Linda Fairstein has been doubling down in the face of recent criticism and career setbacks. But this isn’t unusual for her. When the The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin sat down with Fairstein back in 2002, she couldn’t praise detectives enough for their work apprehending the five young boys who would later be exonerated.

At first, the detectives didn’t have much to go on. “A kid would say something like ‘a dark-skinned guy who lives on 102nd Street,’ ” Fairstein said. “And these detectives would go out and find him. I think it was one of the most brilliant police investigations I’ve ever seen.” 

Linda Fairstein in The New Yorker

I don’t know about you but I think it would have been more impressive had they found the dark skinned guy on 5th Avenue. Be that as it may, with the revelations which continue to pour forth producing article after article, one thing hasn’t been much talked about. Perhaps this is the reason Farstein (how is it that a person can have such an ironic name anyway?) has been so loud and proud even after her public fall from grace:

She hopes to keep the focus on this case only. Because if investigators look into other cases, what might they find?

Houston’s Example

Back in January, Houston police conducted a no-knock raid on the home of Dennis and Rhogena Tuttle in the Pecan Park neighborhood. Officers busted down the door on the basis of a fabricated warrant which claimed that an informant had purchased heroin from Tuttle, had seen more heroin in the home and had even witnessed a semi-automatic weapon. None of these facts turned out to be true. Tuttle and his wife were killed in the raid and four officers were shot and hospitalized – likely by friendly fire private investigators hired by family members have discovered. [ Timeline of the fiasco can be found here].

As a result of the initial internal investigation two officers were suspended (with pay). HPD is currently reviewing over 1400 cases handled by the lead officer, Gerald Goines, spanning his entire 34-year career. Officer Steven Bryant, who originally claimed he had seen the fabricated drug buy and later changed his story, has over 800 of his past cases under investigation.

Already there have been two dismissals of Goine’s pending cases. How many more will result in reversals is yet to be seen. The FBI is also investigating the civil rights violations that may have occurred as a part of the raid.

HPD’s police chief, Art Acevedo, is no stranger to controversy and bad police conduct. He was formerly the Chief of the Austin, TX police department notorious for its treatment of the city’s minority population. One wonders what would happen if somebody looked deeper into his past.

Underneath The Water

The real question is, what lurks underneath the proverbial water? Fairstein retired after 30 years as a prosecutor. She must have hundreds and hundreds of prosecutions, if not thousands. She hoisted herself by her own petard when she stated that the police-work in the Central Park Five case was some of the best she had ever seen. What happens when investigators start looking at the rest of her cases both before and after 1989, where the police work wasn’t so “brilliant?”

Likely they discover a Titanic-sinking iceberg. Why likely, you ask? Because Farstein is not even the slightest bit remorseful. This suggests that she and police routinely practiced the kind of behavior revealed to have been perpetrated by police in the Central Park Five case. It wasn’t an anomaly for which she feels regret.

In fact the only regret Farstein has so far admitted is that the Central Park Five were not charged with other crimes besides the rape that they didn’t commit. That in and of itself is damning enough but when will the main stream media start demanding a look into her other cases?

A Vast Ocean Of Icebergs

Lest anyone think that this is a person problem, it isn’t. Its an institutional problem. Fairstein does not fail to show remorse because this is an isolated case and her behavior prosecuting it was an exception to the rule. She fails to show remorse because the way she handled it and the way prosecutors all over the country handle their cases is a demonstration of the rule. The tactics that police and prosecutors use, especially against minorities (though as a white guy who was falsely convicted I see that it can be applied just as effectively to my kind), are part of an institutional pattern. They are trained and groomed to this behavior and their training is designed to alleviate misgivings about the misconduct they are trained to practice. Furthermore, decades of bad court rulings have emboldened justice workers to push the envelope further.

It is the rare cop and prosecutor who act constitutionally in spite of their training that we can consider the anomalies.

To turn Farstein into a scape-goat would be unfair and myopic. Nevertheless, we ought to look at every single case she has ever prosecuted. Because the tip is the smallest part of a vast ocean of icebergs.