WORLD'S WORST INFORMANT Upon being confronted by Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes with evidence of his corruption, Supreme Court Judge Gerald Garson reportedly offered to turn informant to get a better deal for himself. The judge told Hynes that, as many have long suspected, judgeships in Brooklyn can be had for the right price. So Hynes's people rigged Garson with a wire and he tried to get operators of the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine to talk about selling judgeships for $50,000 and up.

One of the people he talked to was Manhattan attorney Ravi Batra, who's become a player in Brooklyn judicial politics since his law firm hired Assemblyman Clarence Norman, the Democratic county chief. Norman made Batra vice chairman of his judicial screening panel, which allegedly tries to weed out corrupt or unqualified people before they get to be judges.

According to the New York Sun, Garson suggested money could be paid to move a friend up in the judiciary, but Batra didn't respond, and later told investigators he didn't know what Garson was trying to say.

What, was he not speaking English? Something is obviously missing from this account, and of course the wags have been quick to speculate on what really happened.

One source guessed that Batra and the others are too careful to openly discuss payoffs. But another suggested that Garson intentionally failed as an informant, tipping off his targets so they wouldn't implicate themselves. That way, Garson could postpone his arrest, and perhaps get himself a better plea deal for "cooperating," without taking down any of his friends.

If so, it worked for a while. But after about five weeks, the New York Post got wind of the investigation and was about to blow Garson's cover. That forced Hynes to pull the plug on Garson's fishing expedition and simply arrest him. (The D.A. allowed the judge to surrender rather than hauling him from his house in handcuffs.)

Getting back to Batra: That Garson went to him to talk about buying a judgeship, and that Batra did not reject the idea, sent up a red flag for Brooklyn's administrative judge, Ann Pfau. She promptly advised her judges to avoid Batra. One observer wondered how that would be possible for judges running for reelection or hoping to be elevated to the Supreme Court, since they have to appear before the screening panel on which Batra sits.

POLS DIVIDED ON JUDICIAL REFORM A group of Democrats organized by Brownstone Brooklyn district leaders Alan Fleishman and Liz Daly, Chris Owens (son of Rep. Major Owens), and others has formed the "Coalition for an Independent Brooklyn Judiciary." That is, a judiciary not owned and operated by Assemblyman Clarence Norman, the Brooklyn Democratic leader.

We exaggerate, of course. Norman does not own and operate the judiciary. He does play a major role in the making and promoting of judges, but he does not get a percentage of their bribery income. This new group has proposed a meeting to institute reforms and released a list of the elected officials in support, which include Assemblymembers Jim Brennan and Joan Millman, State Senator Marty Connor, City Councilmen David Yassky, Bill deBlasio, and James Davis, and Reps. Nydia Velazquez and Major Owens. That's everyone representing this part of Brooklyn except Rep. Ed Towns, State Senators Velmanette Montgomery and Carl Andrews, Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, and City Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez.

Fleishman said he was not concerned that the rebellion would ostracize him from the party leadership. "My constituents in the brownstone neighborhoods are reform-minded and are tired of the horrible situation we have in the Brooklyn courts," said Fleishman, referring to the 10 Brooklyn judges who've landed in hot water in just two years. "I feel it's my job as a district leader to try to change things." He might start by changing his locks. Just kidding.

The reform push, under way for months, has picked up steam in the last two weeks as three more Supreme Court justices have made headlines: Gerald Garson was arrested for fixing cases, his cousin Michael Garson was reported to be under investigation for taking money intended for his 83-year-old aunt, and Reynold Mason was removed from the bench for subletting his rent-subsidized Flatbush apartment to his brother-in-law, raiding the escrow account that held the rent payments, and stonewalling the investigators looking into the matter.

NEWS SLAMS JUDICIAL SELECTION The Daily News has been leading a call for reform of the Brooklyn judiciary, and the continuing scandals surely have justified it. But did the paper go too far in its rant against the Democratic machine's screening panel for judicial candidates? Councilman and Democratic district leader Lew Fidler thinks so.

