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Saturday, February 05, 2000
By Dennis Roddy
If, while visiting Harrisburg, you decide to commit a crime, might I suggest the State Capitol, a superb venue for misdeeds large and small and home to a police force as accommodating as it is discreet.
Take care to get yourself elected first.
When the Hon. Thomas W. Druce, R-Bucks, pulled his extremely dented Jeep Cherokee into the Capitol parking garage on the night of July 27, a member of the Capitol police force was on guard, as always, keeping secure the assorted horseless carriages, flying brooms and whatever other conveyances our solons rent for their official excursions.
Because they suspected the dent in Druce's Jeep might have been put there by a late pedestrian who lost a confrontation with Druce's oncoming grill work, investigators from the Harrisburg Police Department were keen to talk to any Capitol policeman who might have noticed the damage.
This is where it gets interesting.
In the days after word broke publicly about Druce's damaged Jeep and its possible connections to the hit-and-run death of Kenneth Cains, Capitol police were read, at morning and afternoon roll calls, a memorandum solemnly advising them not to talk with representatives of any outside agency.
That Capitol police are not to speak with reporters is the stuff of obstreperous legend in a place where state secrecy prevails. That they were not to speak with investigators from a Harrisburg Police Department deep into a criminal investigation of a powerful, elected representative, is the stuff of profound annoyance to any policeman worthy of the badge.
"From a law enforcement agency, it's not what you would expect," said Ed Marsico, the Dauphin County district attorney who is prosecuting Druce. "We were just told that at the roll call they were told not to cooperate with the investigation."
No, it is not what one would expect of a law enforcement agency. But the Capitol police is no mere law enforcement agency - it is a branch of the Department of General Services. As such, its members answer to administrators whose major task is to see to the creature comforts of the state.
Samantha Elliott, a General Services spokeswoman who has the unenviable task of explaining why cops were warned not to talk freely to other cops, said the memo was merely a restatement of standing policy.
"As with any investigation, information should be directed to the proper authorities in our department," she blah blahed. "They are not to discuss anything about an ongoing investigation."
But, of course, Capitol police were not investigating the death of Kenneth Cains. What, then, is the policy?
"That any questions anyone would have they would have to direct them to the proper authorities," Elliott said.
If this sounds vague and circuitous, then you will understand why I asked Elliott precisely what the memorandum said.
"I can't tell you that because it's not a public document," she replied.
Harrisburg is a town in which the need for order often seems to crowd out the need for law to accompany it. When a large, scandalous mess looms, the bureaucrats tend to click into a sort of moral hibernation for which the catchcry is, "Please, no trouble."
I suspect the Capitol police had less to tell investigators about Rep. Druce than they have inadvertently said about themselves.
There is an old Russian saying: "What is said in a whisper thunders."
What is said not at all, in this instance, fairly screams.