Secret Police: Inside the Department of Investigation

Between 1991 and 1994, during the administration of Mayor David Dinkins, Benjaminson was the public relations official for the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI), and he continues flacking for his old outfit in this breezily written review of what he considers some of the DOI's most interesting cases. He calls the department the city's ""secret police,"" but what he really means is unknown police, because he believes that few people have ever heard of it. Its job in theory is to investigate the corruption within city government, although he argues that except for the Dinkins years, its role has been to whitewash rather than to uncover. Among the more than 20 cases Benjaminson discusses are those of a doctor who faked postmortem exams, ""water police"" who weren't protecting the upstate reservoirs they were supposed to be guarding, a city official who counterfeited all his personal credentials (from his driver's license to the papers documenting his immigration from Hong Kong), false rumors that the fire department looted offices during the World Trade Center bombing, librarians who stole late-book fines, a commissioner who paid herself two salaries under different names and crooked investigators for city agencies who ranged from restaurant inspectors to employees of the DOI itself. The biggest cases investigated corruption at the Parking Violations Bureau and charges that the city comptroller traded favors for a quick loan to help bankroll a faltering political campaign. Benjaminson claims that with the election of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the DOI again became a ""lap dog."" The prose style is often glib and slangy. As for the subject matter, it's hard to believe that these workaday civic scandals will interest anyone west of the Hudson or east of Brooklyn. (Mar.)