ALBANY — The scandal engulfing Gov. Paterson claimed another victim last night as State Police Superintendent Harry Corbitt was forced out after he came under fire for allowing a senior officer to repeatedly contact a woman who charged she was attacked by a top aide to the governor.
Corbitt, handpicked for the job by Paterson, contended he had decided on his own to retire at the end of today — but sources told The Post he had little choice but to get out or find himself fired because of his conduct.
“He was toast,” said a source.
Also last night, it was reported that Paterson urged a female state employee who contacted Sherr-una Booker, the Bronx woman who alleged she was attacked, to tell her he wanted the incident to disappear.
“Tell her [Booker] the governor wants her to make this go away,” Paterson told Deneane Brown before she reached out to Booker, The New York Times reported on its Web site.
POLL: SUPPORT FOR GOV AMOUNG WOMEN DROPS
However, a law-enforcement source and a spokesman for Paterson both denied that Brown had used those exact words.
The source said it wasn’t clear if the governor wanted Booker to agree to end her legal efforts to obtain an order of protection against her boyfriend, David Johnson, Paterson’s top adviser.
Paterson may also have been trying to get Booker to assist him in knocking down widespread rumors that damaging newspaper reports were about to be published, the source said.
Corbitt had been tapped by Paterson to clean up the already scandal-scarred State Police two years ago in the wake of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation. Corbitt yesterday insisted he was tired of “being attacked every day” after it was revealed that Maj. Charles Day, head of the governor’s security detail, sought to persuade Booker, a divorced mom, to drop an effort obtain court protection against Johnson.
Corbitt, who publicly contended that it was appropriate and standard practice for the State Police to get involved in such a controversy because it involved someone close to the governor, has been widely condemned by state lawmakers and others for his actions.
“I’m a cop, a good cop, so to continue to face that pressure — and even pressure from my family — the media showing up in my driveway, that’s unacceptable,” Corbitt said during an interview on Albany’s Capital News 9.
“So for my own health, for my own sanity, it’s the right thing to do.”
Corbitt was ripped for claiming that the State Police’s contacting of Booker — which she described in court as harassment and pressure to drop her case — was routine.
“We never pressured her, at least what I was advised; we never pressured her not to press charges,” Corbitt told the Times. “We just gave her options.”
Booker had told a 911 dispatcher and a Family Court judge that Johnson, one of Paterson’s closest aides and longtime friend, choked and beat her last Halloween.
Paterson was revealed to have talked to Booker a day before she decided to drop her quest for the protection order.
The governor suspended Johnson without pay from his $132,000-a-year job last week.
Corbitt and Deputy Superintendent Pedro Perez testified under oath Monday before Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigators.
Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn) praised Corbitt’s departure as “entirely appropriate, and hopefully it is a substantial first step toward reforming an institution desperately in need of change.”
Corbitt came under the most intense heat last week, after Paterson’s deputy secretary for criminal justice, Denise O’Donnell, resigned in protest of what she claimed was Corbitt’s improper use of the State Police.
Corbitt joined the State Police more than 30 years ago and rose through the ranks to become a colonel and then deputy superintendent. He initially retired in 2004.
Corbitt was recalled by Paterson to replace Preston Felton as head of the State Police after Spitzer’s resignation and in the wake of Spitzer’s use of the State Police to gather purportedly damaging material on then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.
Last night, Cuomo, in his first public comment on the politically explosive probe, promised to complete it “as far as we can.”