NYPD Honors Whistleblower Frank Serpico 50 Years Late (2024)

FAQs

Where is Frank Serpico today? ›

Serpico, now 85 and living in Brooklyn, had been awarded the department's highest honor in 1972. But at that point he had come forward with allegations of police corruption and was shunned by many of his colleagues. He says the medal he received in 1972 was handed to him, unengraved, over a counter.

The ensuing article, published on April 25, 1970, exposed a pervasive culture of corruption, detailing instances of payoffs, shakedowns, and an ingrained code of silence within the NYPD. Serpico's testimony became a rallying point for those advocating for accountability and reform within law enforcement.

As the feature-length adaptation of a non-fiction book written by an author who was being regaled with the story by its subject, the dramatisation of Frank Serpico's career as a law enforcement officer was never expected to be 100% accurate to the experience of its subject, but it was pretty close nonetheless.

Francesco Vincent Serpico (born April 14, 1936) 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.

After the movie debuted and Pacino nailed the performance, the real Frank Serpico went off the grid. He initially moved halfway around the world to Switzerland to convalesce and then to the Netherlands. Today, he lives in upstate New York in a small log cabin that he built himself.

Frank Serpico's revelations in the early 1970s sent shockwaves through the NYPD, exposing a web of corruption and misconduct that had festered within the department for years.

In 2021, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, tweeted Serpico inspired him in his career and vowed to ensure he finally receives the long overdue ceremony and certificate. He went to Switzerland to recuperate, spending almost a decade living there and on a farm in the Netherlands , and traveling and studying.

The film ends with him waiting to board a ship; despite being promoted to detective (a lifelong ambition of his) and being decorated by the department for "conspicuous bravery in action" (along with the two officers who abandoned him during the drug raid) he resigns from the NYPD and emigrates to Switzerland.

There are numerous violent and suspenseful scenes which include an attempted rape, the beating of handcuffed prisoners by policemen, chases and take-downs on foot and in vehicles, fighting and gunfire. A man is shot in the face, then shown wounded and bloody during several sequences.

What is the most prevalent type of corruption in law enforcement today? ›

The most common form of police corruption is the acceptance of bribes.

After a best-selling novel on his life was made into the movie 'Serpico,' he became famous, but Frank Serpico was more concerned with courage. Frank Serpico was born April 14, 1936 to two hard-working and highly principled Italian immigrants proudly making their way in the new world.

The Whistleblower was described as a "fictionalized dramatic presentation" of a late-1990s scandal. The producers based it on Bolkovac's experiences, rather than on her memoir.

Amazingly, Serpico survived and went on to be celebrated for his heroism in exposing the rotten world of New York cops in the early 1970s: where police pocketed cash and heroin from hoods, and even accepted hot dogs as bribes from grocers.

In 1966, he married Laurie Young, but they divorced in 1969. On June 15, 1972, Serpico left the police department to move to Europe. In 1973, he married a woman named Marianne from the Netherlands, who was his final wife; she died from cancer in 1980.

Al Pacino as Frank Serpico in Serpico. In 1959, Frank Serpico joined the NYPD. He was sworn in as a probationary patrolman on September 11, 1959. He was handed his shield and immediately went out and got it replated so it would be shiny and garner the utmost respect.