gH#*ff

'm in the boardroom ofan upmarket
NewYorkCiry hotel.I'm
surounded by some very angry cops.
They're also intensely worried. For
good reason. Trvo ofthe officers
present have received€ath threats itl
the past fe" days. One tells me he has been
sickwith worry. Literally. The reason is his
"bro ther of6cers". Hallivay through an
undercoverjob he discovered many oF
themwere corrupt in more rvays than he
could possibly have imagined, and now
he\ blorving the whisde. He's allla*yeredup;hisrvife,
a fellow of6cer, is standing by
his side. His partner6om the d€partment,
also. Butuntiltoday the most important
piece oftheircrusade was missing. A leader.
They all knew exactly who they wanted
to 6llthat role, and thrs afternoon he
arrived. \ghen he st€pped fonvard,rvith
his hand outstretched, their rvonies
evaporated lora beautitul second. His
name is Frank Serpico. And, as oftoday,
he's back in business.
@-@@btNrr{ark @hnea
gH#*ff
San
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There was a time rvhen Frank Sepico's lame
eclipsed Elvis Presley s,John \i/ayne's and
MuhammadAlit.
ln the €arly S€venties, amid the mud of
Vi€tnam and Watergate, America found
the hero itlvas looking for:an honest cop
called Serpico. Naturally, I lollrrvood
loved it and when they made the film in
1973 - s tarring Al Pacino - Serpicot name
became dre title, assumi'rg the kind of
famitiarity normally reserved for rock stars,
FrankSerpico had graduated from $e
police academy ur r95o, hopeful and
idealistic. \0ithin days "on the job" he
discovered Iorv-level corruption
every.rvhere: free me:ls from diners;
sleeping on the job; bibes from speeding
drivers, and so on But Serpico stayed
clean. So clean he even carried out arrests
ofFduty. As a result, heivas ostracised.
He fought back, embracing Sixties
counterculture - living like a hippy and
escherving the normal "we atl stick
togethel'police life. And when he realised
the sheer scale ofthe corruption, Serpico
knew he had to tell someone about it.
He follorved the mle bookand
:rpproached his most senior officers. They
ignored him. He thendid the unthinkable,
wentoutside the police department to
the Mayor ofNervYork's assistant - who
alsodid nothing.In a last, desperate
mcasure, Seryico secretly met David
Burnham, a respected reporter from the
Nna )'or| Tim:. On Aprtl21, r97o, headlines
announcing an unprecedented scale of
police corruption made the front page.
Despite beingcalled a "psycho" by the
police commissioner and 6nding a live >