Frank Serpico Explains How Police Violence is the New Graft

In
1971 Frank Serpico was shot in the face while opening a door during
a drug bust in a Brooklyn apartment, and left there to die by the
cops with him because Serpico had testified against crooked cops in
the narcotics division. An elderly man in the building, not the
other cops, called 911 to send an ambulance.

In a
piece at Politico, Serpico explains that to this day he’s
shunned by the New York Police Department (NYPD). A Medal of Honor
recipient, he’s only been invited to the annual dinner once, when

Bernard Kerik was commissioner. While the graft is, thanks to
greater accountability, not as systematic as it used to be, Serpico
writes, a lack of accountability is why police violence is such a
problem. Via Politico:

I tried to be an honest cop in a force full of bribe-takers. But
as I found out the hard way, police departments are useless at
investigating themselves—and that’s exactly the problem facing
ordinary people across the country —including perhaps, Ferguson,
Missouri, which has been a lightning rod for discontent even though
the circumstances under which an African-American youth, Michael
Brown, was shot remain unclear.

Today the combination of an excess of deadly force and
near-total lack of accountability is more dangerous than ever: Most
cops today can pull out their weapons and fire without fear that
anything will happen to them, even if they shoot someone
wrongfully. All a police officer has to say is that he believes his
life was in danger, and he’s typically absolved. What do you think
that does to their psychology as they patrol the streets—this sense
of invulnerability? The famous old saying still applies: Power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (And we still
don’t know how many of these incidents occur each year; even though
Congress enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
20 years ago, requiring the Justice Department to produce an annual
report on “the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers,”
the reports were never issued.)

It wasn’t any surprise to me that, after Michael Brown was shot
dead in Ferguson, officers instinctively lined up behind Darren
Wilson, the cop who allegedly killed Brown. Officer Wilson may well
have had cause to fire if Brown was attacking him, as some reports
suggest, but it is also possible we will never know the full
truth—whether, for example, it was really necessary for Wilson to
shoot Brown at least six times, killing rather than just wounding
him. As they always do, the police unions closed ranks also behind
the officer in question. And the district attorney (who is often
totally in bed with the police and needs their votes) and city
power structure can almost always be counted on to stand behind the
unions.

Serpico goes on to write that while he understands the need for
cops to protect themselves, militarized gear isn’t necessary in
everyday situations—he says while he was off-duty he once disarmed
a suspect who had three guns using just a snub-nose Smith &
Wesson—and helped to isolate cops from the communities they’re
supposed to serve.

He also dismisses politicians who offer rhetoric but little
action, all the way to the top:

As for Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder,
they’re giving speeches now, after Ferguson. But it’s 20 years too
late. It’s the same old problem of political power talking, and it
doesn’t matter that both the president and his attorney general are
African-American. Corruption is color blind. Money and power
corrupt, and they are color blind too.

Read the whole thing, including Serpico’s policy
recommendations,
here.