Its stinging editorial, the newspaper characterized the lawyers who sit on county leader Clarence Norman's panel "an embarrassment" filled with "mostly Court Street lawyers from the clubby Brooklyn legal world, with histories not unlike those of the inept judges they selected." The News singled out five of the 20 panelists as examples: Jerome Karp, Ravi Batra, Louis Rosenthal, Barry Kamins, and Ronald Aiello.

"I don't think there's a whole lot wrong with the panel. You notice they picked on four or five names out of 20," said Councilman Fidler, who has pressed for some reform of the judicial selection process. "As a whole, the panel is kind of impressive." Fidler said the News "made it seem like the screening panel picks the judges. They don't. They just interview people… (and say) whether or not they're qualified. They have rejected people."

He even defended one of the lawyers attacked by the newspaper. "Barry Kamins is one of the most widely respected criminal attorneys in the state of New York," Fidler said. It is a little odd that Kamins appeared with Garson when the judge surrendered, given his position on the panel that's supposed to stop bad judges from getting to the Supreme Court. But Kamins is not representing Garson, he told us.

He's also no longer on the screening panel: he resigned in early May, along with one other panelist. The News claimed that corrupt Judge Victor Barron got a sweetheart deal from Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes because Barron was represented by Kamins, who raises funds for Hynes's campaigns. Anyone who believes that "doesn't know Joe Hynes," said Fidler, former Hynes campaign manager. Besides, Barron got a minimum of four years in prison, not a slap on the wrist. The News complained that he "could have blown the lid off courthouse corruption" but "was allowed to stay mum."

Why the paper assumes that all the corrupt judges swap stories of their bribe-taking, we don't know. Barron certainly had every reason to trade information for a lighter sentence, but he didn't. Perhaps he had none. "I think (the editorial) was largely unfair and I think they know that a lot of what they wrote was unfair," Fidler charged.

Can the screening panel be blamed for approving some of the judges who turned out to be rotten? Perhaps, but no panel has a crystal ball. Democratic district leader Ralph Perfetto, as straight a shooter as we know, said he never would have guessed Barron would turn bad. "It's a shame," said Perfetto, "because you blemish the whole group."

Still, it is clear that something is wrong. Many judges and lawyers are politically connected and engage in mutual back-scratching that would make your skin crawl. And 10 Brooklyn judges have been scrutinized for criminal or ethical violations in the last year alone, the News reported. And that was before Gerald Garson was nabbed. The paper deserves credit for uncovering some of the abuses and for keeping the issue in the public eye. On the other hand, neither it nor anyone else has come up with a good solution for selecting judges. "The Daily News's constant (and I think simplistic) refrain that we need a 'merit selection' system is juvenile," one reader emailed us. "All you have to do is look at the way the merit selections work for the non-elected judges in NY-such as the Court of Appeals, the Family Court, the Housing Court-to see that it's no better, and sometimes a good deal worse. Just different politics."

One possible answer is non-partisan, publicly financed judicial elections, the reader offered. Could that be any worse than what we have now? Consider what Roger Bennet Adler, a criminal defense lawyer who has been president of the Brooklyn Bar Association and the Kings County Criminal Bar Association, told The New York Times: "I certainly understand that there's a compelling need to restore public confidence, and we hope that (the Gerald Garson case) will be viewed as an aberrational, episodic event. But I think that the root cause is a political process that brings people to the bench who have baser motives than one would otherwise hope for."

NOACH DEAR TO RUN AGAIN? We hear former City Councilman Noach Dear is planning to run for his old seat against incumbent Simcha Felder, who won it in 2001 when term limits forced Dear out. An amendment to the term limits law would prevent Dear from running again this year, but a judge struck it down. How sure is Dear that the ruling will be upheld on appeal? Well, we hear he's already agreed to rent space on Avenue J for a campaign office. We'll know for sure on June 3, when candidates can begin collecting signatures to get on the ballot for the September 9 primary. Dear usually has petitioners out in droves.

