Taking the Fun out of Fundraising

I'm not sure if it's ironic, appropriate or just downright disappointing that Sheriff Philip F. Corso, who has graced this blog's homepage since the beginning, was himself removed from office after being accused of committing seven felonies and six misdemeanors. It's not as bad as it sounds but it was enough to have him removed from office after nearly 20 years of service.

In 1975, following a three month investigation by his office's anti-corruption bureau, Suffolk County, New York District Attorney Henry F. O'Brien announced the 13 count indictment against Sheriff Corso. The felony charges included grand larceny by extortion and/or coercion, attempted grand larceny by extortion and/or coercion, attempted coercion, second degree conspiracy. The misdemeanor charges included official misconduct and violation of the Civil Service law.

Basically, Sheriff Corso was being accused of pressuring his subordinates and the vendors who were doing business with the Suffolk County Jail to purchase tickets to an upcoming Republican Party Fundraising Dinner. Tickets cost $50 a piece and those who refused to buy found their jobs in jeopardy or their contracts canceled.

Sheriff Corso told the judge and the press that he was innocent and he declared the indictment to be a "weak, cheap attempt by a Democrat (the District Attorney) to destroy the Republican party in this county. I have no intention whatsoever of stepping down. I know I will be completely vindicated on all of these charges."

It was no secret that Corso, aged 54, was a life-long Republican and active in the party. It was also true that O'Brien was on a tear and that this indictment against Corso was just the tip of the iceburg in his office's investigation of both corruption within the county's police force and collusion between the Republican Party and the SCPD. O'Brien had ordered wire taps and was subpoenaing records.

In the end, Philip F. Corso took a plea bargain. In May 1976, Corso admitted he was guilty of violating the state's Civil Service laws by selling tickets while on County Property. He resigned his position and was banned from holding public office for a year.

Corso vowed that we hadn't "seen the last of him" and suggested he might even run for sheriff again once the year was up but I can't find a record of him holding any elected or appointed office again.

Although, Corso was all smiles at an Old Timers Awards Ceremony in 1987.



photo courtesy of Suffolk County News, Jan 22, 1987 edition

The man who assumed Corso's office and responsibilities after the scandal was Donald Dilworth, a Democrat, who didn't linger long as Suffolk County's sheriff. In 1977, he would become the Suffolk County Police Commissioner.

For the most part, Corso seemed to be doing a good job but his tenure wasn't without incident.


Prior to his removal from office, Sheriff Corso had been named in a 1971 lawsuit brought by 22 inmates of Suffolk County's Riverhead Jail. Corso and Warden Charles Cyrta were accused of murdering the prisoners' pet mouse whom they had named Morris. The prisoners claimed that Morris was tame and had been trained to keep other mice and vermin, of which there was plenty, off of their cell tier but when jail officials discovered Morris, he was flushed down a toilet. Two months later this suit was dismissed by the Suffolk County Supreme Court after Justice L. Barron Hill toured the prison and found it a "an antiseptic, scrubbed stone environment." Hill pronounced Morris to have been a disease-carrying pest like any other then recited Robert Burns' quote about how "best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry."


In 1973, a US District Court ruled against Sheriff Corso and Warden Cleary when they tried to refuse the prisoners access to newspapers. Corso and Cleary claimed news from the outside world was disruptive and the accumulation of newspapers in the jail was a fire hazard but the judge found this censorship to be a violation of the inmates' First Amendment Rights.


Corso was also one of six people named in a class action lawsuit filed in March 1975 by Dinah Micaleff. On March 6, 1974, she was arrested on a bench warrant, detained for several hours and subjected to a full body and cavity search. Her crime? She was guilty of being delinquent in paying a $15 speeding ticket she'd received on March 30, 1973. In December 1977, U.S. District Court Judge George Pratt called for a halt to such practices as "there was no reasonable or rationale basis" for them and ruled that they violated the indivduals' 4th and 14th Amendments.


Philip F. Corso died August 29, 1994 at the age of 74.


In an August 11, 2006 NY Times interview, Thomas J. Spota, then Suffolk County's District Attorney, remembered Philip Corso as "Mr. Republican back in the '70s." In recalling the conviction of Corso, Spota claimed Corso cried afterwards and told him there was no worse punishment than walking into a courtroom as a person of stature and then walking out in terminal disgrace.