Still crusading against corruption; Frank Serpico famously risked his life to break through the `blue wall of silence' and expose wrongdoing in the NYPD. Today, he still refuses to look the other way

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 29, 2002 | by Martin Edwin Andersen

Long before the word "hero" was revalued in the American lexicon, the name of Frank Serpico, a New York City police detective, exploded into public consciousness. Exposes on the front pages of the New York Times, the movie Serpico starring Al Pacino, and a TV series called -- well, yes, Serpico --put this son and grandson of Italian immigrants firmly into the pantheon of American folk heroes.

Three decades ago, nearing the point of vindication in his crusade against endemic corruption among Gotham's Finest, Serpico was shot in the face and almost died in the line of duty, perhaps with the help of some corrupt fellow officers. Today, he remains a Jeremiah in our midst. We must as a society change our ways, he says, or risk losing what we take for granted -- our liberty and our security.

Serpico, 65, spent 10 years living in self-imposed exile in Europe after his close call. But the shooting was a watershed moment for the New York Police Department (NYPD), putting an exclamation point on Serpico's long-ignored claims that practices such as bribery, protection rackets and shakedowns of gamblers and drug dealers had become a subculture within the department.

Serpico k sense of community service, the reason he became a cop, quickly was challenged by a system in which corrupt officers got away with the cash, while those who tried to remain honest were forced to look the other way. Unable to live the lie and incapable of accepting the increasingly large share of the illegal booty he was being offered by corrupt cops, Serpico ignored the "blue wall of silence" ingrained in police organizations around the world.

Instead, Serpico became the first police officer in modern memory to speak up publicly about the NYPD dirty laundry. Violating the police version of the Sicilian Mafia's code of silence, the omerta, he faced isolation by anxious peers and a series of death threats that did not stop even after he was shot.

Time has blurred Serpico's physical resemblance to Pacino, immortalized as a darkly handsome, streetwise cop repulsed by police corruption and ham-handedness. The forever-young icon, the long-haired, bearded, vaguely mystical detective of a thousand disguises, has given way to a kinder and gentler look, although Serpico retains his welterweight frame. What hasn't changed are his obsessions: stopping the use of police badges as a shield beyond which to steal and to abuse citizens, restoring respect for legal processes that set the United States apart from much of the world and reversing the usual fate of those who confront bureaucracies about issues of misuse of power and corruption.

Today, Serpico divides his time between rural upstate New York and an apartment in Brooklyn, residences he shares with a menagerie of chickens, rabbits, cats and lizards. In either place he dances for hours -- ballroom, tango and cha-cha are favorites -- as both exercise and recreation. He is a reader as well, although he strictly limits his time on the Internet to an hour a day.

Serpico admits that his concerns have remained constant in a changing world. "My issues? They seem to me always to be the same," he says. He speaks of the lack of good role models in popular culture and the propagation of unrealistic stereotypes by the television and motion-picture industries as some of what is wrong with American culture.

Even Serpico, the movie about his experience, comes in for a little criticism. "I think the story is still applicable today. Last year, I showed it at a boys' farm, and every kid in that audience related to it. But the personal portrayal was embarrassing because it was overacted; and then there was the issue of Hollywood's own racial profiling--where a defendant was white and they made him black."

Serpico's bemusement about his celluloid image is juxtaposed by the fact that the flashbacks and nightmares associated with his leaving the force occasionally still recur. "There was one nightmare in particular," he recalls for INSIGHT. "I'd see some type of crime going on. Somebody was after me. I would call the police and who would show up ? All the corrupt guys that I worked with." His exposure to Hollywood showed him that there was plenty of corruption there, as well.

Does he still believe that a single individual can make a difference? '"Absolutely," Serpico responds without hesitation. "If you don't have a role model, who are you going to follow? We have a lot of education today, we have a lot of knowledge, but very little wisdom. This is the whole thing about traditions in which you go to your elders for advice; we don't have that any more. We are a Kleenex culture -- everything is disposable. We need examples and common sense."

His travels around the world, Serpico says, have given him a context in which to measure changes among police officers, both in terms of community service and possibilities for abuse. He is concerned about U.S. parochialism. "In every country I've been to," he says, "many cops have a smattering of English. Here we have the attitude, `This is America, why don't you speak English? "`Serpico is fluent in Spanish, Italian, French and German. In England, he says, he personally witnessed British bobbies, famed for not wearing a gun, charging a crowd with their nightsticks. In Wales, the local version of the New York City tradition of opening fire hydrants onto summer streets was some kids jumping off a bridge into the water "The cops wouldn't say anything to them as long as others were around, but as soon as it got dark the police pounded the shit out them," he says.