Frank Serpico was definitely a smart, dynamic, and ambitious
police officer, if everything in this book is true. History treats him as a
martyred hero, with all the praise for risking his life and being brave enough
to do what others didn’t. However, I find some holes in the story, with regard
to how much he really accomplished. Despite being a working class Italian cop from
Brooklyn, he doesn’t come off as street smart. Throughout the book he seems to
go out of his way not to be trusted by his peers, and that’s not a way to
accomplish anything. He cultivates the most bizarre image and persona, hiding
behind a beard and funny clothes, constantly trying to reinvent himself. It’s
one thing to adopt the look of a shabby hippy in order to go undercover, but
Serpico wanted to be a hippy and a cop at the same time. He does things that
undermine his credibility, and complains constantly instead of taking care of
things himself. After reading this book, I have to wonder if Serpico is really
worthy of all the praise that he received.
For some reason it
took Serpico a decade to become a detective, despite having a college degree,
multiple languages, a great arrest record, and top marksmanship skills. He was
accused of being a peeping tom, which may or may not have been true, but even
without an accusation like that, he comes off as a troublemaker. He’s always
complaining about the other cops, but never makes any effort to improve things
for his fellow officers. There’s a part where he finds all the night shift
officers camping out in a basement (known as “cooping”) so he goes out on
patrol by himself. That’s good, he takes the initiative and makes an arrest.
But he could have tried to convince one of them to go along with him. He takes
issue with the corruption in the plainclothes division, but he could have asked
to be reassigned to uniform. Not the best way to become a detective, I agree,
but he could still have accomplished great things. It was a waste for him to
stay in a division for which he had nothing but disdain.
More outrageous
and bizarre incidents follow. He shoots a fleeing suspect in the back (without
knowing if he’s armed or not) then patrols his own neighborhood (a big no-no)
while disguised as an old man and carrying a sword cane (not allowed.) His
superiors aren’t happy, and no wonder, because he’s violating the rules to
arrest a mugger (and the charges would probably be dropped anyway.) He spends
half his time complaining about corrupt cops, but what does he expect? These
cops were paid crap, the bookies never got sent to prison, so why would the
vice cops make any effort? It’s no wonder the cops were all taking payoffs from
numbers runners, pimps, drug dealers, and professional burglars. It wasn’t cops
like Serpico that destroyed the numbers racket, but the legalization of the New
York Lotto.
History credits
Frank Serpico with exposing police corruption, and that’s how we’ll all
remember him. Whenever we hear the name, we’ll think of the Knapp Commission, and
the lone honest cop versus the dirty pigs, and all of his hippy heroics.
However, a lot of what he’s credited with was done by another cop named David
Durk, and that’s where things get weird. Durk was older than Serpico, had fewer
years on the force, but somehow got promoted faster. The two of them were
certainly an “odd couple” in every sense of the word; Durk was the tall blonde
Jewish guy, and Serpico was the scruffy little Italian-American hippy. A lot of
readers, not just myself, think that the media focused on Serpico exactly
because of that - he was an Italian - and they needed him to the be the big
hero! The Valacci Papers and The Godfather had hit the bookstores, furthering
the stereotype Italian-American criminal, and in Officer Serpico the media
found a more positive role-model. As for Durk, who risked his career to expose
corruption, he’s only a footnote in this book. Even the movie skips him over,
turning him into a waspy character named “Blaire.”
After the events
of this book, things didn’t go well for Serpico. He got shot in the face and it
left him partially deaf, then he left the force and lived in Europe for a
while, came back to the USA in the early 80’s. In the 1990’s he was in the
spotlight again, thanks to the Abner Louima case and the new debate on police
brutality, but few really cared about his opinion. As for David Durk, he got
promoted to Lieutenant, but the NYPD stuck him in boring jobs he didn’t like,
and when he retired he got screwed on his pension. Like Serpico, he left the
city for upstate New York, but spent the rest of his life trying to bring
attention to police corruption, and his efforts were mostly ignored.
After reading this
book, and a few others about this topic, I wonder if Serpico and Durk are some
kind of little-and-large comedy act? You have the scruffy little working class
Italian American hippy weirdo, and the well-dressed straight-arrow upper-class Jew.
When I wonder why both of them ended up with less-than-ideal ends, it dawns on
me that they had issues to begin with. Both of them seem deluded and unable to
face reality. They both had fantasies of making some radical change to American
life, which everyone knows doesn’t happen overnight, and certainly can’t be
accomplished by only two men. They would have to have been crazy to do what
they did, taking the risk that their fellow cops would mark them as rats.
It was the same
crazy attitude that led to their undoing.
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