I also posted there what people think about that, Facebook comments about that undertaking. The consensus was that it was a fake and that nothing good will come out of it.
A reader reported to me yesterday as to how that reader tried to report an actual egregious case of corruption in New York court system to the New York State Attorney General, defender of the people.
I wrote on this blog more than once that the multiple hats that the NYS AG wears - of defender of the people against corrupt government, and as an attorney and defender of the corrupt government against the people - if they do not give the NYS AG a split personality disorder, they certainly make him look like a circus jester.
Ok, so, the reader decided to report corruption in New York courts.
With that in mind, the reader called the office of the New York State Attorney General and announced the reader's purpose.
The reader was told that the reader (I refuse to disclose the gender, so, please, bear with me when I repeat "the reader" where I could put a pronoun) must put the story in writing, send it to the NYS AG's office, and the NYS AG's office will then forward it to their own "public integrity division".
A "Public Integrity Bureau" of the NYS AG's office actually does exist - as the NYS AG's website says:
The webpage of the Public Integrity Bureau does not have contact names of individuals who handle investigations and to whom the public should report public corruption. Nor does it have any telephone numbers or direct e-mails of such individuals.
The general "contact us" webpage of the New York State Attorney General's office contains the following information:
The "contact us" information contains the following "hotlines":
- General Helpline
- TDD/TTY Toll Free Line
- Immigration Fraud hotline
- Healthcare hotline
- Medicaid Fraud control Unit
When my reader (who has some experience dealing with public officials and how they try to hush up reports of public corruption) preferred direct contact with public officials on issues of corruption and did not want to engage in a run-around game.
For that reason, the reader requested a direct phone number of the Public Integrity Unit - and was denied and told to send the information to the general office, and that they will allegedly "forward it" and "call her back". Right.
I do not know what was so secret in that unit that its phone number could not be given to the public in order to report public corruption to that unit.
But, my reader is not a faint-hearted individual.
After being spurned and not given the direct number to the Public Integrity Unit, my reader simply went to the New York State Attorney General's office in Albany.
On arrival to such office, my reader asked the representative accepting correspondence at the entrance to take her to the Public Integrity Bureau. The NYS AG representative expressed an extreme surprise as to what the reader was talking about, and that there is no such unit or bureau in existence.
It is not surprising that the NYS AG plays games with people wanting to report corruption, that is exactly what people were discussing when commenting on the "corruption billboards" this past January.
I guess, one of my next Freedom of Information projects will be to obtain and publish direct numbers of the secret public integrity unit of the NYS AG office keeping the biggest secret of all - there is no public integrity in New York government.
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