margarita Lopez Torres into hiring Vito’s daughter as her Law Clerk.  Or put it this way. It amounted to Judge Lopez Torres being offered a bribe for hiring Vito’s daughter, and  being threatened with being black-balled from promotion if she didn’t.

I’m no lawyer. But it certainly seems like there was extortion or bribery involved here. No one came forward to refute the story as told in Judge Gleeson’s Federal court, and it rests as fact in the decision.  Yet all of this was known to the DA’s office just months after it occurred and he did nothing. Nor did he do anything when the partners of the Law-firm of Garry Ludwig announced in a written statement that they had been paid with Court receiverships to do political hack-work for County bosses.  And there certainly seemed to be a felony in this.

Clarence Norman and Jeff Feldman were indicted in October 2003 (correction?). Rumor on the street was that the Feds were about to step in and grab Clarence.  And according to the story, Hynes who had refused to move on information he had, begged them to let him go forward.

Once the trial started, Hynes stated that he was waiting for Gary Naftalis to complete a major case so he could take over Clarence‘s defense. So there was a 6 month delay. As it turned out, Naftalis never took over the defense. Clarence got to run for office and win, but was convicted and sentenced to jail in Spring 2005.   3 years after his indictment and a year and a half after his conviction Clarence is still free to walk the streets.  And Jeff Feldman has not yet been tried.

Assemblywoman Diane Gordon would have been serving time by now if Hynes had not been duped into making a plea-bargain deal with her. It was the NYC Inspector General’s office who broke this case. But we now hear that there had been previous reports to the District Attorney’s office that current and previous elected officials were involved in deal-making with developers.  Hynes also appears to be intent on letting time run out on two other felony matters involving Gordon. And one of these matters is tied to Alan Hevesi who was on the ticket with Hynes’ in 2001.

After loud announcements about investigating individuals involved in the scandal that led to the dismissal of Judge Feinberg, the Counsel to the Court, and his Public Advocate  Marietta Small,  Hynes will do absolutely nothing until there is some newspaper story or until the Feds begin to show an interest.

On the other hand,  Hynes has a different level of energy when it comes to prosecuting his enemies.  Take John O’Hara, a young lawyer who voted from an address where he did not live, was tried and re-tried, and re-tried to set a record in Kings County for retrials. And finally John was convicted, disbarred, fined $20,000, and assigned to clean parks because he committed the same offense that more than 100,000 voters in Brooklyn probably commit every year, and candidates are found guilty of committing, and are not even reprimanded.

And there was Sandra Roper who was brazen enough to run against Joe, and suddenly found allegations being made against her by an ex-client who frequented the District Attorney’s Help room. Roper quickly lost her job as a Law Clerk, and facing a long, and expensive “John OrHara”  trial which she could not afford, agreed to settle the matter without a decision.

Worse than all is the matter of  former Judge John Phillips.  In addition to having been a judge,  John Phillips was the owner of almost a block of property on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn. He also owned a theatre on Fulton Street, and several buildings on Nostrand Avenue. Phillips’ estate is estimated by some to have been worth as much as 50 million $$$$ today.  Shortly after he announced that he would run against Hynes, the DA’s office claimed that Phillips was the target of a plot by predators.

Somehow the DA’s office succeeded in providing the Court system that Phillips was incompetent to handle his own affairs, and he was put under the charge of guardians. Under the care of these guardians we understand that much, if not most of Phillips estate has disappeared. Rumors in Bedford/Stuy are that part of his estate was “sold” to persons connected to a Brooklyn judge, and other parcels to politically-connected individuals who are friends of the DA.

My prediction is that the time will come when the dots will be connected and Brooklyn will understand the motivation behind the all the actions and inaction of District Attorney Charles Hynes.  Joe made that first step towards Howard Golden when he betrayed Joe Ferris many years ago.  And he has never been able to get off from that slippery slope. He has become comfortable with big money and affluent surroundings just as he has become comfortable in his home in the peaceful, segregated community of Breezy Point, Queens.

But it won’t be long.

The suffering of John Phillips and John O’Hara and Sandra Roper will not be in vain, Joe.  And won’t it be a hoot if  a bunch of  John Phillips’ friends from Bed/Stuy come to visit you in Breezy Point one Sunday morning after church?   Maybe to pray for you?