Busting Public Servants

Smiling, joking, occasionally backslapping, Louis Turco presided genially over a Newark city council meeting one afternoon last week. Then an aide approached and whispered something into his ear. The Democratic council president paled. He bowed his head and hurried from the room. Turco had just learned that he had been indicted on ten charges of mail fraud and four counts of income-tax evasion.

The scene has become depressingly familiar in U.S. state and municipal politics. Over the past three years in New Jersey alone, 67 officials have been indicted and 35 convicted. U.S. Attorney Herbert Stern has snared mayors, legislators, judges, highway officials, postmasters and a Congressman.

Last week scandal nipped at the Governor's mansion. Newspapers reported that state Republicans had devised an illegal scheme for soliciting funds for Governor William Cahill's 1969 campaign. Fatcat contributors had been advised by leading Republicans to write off their donations on their tax returns as business expenses. This disclosure came on top of the conviction six months ago of the Governor's closest political confidant, Secretary of State Paul Sherwin, who had sought a kickback from a highway contractor. Cahill, who had seemed a shoo-in for reelection this year, is now in trouble.

While New Jersey leads the nation in discovered political corruption, scandal after scandal is emerging in many other areas as the nation conducts what appears to be an unprecedented political housecleaning. Corruption is not necessarily on the rise in the U.S., but the prosecution of it is.

MIAMI. Democratic Mayor David Kennedy was indicted two weeks ago for conspiracy to bribe; he was charged with attempting to free a convicted drug offender. Also indicted was Circuit Judge Jack Turner, who had first sentenced the dealer to three years, then dismissed the case. At the same time, Circuit Judge Murray Goodman was indicted for conspiracy to accept a bribe after he reversed his own sentence and put a child molester on probation.

PHILADELPHIA. Maurice Osser, former city commission chairman, was sentenced to six years in prison last December for demanding kickbacks from city printing contracts. This month Sander Field, onetime chairman of the city-planning board, was sentenced to pay a $25,000 fine for violating the state security act by selling stock in his bank below its market value to political officials. In the past three years in Philadelphia, a judge has been sent to jail for nine months for check fraud, the chairman of the housing authority advisory board has been convicted of bribery and conspiracy, the stadium construction coordinator has been convicted of extortion, and the former chief court clerk has received a two-to ten-year prison sentence for robbery and fixing cases.

NEW ORLEANS. District Attorney Jim Garrison, famed for his conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination, will go to trial in May on charges of receiving bribes from pinball-machine companies. Former Louisiana Attorney General Jack Gremillion was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for perjury; he was convicted of lying about stock that he owned in a savings-and-loan corporation that was under investigation by a grand jury.

BALTIMORE. James Scott, a member of the Maryland house of delegates, was arrested on the charge of conspiring to distribute some 40 pounds of heroin. Last week State Senator Clarence Mitchell III was indicted for failing to file income-tax returns for four years.

NEW YORK CITY. Queens District Attorney Thomas J. Mackell was indicted last week on charges of hindering the prosecution of a get-rich-quick swindle in which members of his own staff, including his son-in-law, had invested. Mackell's office is also under investigation in connection with two gangland killings in which no action was taken. Meanwhile, Ted Gross, who recently resigned as the city's commissioner of youth services, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from companies seeking city contracts.

ALBANY, N.Y. The New York State commission of investigation issued a report two weeks ago documenting "systematic and organized burglaries, larcenies and thefts" of public funds by six city policemen. The commission sought to have the cops removed for trial to New York City, where they will not be protected by the Albany Democratic machine, which sponsors most of the judges elected in the area.

CHICAGO. Republican U.S. Attorney James ("Big Jim") Thompson is making a shambles of the once mighty Daley Democratic fiefdom (TIME, April 2). Former Governor Otto Kerner was convicted last month of taking a bribe from a race-track owner. Cook County Clerk Edward Barrett was convicted of receiving kickbacks on the purchase of voting machines. The Chicago Sun-Times has been running an expose of city officials who are accused of selling tax-delinquent lands to political chums at bargain prices. Among the alleged profiteers: Thomas Keane, chairman of the city council's finance committee and a Daley intimate (see THE PRESS).

Despite what seems to be an epidemic of political corruption, most policemen and criminologists believe that it is not on the increase. "We are not dealing with anything new," says Miami Criminologist Charlotte Tatro. "The goal in our society is money, and if people can't get it by legitimate means, they are going to turn to illegitimate means." What is new is society's increased sensitivity to corruption. "We have changed our expectations," says Ernest van den Haag, professor of social philosophy at New York University. "We no longer accept corruption as part of the political process."

Pinched by inflation and taxes, citizens are scarcely in a mood to tolerate the enrichment of politicians at public expense, and prosecutors are receiving public backing to hunt down venality aggressively. There is plenty of political mileage to be gained, especially if it is discovered in the opposition party. It is no coincidence that Republican district attorneys -notably New Jersey's Stern and Illinois' Thompson -have dug up scandals in Democratic machines. Says Ralph Berkowitz, special assistant to the state's attorney in Cook County: "We are exposing things that for years were only suspected. The old sense of immunity is gone." As it disappears, the public appetite for prosecutions will probably be whetted. In that case, considerably more instances of the corruption that was condoned in the past will come to view in the courts.

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