Crime Scene

….sometimes there’s just a stack of documents.
Hard to make this sound sexy to an outsider. But we’ve been looking for paperwork all month.

See, we’ve been tracking developments in Yonkers that still seem to have more questions than answers. Namely, two federal subpoenas have now been served on City Hall, with few clues because the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office won’t confirm or deny that there’s an investigation, although everyone in Yonkers has been speculating over what it’s about — not that it exists. We know the first subpoena, served March 2, sought Yonkers City Council records dating to 2004. A source close to the federal investigation told The Journal News that the feds were poking around the council’s handling of Ridge Hill Village, the $600 million mega-project slated for an 81-acre chunk of land along the New York State Thruway in Yonkers.

The second subpoena, served one week ago today, asked for financial disclosures filed with the Yonkers Board of Ethics by Zehy Jereis, chairman of the city’s Republican Committee. Turns out Jereis never filed any. There’s some dispute as to whether he ever had to, but wide agreement that he didn’t need to after the beginning of 2006 because of a change in city law. So the feds came up empty on that one.
Of course, the whole thing has fueled a raucous political fight like only Yonkers can stage, with GOP Mayor Phil Amicone squaring off against Jereis, a staunch rival since Amicone and others in the party tried to block Jereis from the leadership post in 2003. Turns out Jereis’ wing in the party had enough juice to carry the day. Now our politics blog, our emails and our phone lines have begun to hum with back-and-forth banter between the two camps.

Anyway, the point is that none of this evokes stereotypical images of late-breaking, rush-to-the-scene, high-drama crime reporting. There’s often no body, no chalk outline, not even handcuffs, nor a chilling confession caught on videotape.
Crime reporting, in fact, can be mundane for much of the hunt. I covered the Bronx County Courthouse for six years, and can dispel the myth that covering criminal trials is thrilling and exciting. In real life, you sit in a courtroom for six hours to get 15 minutes of gripping testimony — on a good day.
We actually spend a good deal of time searching for indictments, lawsuits, subpoenas, arrest reports, etc. — anything on paper that advances or makes the story. So, much as we do our share of hoofing it to crime scenes, we also spend a good deal of time looking through old manila folders. The thrill, of course, comes when you find the document you sought, or, better yet, the one you didn’t expect to find. Even if, as my colleague Jon Bandler says, “there’s not always a smoking gun.”

Now we’ll see what it leads to in the present Yonkers situation — if anything comes of it. But it won’t be for lack of a paper chase.