An Article about Frank Serpico by Larry McShane, 2012, New York Daily News

Despite distance and decades, whistleblower Frank Serpico is never too far from his NYPD past After death of fellow cop David Durk, Serpico is left to ponder his legacy in the department whose corruption he helped expose

BY LARRY MCSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Published: Saturday, December 22, 2012, 9:30 PM Updated: Sunday, December 23, 2012, 2:00 AM

DAVID HANDSCHUH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Frank Serpico, who lives upstate, says Al “Pacino played Serpico better than I did."

GHENT, N.Y. — If you’re searching for the Frank Serpico of the ’70s, the whistleblowing hippie cop of cinematic renown, pay a visit to Netflix. The real thing is now 76, his famous beard close-cropped and gray. Wiry and fit, Serpico sports tinted glasses and a Keith Richards-style skull ring with ruby red eyes. He lives alone in the woods upstate, far from his Greenwich Village haunts of yore. But despite the distance and the decades, Serpico is never too far away from his NYPD past. “I don’t know if there are ghosts,” he offers over coffee at an upstate farmers’ market. “It depends on the concept, or the impression that people are under about my life, you know?”

David Handschuh/New York Daily News Serpico is viewed as both prophet and pariah in his corruption-busting days. Serpico, viewed as both prophet and pariah in his corruption-busting days, is committed to giving the right impression to anyone willing to listen. He quotes chapter and verse from books written over the years, noting their inaccuracies about his life and near-death in a 1971 drug bust shooting. “They left this legacy of illusion,” he gripes. “All of a sudden they become writers, and they’re victims of their own illusion.”

The long-retired cop speaks just weeks after the death of his Knapp Commission cohort David Durk, the ex-detective who helped expose the NYPD’s massive corruption. While Durk was widely hailed in his obituaries, Serpico was left to ponder his legacy. “I would like to be known for having been a human being, but for having taken that responsibility very seriously,” he reflects. “I don’t even want an obituary,” he continues. “I want a stone with a hole in it that will gather water, so the birds could come and drink.” Yet there are some issues that he’d like to set straight first.

David Handschuh/New York Daily News Serpico says he doesn't want an obituary, just a stone with a hole that will gather water so birds can come and drink. For the record: Serpico never received a gold first-grade detective’s shield. His NYPD Medal of Honor was handed to him without ceremony, like a pack of cigarettes. And he still wants to know why fellow cops never called in a code 10-13 — officer down — after he took a bullet in the face on Feb. 3, 1971.

Nearly 42 years later, the one-time NYPD detective appears on a December morning wearing slippers without socks. His memory and attention to detail remain astounding. A deadpan recitation of his first collar is riveting — the bust of a “Mutt and Jeff” team of taxicab bandits. He and a fellow recruit made the arrests while staking out a synagogue.

The proud pair escorted the suspects upstairs to the local precinct’s detective squad.

“We walk in, and there’s a little, squat man with his cap in his hands,” Serpico recalls.

“He jumps up and says, ‘That’s them! Those are the two guys who robbed me!’ ” He pauses for effect, a smile spreading across his lips. “And I always like to add, ‘No, not the cops — the other two guys.’ ” The 2012 Serpico addresses his younger incarnation as another person entirely.“I don’t speak of myself as ‘Serpico,’ ” says the ex-detective, his voice still pure Brooklyn. “I speak of what this Serpico did, and what he stood for. “And I believe, my opinion, that there are some who couldn’t live up to his standards. And so they took it upon themselves, as a crusade, to diminish what he did.” As for the movie, the man who broke through the Blue Wall of Silence is succinct: “Pacino played Serpico better than I did.” Serpico, left with a bullet in the head and a deaf ear from the on-duty shooting, still collects a regular NYPD disability check. And he still maintains skepticism toward the department. Many colleagues, past and present, share the animus. Durk’s death brought fresh vitriol for Serpico on the Internet message board NYPD Rant. “Join your mentor, Rat scum!” advised one. “Serpirat!” blared another.

The public takes a kinder view. He ranked No. 41 on the American Film Institute’s list of movie heroes, right behind Lassie. “Good company,” he smiles. He’s still trying to finish his own book, an unfinished project that’s been in the works for years. Serpico stays busy with solitary walks, the occasional cigar, a younger girlfriend and various police event appearances — all outside of New York. “I was better received in foreign counties than in my own city,” says the son of Italian immigrants, recalling an emotional meeting with the trembling Amsterdam police commissioner. He’s aware some already see Serpico as a figment of the past, like the gray-haired woman who came to see him in Rome. “As I was walking up the aisle . . . she looked at me, she turned ashen and she fainted,” he says. “She said, ‘E vero!’ — it’s true — like she didn’t believe I was real, you know? “That’s another thing I assure people.” lmcshane@nydailynews.com

History Dept.

The Police Are Still Out of Control I should know.

By FRANK SERPICO October 23, 2014 In the opening scene of the 1973 movie “Serpico,” I am shot in the face—or to be more accurate, the character of Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino, is shot in the face. Even today it’s very difficult for me to watch those scenes, which depict in a very realistic and terrifying way what actually happened to me on Feb. 3, 1971. I had recently been transferred to the Narcotics division of the New York City Police Department, and we were moving in on a drug dealer on the fourth floor of a walk-up tenement in a Hispanic section of Brooklyn. The police officer backing me up instructed me (since I spoke Spanish) to just get the apartment door open “and leave the rest to us.”

