Top NY official quits amid question of impropriety

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A senior New York state official who supervises police resigned on Thursday following a newspaper report that Governor David Paterson and police officers may have improperly intervened in assault allegations against another Paterson aide.

Denise O'Donnell, deputy secretary for Public Safety, said in her resignation statement that contacts by the governor and state police with a woman seeking a protective order against Paterson aide David Johnson were "unacceptable regardless of their intent."

The unidentified woman seeking the protective order accused Johnson of violent assault last fall, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

The woman said state police harassed her to drop her case, and police confirmed a member of the governor's personal security team visited her, the Times said.

Paterson telephoned her before a court hearing earlier this month. After the call, she failed to appear and her case was dismissed, the Times said.

Paterson was already fighting for his political life before this latest report. With low approval ratings, he has resisted calls from fellow Democrats to drop his re-election bid in November. He took office two years ago when former Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal.

O'Donnell said she first was led to believe local police were handling the case against the Paterson aide and that state police were not involved.

"It was only last night when I learned from press reports the contrary details, including the involvement of the State Police," O'Donnell wrote. "For these reasons, I am resigning my position as Commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services and Deputy Secretary of Public Safety effective today."

Johnson, a Paterson confidant, has been suspended.

Paterson, during a radio interview, refused to say whether he had called the woman.

"I don't want to talk about that," he said, adding that he has referred the case to the state attorney general.

"I'll just let the facts come out, and I think that will be the best way for it to work," he said.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office said it was examining whether "criminal or other wrongdoing is involved."

Cuomo, who far outpaces Paterson in campaign funding and public opinion polls, is expected to challenge Paterson for the Democratic governor's nomination this year.

(Additional reporting by Joan Gralla and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Mark Egan and Alan Elsner)