DA indicted in bash coverup
SUFFOLK COUNTY District Attorney Thomas Spota and a top deputy found themselves on the wrong side of the law Wednesday when a federal grand jury indicted them on “shocking and appalling” charges that they tried covering up the brutal beating of a suspect by a disgraced police chief.
Instead of facing a judge in their usual roles as prosecutors, Spota and assistant Christopher McPartland stood in a Long Island courtroom as defendants, accused of using their power and influence to keep a law enforcement partner out of jail.
Spota’s alleged 180-degree legal turn began in 2012 when county police Chief James Burke was accused of pummeling a handcuffed suspect inside a Smithtown police precinct.
The beating victim, Christopher Loeb, made the mistake of breaking into Burke’s police-issued SUV — and swiping the police big’s sex toys, a porn video, a gun belt, cigars and a humidor.
Burke went berserk when Loeb (photo right) called him a “pervert,” thinking the skin flick was child porn. He reportedly beat and kicked the petty thief so badly that an onlooking officer told him, “Boss, leave it alone.”
After the attack, Spota, 76, and McPartland, 51, ran interference for Burke, pressuring witnesses from cooperating with federal investigators, prosecutors said.
In April 2013, the FBI and federal prosecutors launched a grand jury probe into Loeb’s beating, but the focus broadened into obstruction of justice surrounding the attack. When Spota and McPartland learned of grand jury subpoenas to Suffolk County police officers in June 2013, the feds said they immediately began a “four-year attempt to obstruct that investigation.”
Spota, McPartland and Burke — before he got locked up — allegedly resorted to threats and intimidation to make witnesses and co-conspirators be uncooperative with federal authorities, lie under oath and hold back relevant information on Loeb’s beating.
The pair “have grossly and outrageously violated their positions of trust and operated in a manner more akin to criminal enterprise than a district attorney’s office,” prosecutors said. Both made $500,000 bail on Wednesday and entered not guilty pleas. Outside court, Spota’s lawyer, Alan Vinegrad, told reporters his client “committed no crime” and “looks forward to vindicating himself in court.”He would not say whether Spota plans to go back to work. Both Spota and McPartland face up to 20 years if convicted. Spota became DA in 2002 after promising to crack down on municipal corruption. McPartland is chief of the investigations and government corruption bureaus. Burke was a longtime Spota protege, and a close colleague and friend of McPartland, according to news reports. According to court papers, Spota, McPartland, Burke and other members of the police department “had numerous meetings and telephone conversations” about the assault.
Burke eventually pleaded guilty to the beatdown, and was sentenced to 46 months in jail for violating Loeb’s civil rights.
Prosecutors claimed in court papers that Burke was involved in “the recruiting of high-ranking officials from other county agencies to assist him in the obstruction and give teeth to his threats. SCPD members who witnessed the assault came under direct and extreme pressure from the defendant and others to conceal it.”
Loeb is now suing Suffolk County over the attack. His lawyer, Bruce Barket, said his client “ignited a spark that burned down a corrupt law enforcement regime in Suffolk County.”