Suffolk County needs detailed answers from its district attorney

The feds are putting down their markers, slowly but clearly, leaving little doubt that their deepening investigation of Suffolk County law enforcement is headed right at District Attorney Thomas Spota.

The latest move came in the case of Edward Walsh, the chairman of Suffolk’s Conservative Party and longtime political ally and friend of Spota, a Democrat. Prosecutors from the U.S. Eastern District allege that Walsh, a former lieutenant in the county sheriff’s department, was enabled to falsify time records so he could play golf or attend to political business because he knew Spota would do nothing about it. The pretrial motion filed Tuesday by the federal prosecutors cites 15 calls between Walsh and the district attorney during the time that Walsh’s boss, Sheriff Vincent DeMarco, was asking Spota to investigate. DeMarco had to take his allegations about $80,000 in fraudulent time sheets to federal authorities to get action.

Spota is under siege. Besides the damaging claims likely to come out in the Walsh trial, a key Spota deputy, Christopher McPartland, is the target of a federal grand jury investigating allegations of a cover-up by the police department to protect James Burke, the former county chief. The feds took down Burke, once a Spota protégé, when he pleaded guilty last month to beating a suspect who was being held on charges of breaking into Burke’s car. Burke, McPartland and Spota were a powerful threesome in the DA’s office. Walsh maneuvered the Conservative Party ballot line in 2001 to help Spota defeat incumbent DA James Catterson, a Republican.

Federal prosecutors are outlining a disturbing abuse of power in the office run by Spota. He has some choices to make. The first should be to give the people of Suffolk some detailed answers. — The editorial board