AFTER THE FALL

Police Officer Michael Siler's guilty plea, like that of his partner
Richard Barnett last year, cannot help but tarnish the Schenectady
Police Department. It came the same day that Davis Etkin, former head
of Capital Region Off Track Betting, was handcuffed and delivered to
jail. Etkin, too, had pleaded guilty after being severely pressured
by relentless prosecutors, and his plea does cast a shadow over his
long and mostly positive involvement in Schenectady County public
life. Both the police officers and Etkin seem to have fallen prey to
hubris, thinking that their responsible positions somehow gave them
license to violate the law.

Siler has pledged to cooperate with federal authorities, and it is
not yet clear what he will tell them about what he and other officers
may have done. But he and Barnett have both admitted providing
illegal drugs to informants in exchange for information. This enabled
them to make more arrests, but also contributed to the use of drugs
in Schenectady, and this illegal activity likely led to others, as
the officers grew used to operating outside the law - which is
obviously the wrong place for law-enforcement officers to be.

While federal authorities obviously need to evaluate any new
information from Siler, it would also serve the public interest for
their investigation to be concluded in the relatively near future.

On the same day Siler pleaded guilty, there were complaints at a
Hamilton Hill meeting both about an insufficiently forceful police
presence, and a traffic stop that allegedly involved racial
profiling. Those somewhat contradictory complaints illustrate the
difficulty of a Schenectady police officer's job: He may well be
subject to criticism no matter what he does, even if acting in good
faith and within the law. That does not, of course, mean it's
acceptable to stop anyone just because they are black.

But in a neighborhood where a high proportion of the drug dealers and
other dangerous criminals are black, it is probably inevitable that
aggressive policing will result in some complaints about racial
profiling, both from innocent people and cynical criminals.

Siler and Barnett did not act in good faith within the law, and were
properly fired by the city. Even after their plea bargains, they
could serve significant prison sentences.

Their guilty pleas should lead no one to assume that other officers
are guilty, including the indicted and suspended Lt. Michael
Hamilton. It is true that illegal actions by police undermine
community respect for them, along with the mutual cooperation that is
so necessary to make lasting progress against crime, and so different
from the type of cooperation Siler and Barnett secured by providing
addicts with drugs.

Still, the Police Department's leadership has been cooperating with
the federal investigation, and police officers deserve the benefit of
any doubt. Schenectadians should not hold back from working with
their police officers to make the streets safer.

Etkin's critics said for years that he was an extravagant manager,
but the vast majority of that criticized spending, from charitable
contributions to a tennis tournament in Central Park, was perfectly
legal. His downfall seems to have stemmed mainly from an extramarital
affair, the provision of illegal benefits to his mistress, and then a
desperate attempt at a cover-up. In fact, Etkin's conduct is in some
ways reminiscent of Bill Clinton's, but unlike the former president,
Etkin could not retain sufficient political juice to wriggle clear of
the charges.

It is a great pity that Etkin allowed his sons to be ensnared in
apparently illegal activities (one pleaded guilty), but he gets some
paternal credit for trying to spare them further trouble by pleading
guilty himself.

It seems doubtful, though, that he will prevail in his court fight to
call that a coerced plea.

Nor would Siler and Barnett likely be successful in claiming their
pleas were coerced, even though prosecutors had threatened them with
several decades in prison by tacking on dubious charges.

A guilty plea does not define someone's whole life and career, but in
these cases it does signify an abuse of the public trust.