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Investigative Classics is a weekly feature spotlighting past masters of the reporting craft. 

By 1970 Patrolman Frank Serpico and Det. David Durk were beyond frustrated. They had shared their evidence about police corruption with officials at the highest levels of the NYPD and Mayor John Lindsay’s office. They heard voices of concern, promises of investigation but saw almost no action. In fairness, the one forthright man, Captain Philip J. Foran, reportedly told Serpico: “I'll take you into the Commissioner and he'll drag you in front of a grand jury, and by the time this thing is through, you'll be found floating in the East River, face down. Or you can just forget the whole thing.” 

Like a scene out the movies – which it would soon become – Serpico and Durk went to the New York Times. The result was a blockbuster story that triggered the Knapp Commission investigation, trials and reforms, as well as a book and movie, both titled “Serpico.” 

It all began with the April 25, 1970 story headlined, “Graft Paid to Police Here Said to Run Into Millions.” Here’s how David Burnham opened his article: 

Narcotics dealers, gamblers and businessmen make illicit payments of millions of dollars a year to the policemen of New York, according to policemen, law‐enforcement experts and New Yorkers who make such payments themselves. 

Despite such widespread corruption, officials in both the Lindsay administration and the Police Department have failed to investigate a number of cases of corruption brought to their attention, sources within the department say.

Burnham details about how plain clothes officers in particular ran protection rackets for drugs dealers and betting parlors, while demanding money, food and liquor from businesses to avoid tickets 

Assigned to stamping out this popular, carefully organized and well‐financed industry are 600 plainclothes men — patrolmen assigned to the uniformed force but who wear civilian clothes. The result, according to many knowledgeable sources, is corruption and the transformation of many of these units from law‐enforcement agencies trying to suppress gambling to regulatory agencies licensing it. 

Some policemen recalled that when they went to plain clothes school some of their classmates complained that going to the school was delaying them from getting out into the street and collecting graft.

Although Burnham interviewed many current and former police officials, it is now clear that the meat of his story came from Serpico – whose identity was concealed in the first article.  

It was Serpico who told him that “Arnold G. Fraiman, now a State Supreme Court justice, and until January, 1969, head of the city's Investigation Department, refused to look into charges that Bronx gamblers were paying policemen between $800 and $1,000 a month.” 

Serpico was also said that “Jay Kriegel, Mayor Lindsay's staff assistant for law enforcement, told [him] early in 1968 that the administration could not act on charges of police corruption because it did not want to upset the police during the possibly turbulent summer ahead.” 

Serpico also provided this telling quote: 

“I believe that 90 per cent of the cops would prefer to be honest.” he said. “But they see so much corruption around them that many feel it is pointless not to go along.”

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