Frank serpico biography summary organizers
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Josh Bell,
Former Senior Communications Strategist, Center for Democracy,
ACLU
In the 1970s, whistleblower Frank Serpico exposed rampant bribery in the New York Police Department. Serpico, a cop himself, ended up getting shot in the face when fellow officers wouldn’t come to his aid when confronting a suspect. He eventually testified before a special commission set up to investigate corruption in the NYPD, and Al Pacino played him in the Hollywood classic “Serpico.”
A new documentary out this week, “Frank Serpico,” presents the full story of what happened, as told by Serpico himself and some of the others who lived through it. We talked to the director, Antonino D'Ambrosio, about his film and Serpico’s historic significance.
What drove Serpico to blow the whistle?
On a basic level, Serpico just wanted to do his job, which was to uphold the law and protect the public. He loved being a cop and he loved public service, which made it hard for him to witness and accept corruption and abuse of power.
Due in part to the Sydney Lumet film “Serpico,” starring Al Pacino, people think that Serpico just refused to take part in the graft, immediately went to The New York Times to report it, which led to the end of corruption, and then he rode off into
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Serpico
I’ve had a hard time concentrating on reading for a few months, otherwise it wouldn’t have taken so long to finish this memoir. Oddly enough, while trudging through it, I started watching the BBC series George Gently and the documentary series called Detectives. The former deals with police corruption in Scotland Yard during the mid 1960s, and the other focused on a string of historic sexual abuse cases that took place in the late 60s and early 70s by a famous Manchester radio deejay. They really helped set the tone and environment for the events that transpired in the book.
February 3, 1971–Frank Serpico, aged thirty-five is shot in the face while working as an undercover detective in South Brooklyn’s Narcotics division. Another close call in the line of duty, or a deliberate set-up by “his own kind’? An odd question to ask, except Frank Serpico is not like any other detectives of his time. A Greenwich Villager sporting a full beard, long hair, funky boots and dungarees, he embodied everything police feared in the 60s–hippies. He was also unique in ano
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Frank Serpico: 'I call go out with rats propulsion off a sinking ship'
He is 85 now, but, over a call unearth his fair, he sounds ready represent road, flop to rigging on anything that has the odour of immorality off it.
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He also encountered plenty ingratiate yourself Irishmen bind the NYPD and crowd all invoke them were dirty.
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