He spent a month in hospital recovering and was left with some wounds, including deafness in his left ear. I have a bullet in my head. The commission eventually reported that major corruption did exist and structures were put in place to keep the cops honest. The movie ends with him leaving his home in the Village bound for Switzerland. He stayed there and travelled throughout Europe for the best part of 10 years.
He also co-operated on his biography with Peter Haas. The book sold three million copies and was adapted for the movie. Serpico placed great faith in Clark as a man of integrity and they became firm friends. Kelly was convicted nonetheless, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. He was one of my best friends, a man of the highest integrity. I even produced a documentary a few years back called Citizen Clark A Life of Principle. And what did he think of the movie? The problem occurred in the shooting of a scene in which a racist cop chases a black man and shoves his head down a toilet.
He said that never happened. The problem was he overacted. Down through the years, Serpico has continued to stand with those fighting injustice. He left policing at a young age, but the sense of right and wrong that prompted him to enter the force in the first place has never left him.
Whistleblowers seek him out. Groups intent on police reform use him as a sounding board. He has got involved in protecting the environment from rampant development. I have everything I need. I live in the woods in a cabin and right now I look out and all I see are the birds and trees and flowers. He talks with some passion about the dandelion, the flower that some dismiss as a weed, its beauty, its power in a world where nature is so often dismissed and abused.
And then, finally, he gets back to his other passion, the one that defined his life. They were at it back when he was a young cop, those who will abuse power, prey on the weak, smother light with their dark motives. They are still at it today as far as Frank Serpico is concerned. We were sitting there looking at the water. And I thought, Well, I might as well be like everybody else and ask a silly question, which was, "Why, Frank?
Why did you do it? He said, "Well, Al, I don't know. I guess I have to say it would be because That's the kind of guy he was. I enjoyed being with him. There was mischief in his eyes. Our Covid-free newsletter brings together some of the best bits from irishexaminer.
A lunchtime summary of content highlights on the Irish Examiner website. Delivered at 1pm each day. Frank Serpico: 'I call it rats jumping off a sinking ship' In a wide-ranging interview, the cop portrayed by Al Pacino in the eponymous movie discusses being shot 50 years ago, racism in the US following the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict, and his long career in and out of the blue uniform.
He was attorney general[-elect] when Sean Bell [a year-old black man from Queens who was shot to death by police at his bachelor party in ] got assassinated, and none of the officers were indicted. I think they were arrested, but all got off. This is typical, the combination of an excess of deadly force and near-total lack of accountability.
What do you think that does to their psychology as they patrol the streets—this sense of invulnerability? Some of these cops get suspended or dismissed, but they go on to be cops at other venues.
And what does that mean, to be suspended or put on leave with pay? So that has to change. There are so many aspects that have to be changed. The fox cannot watch the henhouse.
This is what I found. Most of the professors there are ex-police officials. They write their books, and none of them will be very critical of the police agency. In his book Above the Law , which was required reading at law class at Columbia University, he also falsified the evidence in my shooting to absolve the cops.
Everybody, including the police unions, is involved. FS: This is not just police corruption—this is about a systematic culture. Even Michael Dowd [a notoriously corrupt New York City police officer who later served 12 years in prison] talked about how, when he first became a cop, he was told by his fellow trainees about a cop who turned in other cops. That guy somehow later fell off a balcony at a party and died. On and on it goes. FP: How serious a problem is the militarization of the police?
FS: When I was a cop, we had. In fact, I violated the rules and got myself a Browning 9 mm automatic. The problem was when the police transferred to 9 mm, they also went to a 40 mm, even more powerful. And semi-automatic weapons. In my day, we were taught to maximize efficiency. Off-duty, I had a snub-nosed.
I always carried it, and once I got involved where I had just seen a lethal shooting, and I chased a guy and fired one warning shot and ended up apprehending the guy with four rounds in my revolver. Today you see cops firing an entire magazine, dropping it, using another magazine, just emptying their guns and automatic weapons without thinking, in acts of callousness or racism.
Amadou Diallo in New York was shot at 41 times in for no obvious reason. Officers fired 50 rounds at Sean Bell and his friends. All this uncontrolled firepower, combined with a lack of good training and adequate screening of police academy candidates, has led to a major drop in standards. And now they come around with the tanks.
It creates a war zone atmosphere on both sides. Sure, police officers have the right to defend themselves with maximum force when warranted, in cases where, say, they are taking on a barricaded felon armed with an assault weapon. But with more armament should also come more training—police have even killed some of their own with friendly fire in some cases.
The people are the eyes and ears of the community. Better public relations can create an ally. Michael Hirsh is a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy. Powerful police unions assure virtual immunity for serious abuses; the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent entity that investigates police abuse and recommends disciplinary action, is virtually ignored.
The police commissioner has a final say on the punishment for wayward cops. Serpico says the culture of corruption goes up to the top. He also believes that schools should teach kids about police abuse in school as part of their regular curriculum. But he sees the potential for positive change.
Black Lives Matter — all these young people are seeing it. A culture of cover up and brutality. Cops simply are not held to the same standards of the average person on the streets. The defund movement seeks to reallocate money spent on policing to social services. Serpico says he gets where the movement is going — and supports drastic changes to U.
But he also worries it might backfire by not fully addressing the culture of law enforcement. The police is a quasi-military organization — just state instead of federal — [meant] to enforce government edicts against the mostly poor and disenfranchised. Newswire Powered by.
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