In an interview with the Associated Press, Connecticut’s new FBI chief Patricia Ferrick says investigating public corruption is at the top of her radar in a state that’s kept federal agents busy the past 15 years.
“You have to look for corruption to find it,” Ferrick said Wednesday, according to an AP story. “It doesn’t walk in the door. I made it pretty clear to my staff that is a priority for me.”
Ferrick predicted “there will be some press on corruption” during her tenure, according to AP.
Connecticut’s FBI headquarters is based in New Haven with an office in Bridgeport.
Ferrick background from FBI website.
On September 23, 2013, the FBI announced that outgoing Director Robert S. Mueller, III appointed Patricia M. Ferrick special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Haven Division. Ms. Ferrick most recently served as acting special agent in charge of the Milwaukee Division.
Ms. Ferrick began her career as a special agent with the FBI in September 1987. She first reported to the Pittsburgh Division, where she investigated organized crime and narcotics. In 1992, she transferred to the Miami Divison and was assigned to investigate white collar crime. While there, she led the formation of the first FBI/FEMA task force to combat government fraud related to Hurricane Andrew, which served as the model for similar task forces formed in response to subsequent disasters.
In 1999, Ms. Ferrick was assigned to the Washington Field Office, where she was subsequently promoted to supervisory special agent of public corruption and civil rights investigations in Northern Virginia. She received a lateral promotion in 2003 to the Public Corruption Unit at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in 2004, was promoted to chief of the unit.
Ms. Ferrick left the ranks of management in 2005 and transferred to the New Haven Division after being selected for a public corruption specialty assignment. Three years later, she was again promoted to the position of supervisory special agent at FBI Headquarters, where she managed policy issues related to the FBI’s human intelligent (HUMINT) program.
In 2010, she was promoted to assistant special agent in charge of the Minneapolis Division where she oversaw the white collar crime and intelligence programs. In 2012, she returned to FBI Headquarters as section chief with program management of field intelligent programs.
Prior to her appointment with the FBI, Ms. Ferrick was an officer with the New York City Police Department.
When municipal governance processes fail to be open, accountable and transparent, there is a dark and unknown area where human behavior can get off track. People begin to serve themselves and those they favor rather than serving the broad public. When ethical behavior is not specifically set out or understood to be the order of the day through lack of enforcement, bogging down in complexity, and failure to have real-life consequences for lapses of integrity, we are in the “dark land” again.
And where actual participation by all the people is so limited as to be unknown, and unexpected, then people opt out and fail to vote and give way to cynicism. Only when they gather in larger groups do they feel any power against the incumbent elect and the bureaucracy employed as public servants.
Perhaps the new chief of Federal investigatory power for this part of CT might make it a practice to provide in public commentary a pragmatic assessment of what “public corruption” means to her by way of Federal law. Time will tell.
Hey Pat, start with your Bridgeport office, they’ve been sitting on their hands for years.
Please come to Bridgeport. It will be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Can you please start with the $400K driveway? The fires and remediation and demolition at Remgrit … I could go on and on …
Good luck, Pat. You can retire with the perceived work you will have in Bridgeport.
Sounds like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
There’s also a hole in downtown Bridgeport. The FBI has been looking into it for years.
*** Start with the construction companies that donate to city political candidates and the rest of the organizations that represent and/or donate to political candidates who have something to gain from it, no? ***