There is also the little matter of residency. It seems that Felder made a quiet arrangement with colleague Kendall Stewart to have Dear's house on East 7th Street drawn out of Felder's district and into Stewart's. "I'm old enough to believe that that did not happen by accident," said one veteran political insider. The idea was to discourage Dear from running against Felder, because it would force him to move from his longtime home before being sworn in to office. Dear, an Orthodox Jew whose voting base was Borough Park, wouldn't run against Stewart, whose district is largely black and Caribbean.

But would he have a chance against Felder, also an Orthodox Jew, who enjoys the support of his former boss Assemblyman Dov Hikind? We can't see the leading rabbis of Borough Park ditching Felder and Hikind, who's always had a competitive relationship with Dear. Perhaps Dear was encouraged by the number of votes he got in the Borough Park during his unsuccessful race for State Senate last year. But in that race, he was the only Orthodox Jew.

One problem Dear doesn't figure to have is fundraising. "I am amazed that Noach still has the ability to raise money," said our source, given that Dear has lost three straight elections (to Kevin Parker for State Senate in 2002 and Anthony Weiner for Congress in 2000 and 1998). Yet the source had no doubt that Dear would be able to rev up his fundraising machine again.

We're talking about a candidate who not only ran TV ads in his bid for Congress but mailed campaign videos to prospective voters. We left a message at Dear's home number with a young woman who was pleasant but wisely didn't promise that he would call back. Dear is, shall we say, not a big fan of this column.

LOUIMA STILL ALIVE Somehow we typed Abner Louima when we meant Amadou Diallo in our item about police shooting John Lagattuta, the driver of a stolen car in Bensonhurst. It was Diallo, not Louima, who was shot at 43 times (and hit 19). Louima survived his attack by cops in a stationhouse bathroom in the 70th Precinct, now known to some people as the Plunger Precinct. Many thanks to all the folks who caught that error.

One reader, though, objected to our comparison of the two shootings. "Your recent commentary on Brooklyn politics was an exercise in non-sequiturs. There is no link between four cops involved in a shooting in the Bronx and officers in Brooklyn attempting to stop a car thief," he wrote.

Our point was, it's not easy to shoot someone with deadly accuracy, so to suggest that Lagattuta was accidentally shot in the back, as Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes did, downplays that the officer's gun was cocked and trained on the driver. Hynes's investigation was likely stymied by the reluctance of witnesses to give accounts that differed from the police's version of events. Indeed, we got two calls from a man who claimed, "I did witness the incident that you described and, um, it was not as the police described it. I'm sorry I can't give you more information now. It's a little complicated. That's why I didn't come forward before to the authorities. I can't get into it now, or leave my name or anything like that, unfortunately."

Our advice: Don't call us, call the D.A. His supporters assure us he's a man of integrity. We can assume he protects witnesses from retribution. The number is 718-250-2000. Or call Ron Kuby, the victim's attorney. He's in the Manhattan phone book.

JAKE GOLD, PEACEMAKER Democratic district leader Jacob "Jake" Gold likes to think of himself as a peacemaker, as he often invites politicians from different sides of the aisle to appear together at his events.

In the latest example, he persuaded Assemblyman Jim Brennan and State Senator Carl Andrews to be speakers at his May club meeting. "Jim and Carl Andrews are not on the same side," Gold noted, referring to the last election, in which Andrews crushed Wellington Sharpe and Mickey Heller.

We pointed out that Brennan, to our recollection, had not endorsed either of Andrews's opponents. Gold agreed but noted that Brennan's club, Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, had endorsed Sharpe. He equated that with a Brennan endorsement. "It's a distinction without a difference," Gold said.

Side note: Gold could enhance his peacemaker credentials by reaching out to his co-leader in the 44th Assembly District, Lori Knipel. The two have been at odds for 10 years now, since Knipel lent $40,000 to their campaign against Joni Yoswein's slate in 1992 and was never repaid.

Borough Politics Archive

2003
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2002
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2001
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2000
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1999
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