There were a number of gratifying moments at the Sunday night celebration of the Ramapo indictments at the Waterwheel restaurant but one of the most important for me was to see Tim Cronin and his wife Cathy again. Tim had come down from his home in Vermont.
Tim’s story goes back 12 years. It was one of the first feature-length stories that I posted on the website. What happened to Tim and his family provided me my first realization of how corruption emanating from one official in a town can spread out over the entire system. It’s no secret to even casual observers that St. Lawrence is a small, vindictive person whose ambitions far outreach any abilities he might think he possesses. But rarely do people see very much about those victimized by St. Lawrence and those sycophants and cowards who willingly line up behind him.
Tim Cronin is an important figure in the history of the Preserve Ramapo website. He has been a personal example for me, and a major part of my motivation to spend more than a decade exposing the corruption at Ramapo Town Hall, and trying to get those agencies responsible for policing local governments to act on what we have found. Now, the most powerful of those agencies, the U.S. Department of Justice will be handling the prosecution of St. Lawrence and others at Town Hall. [Read more…]