Frank Serpico

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Francisco Vincent Serpico

New York City Police Department (NYPD)

Frank Serpico in 1971
Born April 14, 1936(1936-04-14)
Nickname Paco
Serpico
Place of birth Flag of the United States Brooklyn, New York
Years of service September 11, 1959 - June 15, 1972
Rank 1960 - Commissioned as a Patrolman
1971 - Promoted to Detective
Awards NYPD Medal of Honor
Other work Lecturer on occasion to students at universities and police academies

Francisco Vincent Serpico (born April 14, 1936) is a retired New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who is most famous for testifying against police corruption in 1971[1]. The majority of Serpico's fame, however, came after the release of the 1973 film, Serpico, which starred Al Pacino in the lead role.

“ Frank Serpico - The first police officer not only in the history of the New York Police Department, but in the history of any police department in the whole United States, to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systematic cop corruption-payoffs amounting to millions of dollars. ”
 
— Peter Maas, author of the biography Serpico[2]

Contents

[edit] Early years

Serpico was born in Brooklyn as the youngest child of Italian immigrants from Marigliano, in the province of Naples, Campania. His parents were Vincenzo and Maria Giovanna Serpico. At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the United States Army and spent two years in Korea. Later, he worked as a part-time private investigator and as a youth counselor while attending college.[3]

[edit] NYPD career

In 1959, Frank Serpico joined the NYPD, where he was sworn in as a probationary patrolman on September 11 of that year. Serpico was commissioned as a patrolman for the New York City Police Department on March 5, 1960, a job he would have for twelve years. He was first assigned to patrol in the 81st precinct. He then worked for the Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI) for two years doing jobs such as filing fingerprints.[4] Serpico was later assigned to work plainclothes where he encountered widespread corruption.[3]

Serpico's career as a plainclothes police officer working in Brooklyn and the Bronx to expose vice racketeering was short-lived, however, because he consistently avoided taking part in the corruption. Serpico risked his own safety to expose those who did.[3] In 1967, he reported "credible evidence of widespread, systematic police corruption".[citation needed] However, bureaucracy slowed down his efforts,[2] until he connected with another cop, David Durk, who helped him in his anti-corruption efforts. Serpico believed that his fellow partners knew about secret meetings that took place with police investigators and with no place left to go Serpico contributed to an April 25, 1970, New York Times front-page story on wide-spread corruption in the New York City Police Department.[2] This forced Mayor John V. Lindsay to take action by appointing a five-member panel to investigate police corruption. This panel ultimately became the Knapp Commission, named for its chairman, Whitman Knapp.

[edit] Questionable shooting and public interest

Serpico was shot during a drug bust on February 3, 1971, at 10:42 pm, during a stakeout at 778 Driggs Avenue, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Four cops from Brooklyn North had received a tip that a drug deal was going down. It seemed like a routine heroin bust.

The two officers Gary Roteman and Arthur Cesare stayed in a car out front; the third Paul Halley was standing in front of the apartment building. Serpico got out of the car, climbed up the fire escape, watched from the roof, went out the fire escape door, walked down the steps, watched the heroin buy, listened to the password and then followed the two kids out.[5]

The police jumped out at the two kids, one of whom had two bags of heroin. Halley stayed in the car with the two kids with the heroin when Roteman told Serpico to make a fake drug buy to get the door open for the rest of them, because he spoke Spanish. Three officers went up the steps to the third-floor landing. Serpico knocked on the door with his other hand inside his jacket on his .38. The door opened a few inches, the chain still on. Serpico pushed and the chain snapped. It was enough for him to wedge part of his body in but the dealers on the other side were trying to close it. Serpico called out to his partners who did not come to help him.[5]

Serpico was shot in the face at point blank range with a .22 LR handgun. The bullet penetrated his cheek just below the eye and lodged at the top of his jaw; he lost balance, fell to the floor, and began to bleed profusely. Serpico's colleagues failed to place a "10-13," a dispatch to police headquarters indicating that an officer has been shot.[5] Instead, Serpico was saved by an elderly Hispanic man who lived in an apartment adjacent to the one being used by the suspects; the man called emergency services and reported that a man had been shot, and then stayed with Serpico to help keep him alive until an ambulance arrived.[5] A police squad car arrived prior to the ambulance, however, and the officers, unaware of the bloodied Serpico's identity, took him to Greenpoint Hospital.

