"Indictment Friday" has become just another day

<p><table width="380" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td>By Andy Grimm / Post-Tribune staff writer</td></tr></table>
<p>
<p><b>HAMMOND '' </b>What ever happened to 'indictment Fridays'?
<p>This time last spring, the tension in Lake County political circles used to build like a lottery jackpot each week before Friday news conferences hosted by U.S. Attorney Joseph Van Bokkelen.
<p>Starting on a May Friday in 2001, with the indictment of Gary City Clerk Katie Hall, 30 local elected officials, political insiders had been named in a series of grand jury indictments announced by Van Bokkelen, most on Friday afternoons in the basement of the federal courthouse here.
<p>Fridays, Van Bokkelen admits, have become less of an occasion as most of his prosecutors have been tied up taking those charges to trial.
<p>'We probably created an expectation,' said Van Bokkelen, who once closed a news conference waggishly promising reporters, 'See you next Friday.'
<p>Van Bokkelen knows people are waiting. The wave of indictments has turned the once-jaded residents of Northwest Indiana into enthusiastic, and sometimes overzealous, informants on the topic of corruption in their towns. Chasing down those leads and gathering evidence to get a grand jury indictment '' much less to try a case '' takes time.
<p>'It takes a lot of gearing up to try a case, and it''s the very people that were presenting those indictments that are in court,' Van Bokkelen said. 'You sort of re-trench.'
<p>More indictments are to come, Van Bokkelen said.
<p>Federal prosecutors nationwide have some latitude when choosing where to focus their staff. In most judicial districts, the top priorities typically are prosecuting drug or organized crime networks.
<p>In Van Bokkelen''s Northern District of Indiana, he chose public corruption as his top target, followed by firearms cases, gangs, drugs and terrorism.
<p>As a Republican appointee in a region run by Democratic elected officials, the order of that list has caused some of his indictees to complain he has been charged with conducting a politically motivated witch hunt.
<p>'I live here,' Van Bokkelen said. 'Nobody told me as U.S. attorney to go after public corruption in Northwest Indiana.'
<p>Van Bokkelen says a special federal grand jury remains impaneled exclusively to unravel cases of public corruption, and grand juries in Hammond and South Bend also review public corruption.
<p>Some longtime residents who recall the fanfare and flurry of high-profile indictments during the Operation Lights Out probe of the 1980s are concerned Van Bokkelen''s office is running out of steam.
<p>'Here I am 20 years later and (public officials are) at it again,' Van Bokkelen said. 'The only difference this time is hopefully, we don''t stop till we''re done.'
<p>Contact Andy Grimm at 881-3148 or <a href="mailto:[email protected]"><b>[email protected]</b></a&gt;