AN INQUIRY OUT OF CONTROL

No one investigates the investigators. So they sometimes run wild.

Prosecutors in the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes knew
that Sidney Quick was a hideously violent man who spent as much time as he
could getting high on booze, crack, powdered cocaine, heroin and LSD. They
knew that he had committed so many armed robberies he couldn't begin to
remember them all, that he slept at times with a semiautomatic weapon by
his pillow, that he admitted to shooting one man and was a suspect in the
murder of another, and that he had lied about everything imaginable,
including his own name.

So warning bells should have gone off when a couple of detectives from the
Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau motored up to Sing Sing prison
to interview this Quick, and taped themselves making unconscionable
promises to him if he would come up with some stories that would nail a
detective they had heard some rumors about. When that damning tape was
turned over to the D.A.'s office -- well, Mr. Hynes's prosecutors should
have blown the whistle on the whole sorry exercise right then.

It's not as if this were a subtle effort. The detective who was the subject
of the rumors was named Zaher (Zack) Zahrey. And one of the detectives who
went to see Quick at Sing Sing said, in a reference to a murder: "Sidney,
Sidney, if you had anything to do with it, and you are telling me that Zack
had something to do with it, that he was there, then you can -- you can put
Zack as part of that, that killing, part of that shooting, that murder, you
would get a very, very, very sweet deal. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

But Mr. Hynes's people blew no whistles. They took the Sing Sing tape and
tried to keep it concealed. And while it should have been clear to them
that the criminal justice process was being violently corrupted (they were
unable to corroborate Quick's fantasies about Detective Zahrey), they
nevertheless joined with the cops in trying to manufacture a case against
the detective.

To do this, they promised Sidney Quick the world -- which is to say they
promised to help get him out of prison as early as they could, thus
enabling this fiend to resume his thieving, crack-smoking, murderous
activities.

(When Quick was asked under oath how many people he had robbed in 1993, he
replied, "I didn't carry a calculator with me.")

The D.A.'s office never did come up with more evidence, and under state law
you need more than the uncorroborated account of an alleged accomplice to
prosecute somebody. So Mr. Hynes's people persuaded prosecutors in the
office of U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter to bring a federal conspiracy case
against Detective Zahrey. In federal court, a person can be convicted on
nothing more than the unsubstantiated word of one person, including an
alleged accomplice.

A jury found the case to be preposterous and took no more than 10 minutes
to agree on a verdict of acquittal. But the Police Department continued to
hound Detective Zahrey. Quick was trotted out to testify against Mr. Zahrey
at a departmental trial late last year, and promptly recanted some of his
most serious allegations. He said he had testified falsely against the
detective because he had been confused. A decision from the departmental
trial is expected soon.

The following exchange from the transcript of that trial is instructive.
Quick is being cross-examined by Detective Zahrey's lawyer, Joel B. Rudin:

Mr. Rudin: Mr. Quick, Detective Zahrey, a police officer, is on trial for
the second time. Isn't that right?

Quick: Yes.

Mr. Rudin: Criminal trial, now this trial.

Quick: Yes.

Mr. Rudin: And you, who should have gone to prison for the rest of your
life for murder and various other crimes, are coming up for a parole
hearing in five months. Isn't that right?

Quick: Exactly.

We are in never-never land here. As Mr. Rudin told the jury at the criminal
trial: "You have been given a unique and frightening view of the underbelly
of a criminal justice system gone out of control, turned upside down."

That's what happens when there is no one to investigate the investigators.