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Divorce
The January 2008 article regarding divorce hits home for many of us in
law enforcement. While some of us experience amicable agreement with
custody arrangements, others aren’t so lucky. After four years studying
the matter, I’ve found many problems with our laws that seem to
encourage divorce as well as custody battles that place children in the
middle. First and foremost, Title IV-D of the Social Security Act
awards federal dollars to local governments based on how much child
support is collected. For millions of dads separated from their
children, the consequences of this policy are intolerable. The second
problem is the child custody act itself. The notion that a child is
better off living with a single parent has been disproven time and time
again by countless studies, yet our juvenile detention centers are
filled with children raised in a fatherless home. After a ten-year
study, the country of Denmark now mandates their courts to award joint
custody. America has yet to follow suit but is heading in the right
direction with the Family Preservation and Reconciliation Act of 2007.
However, dads across the nation continue being stripped of the right to
raise their children and the children are being denied the opportunity
to develop a positive relationship with their fathers. The result of
all this is that we have a whole generation of youngsters who don’t
understand what fatherhood really is. Finally, a correlation exists
with awards of joint custody and filings for divorce. The more a court
issues sole custody to the mother, the higher the divorce rate. A
mother files for divorce fully knowing that she has an 80 percent
chance of getting sole custody of the children and receiving a
significant portion of the father’s income.
–D. Aldrich
Steroids
Along with Brian McNamee, the former NYPD cop who has been accused of
giving steroids to Roger Clemens, there’s another person from the NYPD
who was involved with a similar scandal over a decade before. Retired
Lt. Kevin Hallinan, the former commanding officer of the NYPD/FBI
Joint Terrorism Task Force, was allegedly told by FBI special agent
Greg Stejskal in 1994 about “Operation Equine,” a nationwide steroid
investigation. According to the Mitchell Report and first reported by
the New York Daily News in 2005, Stejskal said he told Hallinan that he
had information that Jose Canseco and other ballplayers were using
steroids. The illegal use of steroids was pervasive, Stejskal said.
According to the Mitchell Report, Hallinan said he does not remember
being approached by Stejskal. Stejskal called Hallinan again in 2002
and the lieutenant assigned his deputy, Martin Maguire, to investigate
the agent’s allegations. According to another report in the Daily
News, Maguire interviewed Curtis Wenzlaff, a convicted steroids
trafficker, who told him that he had supplied steroids to Canseco and a
number of other players. Maguire later asked Hallinan if he should
investigate media reports that Canseco used steroids, but Hallinan told
him to drop the investigation. But there’s not much new here. Retired
NYPD police officers have been involved in N.Y. Yankee history and
various scandals from the very first day of the ballclub’s American
League franchise right up until the present. Former NYPD 1st Deputy
Commissioner and the last uniform MOS to hold the title of “NYPD Chief
of Police,” William ‘Big Bill’ Devery, who was also a former jailed
felon, was the first owner of the N.Y. Highlanders / Yankees, along
with the corrupt Tammany Sachem Frank Farrell and one other. Devery is
the man most responsible for the N.Y. Highlanders / Yankees’ first
baseball scandal, when in a cost-saving endeavor, he had uniformed,
on-duty NYPD police officers assigned ‘in the bag’ to Highland Park as
ushers and parking lot attendants. This was a habit he carried over
from Madison Square Garden, when it was located adjacent to Madison
Square Park. Big Bill Devery ran the boxing rackets there. Believe it
or not, Devery would sit ringside in his chief’s uniform, while on-duty
police officers performed usher duties inside the garden. At the time,
professional prizefighting was illegal in New York State. For more
information, check out the minutes of the 1894 NYS Lexow Committee
Hearings and the 1899 Mazet Committee Hearings into police corruption
for the special relationships “Big Bill” Devery had with Frank Farrell
and ‘Clubber’ Williams.
– Sgt. Mike Bosak (Ret.) NYPD
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