Corrupt system enabled Spota

In 2001, the voters of Suffolk County elected Democrat Thomas Spota over longtime district attorney James Catterson. Spota argued Catterson was a power broker who turned prosecutorial discretion into sanctioned corruption, protecting allies while persecuting enemies.

In 2005, 2009 and 2013, voters had no such choice. The county’s major and minor party bosses inked Spota’s name on every ballot line, and a try by Republican Ray Perini in 2013 for the Republican line ended in the primary defeat GOP leadership favored.

That failure of the political system to check abuse allowed Spota and right-hand man Christopher McPartland to use prosecutorial power for political ends. Each was sentenced to 5 years in prison Tuesday on federal corruption charges for helping enact a conspiracy with former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke to cover up Burke’s assault on an addict who’d burgled his vehicle.

Spota and McPartland deserve the bulk of blame for what went on in his office, but the Suffolk political system enabled them to abuse this very powerful office.

County Executive Steven Bellone heard credible warnings that Burke's history was shady, but empowered him anyway, and left him in place even as alarms sounded. The clubby cooperation orchestrated by Suffolk Democratic County chairman Rich Schaffer, who was extremely close to Spota, with the leaders of the Republican, Conservative and Independence parties, fueled abuses.

We know of wrongs the Spota system allowed that raise the question: What don’t we know? There was the theft of $200,000 in time from the sheriff’s department by corrections lieutenant and Conservative Party boss Edward Walsh, gambling and golfing when he said he was working. Spota refused to seriously pursue prosecution of Walsh. There was the kid-glove treatment of politically connected defense attorney Robert Macedonio on allegations of fraud, bribery and cocaine possession..

There was the failure to pursue charges against a drunken off-duty Nassau cop who shot a cabbie, and the Suffolk cops who tried to cover it up.

There was the deal with former County Executive Steve Levy requiring him to forgo reelection and relinquish his campaign war chest. Suffolk residents still don't know what happened. And there was the legal hounding of a Suffolk cop who, angered at Burke’s move to drop the county’s crucial participation in a federal gangs task force that might have helped solve the Gilgo murders and prevented MS-13's growth, tipped a reporter to some wrongdoing.

Contested elections and challenges to incumbency are the most potent antidote to kingly public servants. That’s one reason 70% of Suffolk voters enacted 12-year term limits in 1993, although Spota's successful constitutional challenge that the law did not apply to the district attorneys kept him in power.

Now Spota, 80, will have time to consider his subversion of law enforcement. The rest of us must consider why the system, culture and players that smoothed his path to corruption remain largely undisturbed.