Frank Serpico

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 In 1967 he reported credible evidence of widespread police corruption to no effect In 1970 he contributed to a frontpage 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 fivemember panel to investigate accusations of police corruption which became the Knapp Commission Serpico was shot in the face during an arrest attempt on February 3 1971 at 778 Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg Brooklyn The bullet severed an auditory nerve and left bullet fragments lodged in his brain The circumstances surrounding Serpicos shooting were quickly called into question raising the possibility that Serpico had been taken to the apartment by his colleagues to be murdered There was no formal investigation but Edgar Echevarria who had shot Serpico was subsequently convicted of attempted murder Much of Serpicos fame came after the release of the 1973 film Serpico in which he was portrayed by Al Pacino based on the book of the same name by Peter Maas On June 27 2013 the USA Section of ANPS National Association of Italian State Police awarded him the Saint Michael Archangel Prize During the ceremony he received his first Italian passport and gained Italian citizenship Description above from the Wikipedia article Frank Serpico licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia