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Guests

Frank Serpico whistleblower, former NYPD detective

Dennis Bernstein multi award winning Investigative journalist (bio below Serpico)

Francesco Vincent "Frank" Serpico (born April 14, 1936) is a retired American New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who holds both American and Italian citizenship. He is known for whistleblowing on police corruption in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an act that prompted Mayor John V. Lindsay to appoint the landmark Knapp Commission to investigate the NYPD.[3] Much of Serpico's fame came after the release of the 1973 film Serpico, which was based on the book by Peter Maas and which starred Al Pacino in the title role, for which Pacino was nominated for an Oscar.

NYPD[edit]

On September 11, 1959, Serpico joined the New York City Police Department (NYPD) as a probationary patrolman. He became a full patrolman on March 5, 1960. He was assigned to the 81st precinct, then worked for the Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI) for two years.[5] He was finally assigned to work plainclothes, where he uncovered widespread corruption.[4]

Serpico was a plainclothes police officer working in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan to expose vice racketeering. In 1967 he reported credible evidence of widespread systematic police corruption. Nothing happened,[6] until he met another police officer, David Durk, who helped him. Serpico believed his partners knew about his secret meetings with police investigators. Finally, he contributed to an April 25, 1970, New York Times front-page story on widespread corruption in the NYPD which drew national attention to the problem.[6] Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed a five-member panel to investigate accusations of police corruption. The panel became the Knapp Commission, named after its chairman, Whitman Knapp.[7]

Shooting and public interest[edit]

Serpico was shot during a drug arrest attempt on February 3, 1971, at 778 Driggs Avenue, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Four officers from the Brooklyn North police precinct received a tip that a drug deal was about to take place. Two policemen, Gary Roteman and Arthur Cesare, stayed outside, while the third, Paul Halley, stood in front of the apartment building. Serpico climbed up the fire escape, entered by the fire escape door, went downstairs, listened for the password, then followed two suspects outside.[8]

The police arrested the young suspects, and found one had two bags of heroin. Halley stayed with the suspects, and Roteman told Serpico, who spoke Spanish, to make a fake purchase attempt to get the drug dealers to open the door. The police went to the third-floor landing. Serpico knocked on the door, keeping his hand on his revolver. The door opened a few inches, just far enough to wedge his body in. Serpico called for help, but his fellow officers ignored him.[8]

Serpico was then shot in the face by the suspect, with a .22 LR pistol, and the bullet struck just below the eye lodging at the top of his jaw. He fired back,[9] fell to the floor, and began to bleed profusely. His police colleagues refused to make a "10-13" dispatch to police headquarters indicating that an officer had been shot. An elderly man who lived in the next apartment called the emergency services reporting that a man had been shot and stayed with Serpico.[8] When a police car arrived, aware that Serpico was a fellow officer, they transported him in the patrol car to Greenpoint Hospital.[9]

The bullet had severed an auditory nerve, leaving him deaf in one ear, and he has suffered from chronic pain from bullet fragments lodged in his brain. He was visited the day after the shooting by Mayor John V. Lindsay and Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, and the police department harassed him with hourly bed checks. He later testified before the Knapp Commission.[10]

The circumstances surrounding Serpico's shooting quickly came into question. Serpico, who was armed during the drug raid, had been shot only after briefly turning away from the suspect when he realized that the two officers who had accompanied him to the scene were not following him into the apartment, raising the question whether Serpico had actually been brought to the apartment by his colleagues to be murdered. There was no formal investigation.[9]

On May 3, 1971, New York Metro Magazine published an article about Serpico, "Portrait of an Honest Cop". On May 10, 1971, he testified at the departmental trial of an NYPD lieutenant who was accused of taking bribes from gamblers.[citation needed]

Testimony before the Knapp Commission[edit]

In October, and again in December 1971, Serpico testified before the Knapp Commission:[8]

“ Through my appearance here today... I hope that police officers in the future will not experience... the same frustration and anxiety that I was subjected to... for the past five years at the hands of my superiors... because of my attempt to report corruption. I was made to feel that I had burdened them with an unwanted task. The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist... in which an honest police officer can act... without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. Police corruption cannot exist unless it is at least tolerated...at higher levels in the department. Therefore, the most important result that can come from these hearings... is a conviction by police officers that the department will change. In order to ensure this... an independent, permanent investigative body... dealing with police corruption, like this commission, is essential.. ”

Serpico was the first police officer in the history of the New York City Police Department to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systemic corruption payoffs amounting to millions of dollars.[11]

Retirement and activism[edit]

Serpico retired on June 15, 1972, one month after receiving the New York City Police Department's highest honor, the Medal of Honor. There was no ceremony; according to Serpico, it was simply handed to him over the desk "like a pack of cigarettes".[12] He went to Switzerland to recuperate and spent almost a decade living there and on a farm in the Netherlands, as well as traveling and studying.[12]

