At Least He Has A Passing Familiarity With Jails

Ba-Da Bing Bernie... time's up.

Federal prosecutors are scheduled to seek a grand jury indictment on Thursday of Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, on a list of charges that include tax fraud, corruption and conspiracy counts, according to people who have been briefed on the case.

The grand jury, sitting in Westchester, N.Y., has been hearing evidence about Mr. Kerik for about a year as part of a broad federal inquiry into a variety of allegations, including his acceptance of $165,000 in renovations from a contractor who was seeking a city license.

Prosecutors are also seeking to charge Mr. Kerik with failing to report as income more than $200,000 in rent that is alleged to have been paid on his behalf to use a luxury Upper East Side apartment where he lived with his family around the time he left his city post, the people who were briefed said.

But hey, Kerik happened to be in the Police Commissioner's post when William Bratton's crime policies and William Jefferson Clinton's COPS program helped make New York safer, so that puts him well above the law. Even if some of these criminally indictable actions occurred before he assumed that post, and his boss Rudy Giuliani knew it, and ignored them altogether.