One officer was standing to my left on the landing no more than eight feet away, with his gun drawn; the other officer was to my right rear on the stairwell, also with his gun drawn. When the door opened, I pushed my way in and snapped the chain. The suspect slammed the door closed on me, wedging in my head and right shoulder and arm. I couldn’t move, but I aimed my snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver at the perp (the movie version unfortunately goes a little Hollywood here, and has Pacino struggling and failing to raise a much-larger 9-millimeter automatic). From behind me no help came. At that moment my anger got the better of me. I made the almost fatal mistake of taking my eye off the perp and screaming to the officer on my left: “What the hell you waiting for? Give me a hand!” I turned back to face a gun blast in my face. I had cocked my weapon and fired back at him almost in the same instant, probably as reflex action, striking him. (He was later captured.)

When I regained consciousness, I was on my back in a pool of blood trying to assess the damage from the gunshot wound in my cheek. Was this a case of small entry, big

exit, as often happens with bullets? Was the back of my head missing? I heard a voice saying, “Don’ worry, you be all right, you be all right,” and when I opened my eyes I saw an old Hispanic man looking down at me like Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan. My “backup” was nowhere in sight. They hadn’t even called for assistance—I never heard the famed “Code 1013,” meaning “Officer Down.” They didn’t call an ambulance either, I later learned; the old man did. One patrol car responded to investigate, and realizing I was a narcotics officer rushed me to a nearby hospital (one of the officers who drove me that night said, “If I knew it was him, I would have left him there to bleed to death,” I learned later).

The next time I saw my “back-up” officers was when one of them came to the hospital to bring me my watch. I said, “What the hell am I going to do with a watch? What I needed was a back-up. Where were you?” He said, “Fuck you,” and left. Both my “back-ups” were later awarded medals for saving my life.

I still don’t know exactly what happened on that day. There was never any real investigation. But years later, Patrick Murphy, who was police commissioner at the time, was giving a speech at one of my alma maters, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and I confronted him. I said, “My name is Frank Serpico, and I’ve been carrying a bullet in my head for over 35 years, and you, Mr. Murphy, are the man I hold responsible. You were the man who was brought as commissioner to take up the cause that I began — rooting out corruption. You could have protected me; instead you put me in harm’s way. What have you got to say?” He hung his head, and had no answer.

Even now, I do not know for certain why I was left trapped in that door by my fellow police officers. But the Narcotics division was rotten to the core, with many guys taking money from the very drug dealers they were supposed to bust. I had refused to take bribes and had testified against my fellow officers. Police make up a peculiar subculture in society. More often than not they have their own moral code of behavior, an “us against them” attitude, enforced by a Blue Wall of Silence. It’s their version of the Mafia’s omerta. Speak out, and you’re no longer “one of us.” You’re one of “them.” And as James Fyfe, a nationally recognized expert on the use of force, wrote in his 1993 book about this issue, Above The Law, officers who break the code sometimes won’t be helped in emergency situations, as I wasn’t.

On the left, Al Pacino plays Serpico in the 1973 movie. On the right, Frank Serpico leaves the Bronx County Courthouse after testifying on police corruption in 1973. | Getty Images Forty-odd years on, my story probably seems like ancient history to most people, layered over with Hollywood legend. For me it’s not, since at the age of 78 I’m still deaf in one ear and I walk with a limp and I carry fragments of the bullet near my brain. I am also, all these years later, still persona non grata in the NYPD. Never mind that, thanks to Sidney Lumet’s direction and Al Pacino’s brilliant acting, “Serpico” ranks No. 40 on the American Film Institute’s list of all-time movie heroes, or that as I travel around the country and the world, police officers often tell me they were inspired to join the force after seeing the movie at an early age.

In the NYPD that means little next to my 40-year-old heresy, as they see it. I still get hate mail from active and retired police officers. A couple of years ago after the death of David Durk — the police officer who was one of my few allies inside the department in my efforts to expose graft — the Internet message board “NYPD Rant” featured some choice messages directed at me. “Join your mentor, Rat scum!” said one. An ex-con recently related to me that a precinct captain had once said to him, “If it wasn’t for that fuckin’ Serpico, I coulda been a millionaire today.” My informer went on to say, “Frank, you don’t seem to understand, they had a well-oiled money making machine going and you came along and threw a handful of sand in the gears.”

In 1971 I was awarded the Medal of Honor, the NYPD’s highest award for bravery in action, but it wasn’t for taking on an army of corrupt cops. It was most likely due to the insistence of Police Chief Sid Cooper, a rare good guy who was well aware of the murky side of the NYPD that I’d try to expose. But they handed the medal to me like an afterthought, like tossing me a pack of cigarettes. After all this time, I’ve never been given a proper certificate with my medal. And although living Medal of Honor winners are typically invited to yearly award ceremonies, I’ve only been invited once — and it was by Bernard Kerick, who ironically was the only NYPD commissioner to later serve time in prison. A few years ago, after the New York Police Museum refused my guns and other memorabilia, I loaned them to the Italian-American museum right down street from police headquarters, and they invited me to their annual dinner. I didn’t know it was planned, but the chief of police from Rome, Italy, was there, and he gave me a plaque. The New York City police officers who were there wouldn’t even look at me.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-police-are-still-out-ofcontrol-112160.html#ixzz3JZW2XzNK