Frank Serpico Francesco Vincent Serpico is a retired American
New York City Police Department officer who is most famous for blowing the whistle on
police corruption in the late 1960s and early 1970s—an act of valor that compelled Mayor
John V. Lindsay to appoint the landmark Knapp Commission to investigate the NYPD.
Most of Serpico's fame came after the release of the 1973 film Serpico, which starred Al
Pacino in the title role in which Al Pacino was nominated for an Oscar.
Early life and education Serpico was born in Brooklyn, New York, on
April 14, 1936, the youngest child of Vincenzo and Maria Giovanna Serpico, Italian immigrants
from Marigliano, in the province of Naples, Campania.
He recounts an experience of his father standing up to corruption in his shop where Serpico
shined shoes.
At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed for two years
in South Korea as an infantryman.
He then worked as a part-time private investigator and as a youth counselor while attending Brooklyn
College.
Career NYPD
In September 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.
He was finally assigned to work plainclothes, where he uncovered widespread corruption.
Serpico was a plainclothes police officer working in Brooklyn and the Bronx to expose
vice racketeering.
In 1967 he reported credible evidence of widespread systematic police corruption.
Nothing happened, until he met another police officer, David Durk, who helped him.
Serpico believed his partners knew about secret meetings with police investigators.
Finally, Serpico contributed to an April 25, 1970, New York Times front-page story on widespread
corruption in the NYPD.
Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed a five-member panel to investigate charges of police corruption.
The panel became the Knapp Commission, named after its chairman, Whitman Knapp.
Shooting and public interest Serpico was shot during a drug arrest attempt
on February 3, 1971, at 778 Driggs Avenue, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
Four officers from Brooklyn North 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.
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 9mm Browning Hi-Power.
The door opened a few inches, just far enough to wedge his body in.
Serpico called for help, but his fellow officers ignored him.
Serpico was then shot in the face with a.22 LR pistol.
The bullet struck just below the eye and lodged at the top of his jaw.
He fell to the floor, and began to bleed profusely.
His police colleagues refused to make a "10-13", a dispatch to police headquarters indicating
that an officer has been shot.
An elderly man who lived in the next apartment called the emergency services and reported
that a man had been shot.
The stranger stayed with Serpico.
A police car arrived.
Unaware that Serpico was one of them, the officers took him to Greenpoint Hospital.
The bullet had severed an auditory nerve, leaving him deaf in one ear, and he has suffered
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 survived and testified before the Knapp Commission.
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.
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.
Testimony in front of the Knapp Commission In October, and again in December 1971, Serpico
testified before the Knapp Commission: Frank 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.
Retirement and activism Frank 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".
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.
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, NY.
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?"
Serpico credited his grandfather, who was stabbed and robbed, and his uncle, who was
a respected policeman in Italy, with his sense of justice.
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 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", which
refers to alerting the public to danger, just as Paul Revere was responsible for having
lamps lit in the Old North Church to warn the public in Charlestown, Massachusetts,
of the British Regulars' movements during the American Revolutionary War.
Among police officers, his actions are still controversial, 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."
Effect on the NYPD As a result of Serpico’s efforts, the NYPD
was drastically changed.
Michael Armstrong, who was counsel to the Knapp Commission and went on to become chairman
of the city’s Commission to Combat Police Corruption, observes 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.”
Personal life Serpico has been married four times.
In 1957, he married Mary Ann Wheeler, but divorced her in 1962.
In 1963, he married Leslie Lane, a fellow college student, and they divorced in 1965.
In 1966, he married Laurie Young, but they divorced in 1969.
On June 15, 1972, Serpico left the police department to move to Europe.
In 1973, he married a woman named Marianne from the Netherlands, who was his final wife;
she died from cancer in 1980.
He decided to return to the United States afterwards.
His only child, son Alexander, was born March 15, 1980.
On June 27, 2013, the USA Section of ANPS (National Association of Italian State Police)
assigned him the "Saint Michael Archangel Prize", an official award by the Italian State
Police with the Sponsorship of the Italian Ministry of Interior.
"Francesco" Serpico is now an Italian Citizen: during the same ceremony, he received his
first Italian passport after extended research by the Presidente of ANPS USA, Chief Inspector
Cirelli, who established the Jus sanguinis, allowing him to gain Italian citizenship.
In popular culture 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 Serpico: The Deadly Game
(also known as "The Deadly Game"), broadcast on NBC.
This led to a short-lived Serpico TV series the following fall on the same network.
Biography Maas, Peter; Serpico, Frank (2005), Serpico:
The Classic Story of the Cop Who Couldn't Be Bought, New York: Perennial, ISBN 978-0-06-073818-1 .