Sunday, August 29, 2010

Ingle: Law Enforcement Demoralized By Fishman

By Art Gallagher

Bob Ingle, the Gannet columnist and blogger, the 3rd NJ101.5 Jersey Guy and the co-author of The Soprano State says that U.S Attorney Paul Fishman's declaration that New Jersey does not have a culture of corruption has demoralized law enforcement personnel who have been fighting corruption.

Fishman said that characterising New Jersey as corrupt was demoralizing to its citizenry.

From Ingle's column this morning:

You don't write a book like "The Soprano State" without getting to know a lot of people, many of whom we came to respect as dedicated law enforcement personnel. They have kept in touch and one of the sad things is that demoralization is happening, but it isn't due to the stories about New Jersey corruption; it's due to Fishman's seemingly downplaying his office's role in finding political corruption and prosecuting it.

When I wrote about Fishman's statements last week, I implied that the directive to downplay corruption was coming from U.S. Senator Robert Menendez and the Obama administration.

Ingle does me one better, saying that another candidate for the U.S. Attorney job was specifically asked if political corruption would be downplayed.

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