When it was decided to make the movie about his life called Serpico, Al Pacino invited Serpico to stay with him at a house that Pacino had rented in Montauk, New York. When Pacino asked why he had stepped forward, 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?"[13] He has credited his grandfather who had once been assaulted and robbed and his uncle, a respected policeman in Italy, with his sense of justice.[14][15]

Serpico still speaks out against police corruption, brutality, the weakening of civil liberties, and corrupt practices in law enforcement, such as the alleged cover-ups following Abner Louima's torture in 1997 and Amadou Diallo's shooting in 1999.[16] He provides support to "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", which refers to alerting the public to danger,[17] just as Paul Revere was credited with doing during the American Revolutionary War.[citation needed]

A policeman’s first obligation is to be responsible to the needs of the community he serves…The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which an honest police officer can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. We create an atmosphere in which the honest officer fears the dishonest officer, and not the other way around.

— Frank Serpico [18]

In an October 2014 interview published by Politico entitled "The Police Are Still Out of Control... I Should Know", Serpico addresses contemporary issues of police violence.[19]

In 2015 Serpico announced he was running for a seat on the town board of Stuyvesant, New York, where he resides, his first foray into politics.[20]

Among police officers, his actions are still controversial,[21] but Eugene O'Donnell, professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, states that "he becomes more of a heroic figure with every passing year."[22]

Effect on the NYPD[edit]

As a result of Serpico’s efforts, the NYPD was drastically changed.[12] Michael Armstrong, who was counsel to the Knapp Commission and went on to become chairman of the city’s Commission to Combat Police Corruption, observed in 2012 “the attitude throughout the department seems fundamentally hostile to the kind of systemized graft that had been a way of life almost 40 years ago.”[23]

Dennis Bernstein

Dennis Bernstein lives in San Francisco and has been a long-time front
line reporter specializing in human rights and international affairs.
He worked as associate editor with the Pacific News Service, and is
currently the host/producer of “Flashpoints,” a daily news magazine
syndicated on Pacifica Radio. He is the recipient of many awards for
his investigative reporting, including the 2015 Pillar Award in
Broadcast Journalism, the Jessie Meriton White Sevice Award in
International Journalism, the National Federation of Community
Broadcasters Gold Reel Award, The Art of Peace Award, the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Reporting Award, Media
Alliance/Media Bash Investigative Reporting Award, and his
investigative reports have been recognized by Project Censored many
times. In 2009, Pulse Media named him one of the “20 Top Global Media
Figures.” Bernstein’s articles and essays have appeared in numerous
newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Denver Post,
Philadelphia Enquirer, Newsday, The Nation, Dallas Times Herald, San
Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Mother Jones, Village Voice, The
Progressive, Vibe Magazine, Spin Magazine, Toronto Globe, Kyoto
Journal, Der Spiegel, International Herald Tribune, and many more.
Bernstein taught “Special Ed” for ten years in schools and maxium
security prisons. He has taught teens in the South Bronx, Brooklyn and
Harlem—how to report and produce for print and radio—and is the
founder of the South Bronx Media Collective and Young Writers Radio
Collective. He started in radio as a poetry producer, and founded the
Muriel Rukeyser Reading Series in Park Slope Brooklyn, and broadcast
over WBAI, in New York City; the series was named after his teacher,
the late poet and biographer, Muriel Rukeyser. Bernstein also produced
the first complete live, 35 hour broadcast of James Joyce’s Ulysses in
the U.S. at New York’s Bloomsday Bookstore and over Pacifica radio.
Bernstein most recent collection of poems Special Ed: Voices from a
Hidden Classroom (NY Quarterly Books) was based on his experiences as
a teacher. It won the 2012 Artists Embassy International Literary
Cultural Award and accolades from Alice Walker and others. His first
poems appeared as a chapbook, Particles of Light, with woodcuts by
Stan Kaplan. His artists books/plays French Fries and GRRRHHHH: a
study of Social Patterns, co-authored with Warren Lehrer, are
considered seminal works in the genre, and are in the collections of
the Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Centre, and other
museums around the world. Bernstein is also the author of Henry Hyde’s
Moral Universe, the co-author of two decks of political trading cards,
Friendly Dictators and the S&L Scandal Trading Cards. Bernstein’s
poetry has been published widely in The Texas Observer, New York
Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, The Progressive, Bat City Review, The Poetry Super
Highway Poet of the Week, Your Daily Poem, Red River Review, The
Bird’s Eye Review, J Journal, Helicon Nine, The Dickens, Dark Horse,
Edison Literary Review, The Chimaera, Science for the People, Ars
Medica, The Bijou Review, Shot Glass Journal.