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Serpico
by Peter Maas
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The biography of NYPD Officer Frank Serpico. The 1960s was a time of social and generational upheaval felt with particular intensity in the melting pot of New York City. A culture of corruption pervaded the New York Police Department, where payoffs, protection, and shakedowns of gambling rackets and drug dealers were common practice. The so-called blue code of silence protected the minority of crooked cops from the sanction of the majority. Into this maelstrom came a working class, Brooklyn-born, Italian cop with long hair, a beard, and a taste for opera and ballet. Frank Serpico was a man who couldn't be silenced -- or bought -- and he refused to go along with the system. He had sworn an oath to uphold the law, even if the perpetrators happened to be other cops.…
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"Serpico is also a terrific book. It’s about a guy named Frank Serpico, in the 70s, who was a patrolman who happened to be a very honest cop. He was assigned to undercover narcotics in New York, busting people for dealing or being in possession of drugs. He was assigned to this unit and he found out that all of the officers were on the take, and not arresting people for any kind of so-called vice. There were detectives who would just take money and let everybody run their own shows. Serpico refused to go along with that and the other cops insisted that he take the money and he wouldn’t. Eventually they virtually set up an ambush and he was shot in the head but was miraculously able to recover. There was an incredibly big scandal after which many high-ranking police executives were forced to retire and effectively the scandal ended that kind of on-the-take corruption in New York City, which had been a tradition for 200 years. Then New York, like other police departments — particularly departments like the LAPD — became involved in a different form of corruption, which is violating the constitutional rights of people and never being held accountable for it: beating people, shooting people. That’s the main corruption right now that big city policing in America faces."