Serpico is a 1973 American biographical crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino in the title role. The screenplay was adapted by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler from the book of the same name written by Peter Maas with the assistance of its subject, Frank Serpico. The story details Serpico's struggle with corruption within the New York City Police Department during his eleven years of service, and his work as a whistleblower that led to the investigation by the Knapp Commission.
Police corruption is a form of police misconduct in which law enforcement officers end up breaking their political contract and abusing their power for personal gain. This type of corruption may involve one or a group of officers. Internal police corruption is a challenge to public trust, cohesion of departmental policies, human rights and legal violations involving serious consequences. Police corruption can take many forms, such as bribery.
Francesco Vincent Serpico is an American retired New York Police Department detective, best known for whistleblowing on police corruption. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a plainclothes police officer working in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan to expose vice racketeering. In 1967, he reported credible evidence of widespread police corruption, to no effect. In 1970, he contributed to a front-page story in The New York Times on widespread corruption in the NYPD, which drew national attention to the problem. Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed a five-member panel to investigate accusations of police corruption, which became the Knapp Commission.
Prince of the City is a 1981 American neo-noir crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet. It is based on the life of Robert Leuci, called ‘Daniel Ciello’ in the film, an officer of the New York Police Department who chooses, for idealistic reasons, to expose corruption in the force. The screenplay, written by Lumet and Jay Presson Allen, is based on a 1978 non-fiction book of the same title, by former NYPD Deputy Commissioner Robert Daley.
The Rampart scandal was a police corruption scandal which unfolded in Los Angeles, California, United States, during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The scandal concerned widespread criminal activity within the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division. More than 70 police officers were initially implicated in various forms of misconduct, including unprovoked shootings and beatings, planting of false evidence, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury, and cover-ups thereof.
The Mollen Commission is formally known as The City of New York Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department. Former judge Milton Mollen was appointed in June 1992 by then New York City mayor David N. Dinkins to investigate corruption in the New York City Police Department. Mollen's mandate was to examine and investigate "the nature and extent of corruption in the Department; evaluate the department's procedures for preventing and detecting that corruption; and recommend changes and improvements to those procedures".
The blue wall of silence, also blue code and blue shield, are terms used to denote the informal code of silence among police officers in the United States not to report on a colleague's errors, misconducts, or crimes, especially as related to police brutality in the United States. If questioned about an incident of alleged misconduct involving another officer, while following the code, the officer being questioned would perjure themselves by feigning ignorance of another officer's wrongdoing.
Charles Becker was a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department between the 1890s and the 1910s. He is known for the scandal of being convicted of first-degree murder and subsequently executed for the killing of Herman Rosenthal, a bookmaker and gambler, in 1912 near Times Square.
The Super Cops is a 1974 action adventure film directed by Gordon Parks and starring Ron Leibman and David Selby. The film is based on the book The Super Cops: The True Story of the Cops Called Batman and Robin by L. H. Whittemore. The film was released a few months after the successful cop movie Serpico.
Percy Whitman Knapp was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Previous to that service, he led a far-reaching investigation into corruption in the New York City Police Department from 1970 to 1972.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) originates in the Government of New York City attempts to control rising crime in early- to mid-19th-century New York City. The City's reforms created a full-time professional police force modeled upon London's Metropolitan Police, itself only formed in 1829. Established in 1845, the Municipal Police replaced the inadequate night watch system which had been in place since the 17th century, when the city was founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam.
Throughout the history of the New York City Police Department, numerous instances of corruption, misconduct, and other allegations of such, have occurred. Over 12,000 cases have resulted in lawsuit settlements totaling over $400 million during a five-year period ending in 2014. In 2019, taxpayers funded $68,688,423 as the cost of misconduct lawsuits, a 76 percent increase over the previous year, including about $10 million paid out to two exonerated individuals who had been falsely convicted and imprisoned.
The Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB) was one of the ten bureaus that formed the New York Police Department. The Bureau was charged with the investigation and prevention of organized crime within New York City. The OCCB was disbanded in March 2016 with all investigative entities moved to the Chief of Detectives' office. The reason for this was the NYPD launching a major reshuffle of its investigative forces, consolidating several of them in an effort to tackle the city's biggest crime problem — violence by gangs and youth crews.
Adrian Schoolcraft is a former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who secretly recorded police conversations from 2008 to 2009. He brought these tapes to NYPD investigators in October 2009 as evidence of corruption and wrongdoing within the department. The tapes were used as evidence of arrest quotas leading to police abuses such as wrongful arrests, and that emphasis on fighting crime sometimes resulted in under-reporting of crimes to artificially deflate CompStat numbers.
Robert Leuci was a detective with the New York City Police Department (NYPD), known for his work exposing corruption in the police department and the criminal justice system.
Patrick Vincent Murphy served as the top law enforcement executive in New York City, Detroit, Washington, DC, and Syracuse, NY. He created the Police Executive Research Forum, an organization of police executives from the nation's largest city, county, and state law enforcement agencies, and led the Police Foundation in a period when it published pivotal reports on issues ranging from the police use of deadly force to the efficient use of patrol resources. Murphy's "long-range impact on American policing nationally probably will be judged by students of police history as significant as that of August Vollmer or J. Edgar Hoover," the FBI's Law Enforcement Bulletin commented in a 1986 cover story on the Police Foundation.
Albert A. Seedman was an officer with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for 30 years, known for solving several high-profile cases before resigning as chief of the Detective Bureau. He was the only Jewish officer to ever hold that position. After his retirement he was the chief of security for a New York area department store chain before retiring to South Florida.
Michael F. Dowd is a former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, drug distributor, and enforcer for the Dominican American Diaz criminal organization who was arrested in 1992 for running a drug ring out of Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He is the subject of the 2014 documentary film The Seven Five directed by Tiller Russell and produced by Eli Holzman. The Tiller Russell TV documentary version, Precinct Seven Five (2015), aired on Film4 on June 19, 2020, and also featured interviews with Dowd's co-conspirator and "dirty cop" friend Kenneth "Kenny" Eurell, who eventually became a cooperating Federal witness and wore a wire, in order to further incriminate Dowd and help corroborate his own testimony in exchange for a lenient sentence at trial.
The 1971 NYPD work stoppage occurred for five days between January 14 and January 19, 1971, when around 20,000 New York City police officers refused to report for regular duty. While officers maintained that they would continue to respond to serious crimes and emergencies, they refused to carry out routine patrolling duties, leading in some cases to as few as 200 officers being on the street in the city.
Howard R. Leary was an American law enforcement officer who served as Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department from 1963 to 1966 and New York City Police Commissioner from 1966 to 1970.
