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Lawyers in private practice don’t make for good public defenders

    Re Feb. 18 article, “Chief: Cop ‘stealing time’”: Those concerned with [the] conduct of public officials’ overtime payments need not look only at the Schenectady police. Being paid for services never provided is something I personally can tell you goes on frequently at the Schenectady County Public Defender’s Office as well.
    New York state doesn’t provide effective counsel for indigent defendants, and never has. “Negligent” is more the word. Attorneys who hold a private practice ought to be barred from collecting a government paycheck for work scarcely performed in the first place — work they supposedly are doing for those who cannot afford their own lawyer.
    Young attorneys and others who aren’t associates of a private practice and who work as a public defender have only what they make from the county as income. However, there are other, more “connected” lawyers who merely pose as defenders of the accused — if they even come to court at all. Gratuitously invited into the circle, these private practice lawyers — some, not all — steal money from the taxpayer.
    They aren’t focused on cases next to ones they’ve already been paid, privately, to represent. Their stake isn’t rooted in compensation from the county. On a given week, it is a fraction of their mainstay incomes.
    The duality of certain lawyers’ careers is rooted strictly in local establishment customers, which nobody is overseeing.
    Schenectady’s officers may not all be truthful when it comes to their time, and there may well be a cover-up of such. However, when lawyers themselves are doing the same thing, there’s an even more profound moral issue.
Those above board at our state Bar Association, with prodding from the federal government, ought to halt this disgusting form of constitutional right violations.

ANTHONY P. COPPOLA III
Niskayuna