By Tom Harvey
New York Daily News
November 28, 2011
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/raid-syracuse-assistant-basketball-coach-bernie-fine-house-local-authorities-refuse-article-1.983048
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| Bernie Fine will probably never coach again amid the sex abuse allegations brought against him. |
There's a reason people laugh when they hear the famous Shakespeare line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
This is understandable, especially when we hear "lawyer stories" like the one my friend told me about his experience with the highly secretive SEAL Team 6 unit. He had spent over a decade carrying out top-secret missions, but could never get over the fact that shortly before going into harm's way, there would inevitably be a last-minute meeting with a lawyer, who literally would go over the law and review what is known as "the rules of engagement." That's right, a lawyer would tell the SEALs when they could or couldn't shoot someone.
Fast forward to Syracuse University: you need a scorecard to keep track of the various law enforcement agencies and prosecutors' offices involved in the investigation of the recent scandal surrounding assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine, especially in light of a dozen federal agents swarming Fine's house Friday and poring through trash and carting away filing cabinets and other material.
This is after the local police refused to cooperate with the local prosecutor, who complained at a news conference — naturally — that the cops were leaking sealed information, possibly vandalizing one of his investigator's cars and in general acting like children. He went on to accuse the police chief, Frank Fowler, of implementing new procedures restricting prosecution access to all reports in the possession of police.
"You do not have a police chief. You have a fiefdom," the DA, Bill Fitzpatrick, said in a Friday morning press conference in his office.
Many of my fellow attorneys are questioning why this all happening now. Is it that the Syracuse scandal can't be cleared up by the locals? Or is it that the upstate authorities have gotten a little bit of the publicity bug that seems to afflict Jerry Sandusky's attorney, Joe "where is the camera?" Amendola.
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