The Greek philosopher Diogenes walked around Athens in the daytime with a lighted lamp. He said he was looking for an honest man. There are no reports that he ever found one. We can all be excused for feeling like Diogenes while walking along, say, Jerome Avenue up by Van Cortlandt Park.

To the left is a filtration plant construction project where people in charge of large portions of it are accused in a 170-page indictment of taking money in return for hiring particular trucking companies. These latest revelations come on the heels of truly unbelievable cost overruns (see page 2).

To the right is 213th Street, a block that has long had a serious drug problem. Twenty-two people have been arrested for participating in that trade and four related murders (see front page).   

While it’s been a bad few weeks for a very small area, with crimes left and right, there is an up side to the situation. In the first place, we know that crime really is down from the really bad old days, though clearly still too prevalent. But more importantly, it would seem people involved in very bad things are actually getting caught.

People have exited the Deegan and driven down to 213th Street and back again for decades like it was a drivethrough drug mart. While the latest arrests won’t put a stop to the drug trade, there is a chance that things can be cleaned up a bit and the decent people in the neighborhood will be a little safer.

The mess that has long surrounded the Croton Filter plant, from the technological, legal, land use, financial and every other standpoint, has gotten completely out of hand. We hope that promised investigations will start to get to the bottom of whatever has really been going on.  

For us, that’s what it all comes down to, knowing what is really going on. There really is a lot of drug dealing going on in our communities. There really is corruption of big public projects. And there also really is unfairness in how resources are handed out in this city and how people are treated.

This brings us to the final point. There is a scientific principle that things are changed by observing them. Anyone who has ever had children knows that this is also true of people. Newspapers are here to watch what’s going on and then to tell people, so things can change for the better. Sometimes people don’t like people knowing what they are doing, but it’s like highway cops and speeding tickets: We don’t like them but we drive slower and more safely because of them.

If the public doesn’t pay attention and they don’t have a free press to help them pay attention, all sorts of bad things would get worse.