The policeman who inspired Al Pacino Serpico

More than just a few bad apples

Serpico, who was partially deaf in one ear from the shooting, testified at the inquest, saying: “I hope that future police officers will not feel the same frustration and anxiety that I have experienced over the past five years at the hands of my superiors because of my attempt to report corruption. I felt that I burdened them with an unwanted task.” He urged the police hierarchy to create “an atmosphere in which the dishonest officer is afraid of the honest officer and not the other way around.”

“Corruption is not about money at all, because there is no amount of money you can pay a cop to risk his life 365 days a year,” Durk told the committee. “Being a cop is a career or nothing at all, and that’s what I’ve seen destroyed by the corruption of the New York City Police Department. It’s ruined for me and thousands of others like me.”

A 1972 BBC report on the state of policing in New York found the force demoralizing. Captain Edward Rogers, commander of the Ninth District, told 24 Hours: “Morale is so low at this time in the department because of the Knapp Commission, that 95% of the honest men are now labeled as corrupt, while the Knapp Commission has revealed at most that 5% of the department is corrupt. The other 95% are bearing the brunt of this corrupt label.” He added: “Something of this kind would certainly set us back many years in our relations with the public, and this is unjustified.”

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Durk told the BBC that the committee’s major achievement was to “dispense with the rotten apple theory” which had previously been the answer to any allegations of police corruption. “The administration will always say: ‘What? Shocking, terrible, show us the villain and we’ll hang him.’ They usually make a very dramatic offer to hang one or two… They are usually very low level people. “I think what the Knapp Commission did was show the extent and seriousness of what corruption really means.”