Frank Serpico
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Image:FrankSerpico.jpg Frank Serpico (born April 14, 1936) is a former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who gained fame in 1971 as the first police officer to testify against police corruption.
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Early years
Born in Brooklyn, Serpico was the youngest child of Italian immigrants. At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the United States Army. Later, he worked as a part-time private investigator and as a youth counselor while attending college.
Career
In 1959 Frank Serpico joined the NYPD. He was sworn in as a probationary patrolman on September 11, 1959. He was handed his shield and immediately went out and got it replated so it would be shiny and garner respect. His swearing in was the culmination of a lifetime dream of becoming what he respected most — a cop.
He was commissioned as a patrolman for the New York City Police Department on March 5, 1960. He worked for the BCI for two years filing fingerprints before he was assigned to plainclothes. He was first assigned to patrol in the 81st precinct; later he was assigned to work plainclothes, where he encountered widespread corruption. He was a police officer for 12 years. After numerous failed attempts to report this corruption within the established police and governmental framework, he finally went to the New York Times, which published an exposé.
Serpico's career as a plainclothes police detective working in Brooklyn and the Bronx to expose vice racketeering was short-lived, however, because he swam against the tide of corruption that engulfed the NYPD during the 1960s and early 1970s. Not only did he consistently refuse to take bribes for "looking the other way," he risked his own safety to expose those who did. In 1967 he reported to appropriate officials "credible evidence of widespread, systematic police corruption."
Knapp Commission
In 1970, Serpico went public on police corruption, speaking of bribery and kickbacks. Partially in response to this, New York City Mayor John Lindsay established the Knapp Commission to investigate the assertions. Serpico received numerous death threats, having testified against a former partner. Somehow they knew of Serpico's supposedly secret meetings with top police investigators. It was not until April 1970, however, when the New York Times published an explosive story, that Mayor John Lindsay took action and appointed the Knapp Commission to investigate.
Betrayal
During a drug bust on February 3, 1971, Serpico was shot point blank in the face. It is believed that his fellow officers were trying to silence him by setting him up to be shot, and then not calling for help. Frank's "colleagues", with whom he had been working since being assigned to narcotics, failed to call in an officer distress signal and left him bleeding on a tenement stairwell. An elderly Hispanic gentleman comforted Frank and called the police. One solitary police car responded; Frank's colleagues were nowhere in sight. Frank paid a high price for the courage he displayed as a lone honest cop. Following this incident, and after discovering the Mafia/(Police) had placed a contract on his life, Serpico was forced to give up his career as a detective.
Frank was deafened in his left ear by the gunshot, which severed an auditory nerve, and has suffered chronic pain from fragments lodged in his brain. Serpico survived and continued to testify for the Knapp Commission. While Frank was sick in bed recovering from a gunshot wound, the police department harassed him with hourly bed checks.
On May 3, 1971, New York Metro Magazine published an article about Serpico titled "Portrait Of An Honest Cop". In October 1971, Serpico testified before the Knapp Commission: "The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which honest police officers can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers." Frank Serpico was the first police officer in the history of the United States to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systemic police corruption payoffs amounting to millions of dollars.
Retirement
Frank Serpico retired from the NYPD on June 15, 1972. He was awarded the Medal Of Honor for "Conspicuous Bravery In Action". Frank moved to Europe with his Old English Sheepdog, Alfie, to recuperate and spent almost a decade there, living, traveling and studying. While traveling and studying in Europe, Frank was detained, strip searched, and warned by Customs Agents: Their message was "if we want you, we got you." Worse, when he attempted to start a new life in Europe, his 29-year-old wife whom he had met there died of cancer. Probably as a consequence of all these occurences, he had to cope with long-term depression. Frank lived in Switzerland from 1972 until the FBI ran him out for refusing to cooperate with them in an investigation into New York/New Jersey police corruption. Before fleeing he told them, "where the hell were you when I needed you? You waited for me to retire to break my chops." He managed to evade their pursuit and drove to Germany and the Westfailia VW factory. He purchased a camper and went to Holland and toured the world before returning to the U.S. in 1980.
When they decided to make the movie about Frank's life called Serpico, Al Pacino invited Frank Serpico to stay with him at a house that Pacino had rented in Montauk, New York. When Pacino asked Serpico, "Why did you do it?" Serpico replied, "Well, Al, I don't know. I guess I would have to say it would be because ... if I didn't, who would I be when I listened to a piece of music?"
He returned to New York City quietly in 1980. He currently resides in the mountains of New York State, studying and lecturing on occasion to students at universities and police academies and sharing experiences with police officers who are currently going through similar experiences. He still speaks out against police corruption and brutality. Frank has studied various cultures and speaks a number of languages. He has also studied animal and human behavior, alternative medicine, music, art, literature and philosophy among other disciplines. He continues to speak out against both the weakening of civil liberties and corrupt practices in law enforcement, such as the attempted cover-up following the Amadou Diallo shooting in 1999. He provides support for "individuals who seek truth and justice even in the face of great personal risk." He calls them "lamp lighters", a term he prefers to the more common "whistleblowers", because it evokes memories of the historic ride in which Paul Revere made a great deal of noise and caused the lanterns to be lit.
Serpico in media
Serpico, a biography by Peter Maas, sold over 3 million copies. It was adapted for the screenplay of the 1973 film of the same name, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino in the title role.
Filmography
- A&E Biography: Frank Serpico (2000) (TV) .... Himself
- American Justice: Cops on Trial (2000) (TV) .... Himself