Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, addressed the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs on Thursday, April 23.  His topic was Serving the Public: Ethics and Public Office.    Fitzgerald’s office  recently brought now-pending fraud and bribery charges against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.  He was special prosecutor in the trial and conviction of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.  

Here are some of Fitzgerald’s bullet points as reported in today’s Seattle Times article headlined Patrick Fitzgerald tells UW audience public must fight corruption:

• “The public needs to stand up when it knows something is rotten, not simply accept graft, bribery and greed as a cost of doing business.”
• “The metric of whether or not you’re doing a good job is not whether or not you get indicted.”
• “…corruption in business or government can exist only if people who know about it do nothing.”

 He also said, “The answer to corruption is not necessarily at the end of handcuffs.”  He meant that honest law enforcement can’t fight public corruption alone.  When the public says, “Let the cops handle it; it’s not my job, it’s not my problem,” then we have become a passive accomplice to the problem, not a contributor to the solution.