CHAPTER 2 Deals, cop contracts: Learning from the masters

By the mid-1970s, Melius was making his way on Long Island, having emerged from five sets of criminal charges without jail time. Largely responsible was brilliant, politically connected lawyer Richard Hartman, who became one of his two great mentors. The other was Alfonse D’Amato, and the ’70s were when D’Amato and Hartman first scored big.

Hartman won police contracts that made the counties’ officers among the highest paid in the country. D’Amato rose from Hempstead supervisor to U.S. senator.

D’Amato toughed out an investigation into kickbacks by town employees to the Republican Party; allegations of favoritism in placements into subsidized housing in his hometown, Island Park; and a district attorney’s report that concluded politically connected developers had received below-market leases on valuable properties in Mitchel Field.

Melius, meanwhile, bought Hartman’s headquarters building and, using politically involved lawyers, built a property portfolio worth millions. He joined civic boards. His foundation, named for his mother, made the first of what would become $2.8 million in charitable donations. He gave $1,000 to D’Amato’s 1980 Senate campaign, which he would follow over decades with more contributions to a range of politicians.