Serpico 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. Although he was visited the day after the shooting by Mayor John V. Lindsay and Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, while he lay recovering in bed from his wounds, the police department harassed him with hourly bed checks. He survived, and ultimately testified in front of the Knapp Commission.

The circumstances surrounding Serpico's shooting quickly came into question. Serpico, who was armed and holding a .38 snub-nose during the drug raid, had only been shot 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, bringing into question if Serpico had actually been brought to the apartment by his colleagues to be executed.

On May 3, 1971, New York Metro Magazine published an article about Serpico titled "Portrait Of An Honest Cop". On May 10, 1971, Serpico testified at the departmental trial of an NYPD lieutenant who was accused of taking bribes from gamblers. On May 14, 1971, Serpico was given a gold shield by the police commissioner and promoted to detective.

[edit] Testimony in front of the Knapp Commission

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In October, and again in December 1971, Serpico testified before the Knapp Commission:[5]

“ 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... We create an atmosphere in which the honest officer fears the dishonest officer, and not the other way around... 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 New York police department to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systemic corruption payoffs amounting to millions of dollars.[6]

[edit] Retirement

One month after receiving the New York City Police Department's highest honor, the Medal of Honor, Frank Serpico retired on June 15, 1972. He went to Europe to recuperate and spent almost a decade there, living, traveling and studying. 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 did it, Serpico replied:[7]

“ 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. While living in upstate NY, Serpico was introduced to Officer Joseph Trimboli by New York Post reporter Mike Mcalary. Trimboli himself was a police officer who had a very hard time after he witnessed and tried to stop widespread police corruption in the late eighties and early nineties.

Serpico still speaks out against police corruption and brutality. Serpico 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 alleged cover-up following the Amadou Diallo shooting in 1999.[8]

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.

[edit] Marriages

Serpico married four times. In 1957, he married Mary Ann Wheeler before becoming a police officer, but they were divorced in 1962. In 1963, Serpico married Leslie Lane, whom he met in college, but she divorced him in 1965 and moved to Texas to marry someone else. In 1966, Serpico married Laurie Young but they divorced in 1969. Serpico married his most recent wife, Marianne from Holland, in 1973; she died of cancer in 1980.[5]

Has one son, Alexander Serpico, born March 15th, 1980.

[edit] Serpico in media

Serpico, a biography by Peter Maas, sold over 3 million copies. It was adapted for the screenplay of the 1973 film titled Serpico, which was directed by Sidney Lumet and starred Al Pacino in the title role. In 1976 David Birney starred as Serpico in a TV-movie called The Deadly Game, broadcast on NBC. This led to a short-lived Serpico TV series the following fall on the same network. Also, in the book Torpedo Juice by Tim Dorsey there is a character with the nickname Serpico.

[edit] Biography

  • Maas, Peter; Serpico, Frank (2005). Serpico: The Classic Story of the Cop Who Couldn't Be Bought. New York: Perennial. ISBN 978-006073818-1. 

[edit] Filmography

  • A&E Biography: Frank Serpico (2000) (TV) .... Himself
  • American Justice: Cops on Trial (2000) (TV) .... Himself

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Clyde Haberman. "Serpico Steps Out of the Shadows to Testify", The New York Times, September 24, 1997. Retrieved on 2007-10-25. 
  2. ^ a b c Serpico Testifies. New York Magazine (2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-25.
  3. ^ a b c Frank Serpico biography. frankserpico.com (2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-24.
  4. ^ Cops have their say. intergate.com (2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-25.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Kathleen F. Phalen (Jan./Feb. 2001). Frank Serpico: The fate that gnaws at him. Gadfly. Retrieved on 2007-10-25.
  6. ^ David Burnham. "Graft Paid to Police Here Said to Run Into Millions", The New York Times, April 25, 1970. 
  7. ^ Kathir Vel. "Bringing the lamplighter to the limelight", rayman.kathirvel.com, November 06, 2005. Retrieved on 2007-10-25. 
  8. ^ Peg Tyre. "Serpico resurrects his decades—old criticism of NYPD", CNN, September 23, 1997. Retrieved on 2007-10-25.