Ho-hum attitude toward gambling, bribery wrong

Earlier this month, Warren Atty. Robert Shaker made the following observation about his client, Joseph Cupido of Niles, who has been charged with two counts of operating an illegal gambling business: "He is a 63-year-old retired gentleman who has had two heart operations. This is a gambling charge in the Mahoning Valley -- we aren't talking about a murder charge."
Cupido pleaded innocent in U.S. District Court in Cleveland.
We wonder whether Shaker was as taken aback as we were when he saw his words in print in The Vindicator. Here's the message we derived from the lawyer's statement: Illegal gambling is part of the Valley's culture and, therefore, it's no big deal.
For an officer of the court to attempt to make a distinction between two criminal acts -- they both contribute to the moral and economic deterioration of the region -- suggests to us that even the intelligentsia, to borrow one of syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell's favorite words, of our community need to re-examine their attitudes when it comes to crime.
No, we aren't being overly dramatic. FBI agents and federal prosecutors who have been involved in the crackdown on organized crime and government corruption have often talked about the absence of public anger toward the Mafia's illegal activities and the selling of justice and public contracts by officeholders and bureaucrats.
Unique
One former assistant United States attorney who had been assigned to the Youngstown office went so far as to suggest that what has historically taken place in the Mahoning Valley could not be found anywhere else in the country.
And that uniqueness was illustrated recently in a Vindicator news story about Dante Massacci Sr. and Dante Massacci Jr., who owned South Main Sand and Gravel and were accused in a federal bill of information of paying an unidentified Warren city official $70,000 to obtain more than $770,000 in city contracts.
The Massaccis have pleaded innocent. Their lawyers, John Fowler and Leo Keating, described them as "good people that were trying to support their families." And, Fowler and Keating characterized the payments their clients made to the official to secure public contracts as the "price of doing business."
"They were told that in order to get city business, they had to pay," Fowler said.
In other words, the price of doing business in Warren was a bribe.
Where was the outrage from Fowler and Keating? Where was the outrage from the two accused? Why didn't they go to the FBI the moment the city official suggested the bribery scheme?
As we have pointed out in this space on several occasions, for bribery to occur there must be an individual in a position of authority demanding money and there must be an individual in the community willing to shell out the money.
The Mahoning Valley has paid too high a price for its corrupt government officials and its residents who see nothing wrong in participating in corruption schemes.