This is a story of an honest cop. I chose this story to be my first Truth Be Told blog. I hope you will as inspired by his story as I was when I began my career.  The monthly blog will cover great detective stories and the stories of great detectives.  

I was standing in a bookstore in 1976, staring at a used book, turning it over in my hand and deciding if I wanted to shell out the cash. The title was in plain view to the guy standing next to me. Honest cop, Lewis J. Valentine by Lowell Limpus. The book was written in 1939, an oldie for sure.

The nosey guy next to me looked at the book and said, “Well, that’s an oxymoron, if I ever saw one.” 

I turned to face him. I was wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, and my Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars (before they became fashionably known as “Chucks”). I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my credentials.  To make sure that he could read them, I thrust them about one foot from his face and said, “Guess what? It’s your lucky day, now you get to meet one.” It took a lot of effort for my twenty-one year ADHD self to refrain from finishing that sentence with the word asshole.

My faded memories of that book is that it dealt more with the politics of that time in New York City when Valentine was a Police Commissioner and whose honesty cost him the top spot a few times when the tides turned, as they always do.

In the Sixties and Seventies, TV cops, that we watched on Dragnet and Police Story as well as Movie cops like Dirty Harry or Popeye Doyle in The French Connection tended to glorify the profession. There was very little written about honesty in policing, with the exception of a book by Peter Maas that was made into a movie of the same name Serpico. They both came out in 1973 during my formative years as a Criminology major in college.

The story of Frank Serpico, who wanted to do good policing when he joined the NYPD, gets interesting when he finds out in very short order that he had to “go along, if he wanted to get along” with the petty graft, bribes and corruption endemic in the culture of big-city police forces at the time. He didn’t play the game and got push back and denials when he tried to expose the widespread corruption of more than a few bad apples in the Big Apple.

Serpico eventually testified before the Knapp Commission* in 1971. The Mayor hired a progressive Police Commissioner and a shake-up of the NYPD took place. Academics woke up to the cold reality of police corruption and began studying it. 

Later, Serpico was shot in the face while trying to open a door during a felony drug bust. He lived, but had to take a disability pension. 

When I asked one of my professors, a former NYPD copper if he knew Serpico, he gave me a dead-eye stare and called him a rat. Well, so much for getting an academic’s well-researched opinion! 

 As I look back over my career of 42 years, I realized what an impact Serpico’s life had on me. I began to wonder what had happened to this real-life protagonist over these past five decades? The final scenes from the movie showed him boarding a ship with his dog Alfie heading for France.

He eventually returned to America and settled in Upstate New York where he lives a quiet and unassuming life.

Way back in the the day, when he testified before the commission, the transcripts read in part as follows: “The atmosphere does not yet exist in which an honest police officer can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers.”

Quoting a New York Times article where they talked to him again in 2010, “I still have nightmares. I open a door a little bit and it just explodes in my face. Or I’m in a jam and I call the police, and guess who shows up? My old cop buddies who hated me.”

I talked to my peers and colleagues who spent time in uniform, whether military or police ,and they can attest to the nightmares. Show up at roll call and you are not wearing any pants. Squeeze the trigger of your gun during a life or death battle and the bullets dribble out the barrel. All the fears and anxieties that never got washed away pop up in your dreams.

Have the times changed and the problems that he faced been rectified? Sadly no.

He said, “I hear from police officers all the time; they contact me.” He added, “An honest cop still can’t find a place to go and complain without fear of recrimination. The blue wall will always be there because the system supports it.”

Much to my surprise, I learned that a documentary on his life was released last year. Titled Frank Serpico, it mixed footage from the Hollywood movie with grainy film from that era, Director Antonio D’Ambrosio  walked ,now 80 year-old, Serpico through his old Precincts, the apartment building where he was shot and into a meeting with one of the detectives that was with him that fateful night. That former cop had no regrets about his actions. Serpico handled the confrontation with surprising equanimity. 

I suggest you watch the version with Al Pacino first and then watch the documentary. (Links to the book, and movies appear below)

What I was left with was a sense that he had no regrets with being (as he calls himself) a “lamplighter”. The tag “Whistleblower” carried too much baggage for him.  Serpico now has the wisdom of time and much introspection to speak about his life and the career that he loved, but one that “they took away from him.” 

Ask me and I will tell you that I think that both movies should be shown to Criminal Justice students as part of a mandatory two credit ethics class. I also think the four hours of movies and a frank discussion late some Friday afternoon in every Police Academy class could easily replace four hours on the state Motor Vehicle codes and would be a hell of a lot more entertaining. 

I’m not bashful on this topic. There are many men and women who put on the uniform every day wanting to work in an honest and non-hostile environment where they can uphold the oath they took when they were sworn in. 

What do you think? 

Serpico Book:  https://www.amazon.com/Serpico-Peter-Maas/dp/0060738189

Serpico Movie: https://www.amazon.com/Serpico-Al-Pacino/dp/B00271B752/ref=tmm_aiv_swatch_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Frank Serpico documentary:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B076ZW9ZNR/