Serpico: Police Corruption and the Knapp Commission

There is a loyalty that exists among police officers. They protect each other, no matter what. As a result, police officers will rarely expose other officer’s criminal misdeeds. Frank Serpico disagreed with this notion, and his report on the corruption within the police force would lead to many more investigations, the most prominent of which resulting in the Knapp Commission Report.

The report would discover corruption throughout the force dating back many years, ranging from beat cops to the highest ranks. In many instances officers were directly involved in running the crimes they should have been working against. Heroin dealers for instance, were allowed to operate relatively openly as long as they paid off the police in their areas.

As a result of the work done by the Knapp Commission, much of the corruption that was endemic in the force was exposed, and the force has been under much more scrutiny ever since. However, even today officers still display the same loyalty that allowed much of the corruption to go on. In many of the high profile police related shootings in the past several years, a recurring factor is the unwillingness of the department involved to try those involved, even in the presence of video evidence. Many obvious cases of police brutality, with clear evidence against the officer in question, have often ended with an acquittal. It would seem despite the work done in the 70s there is still much that must be done to have a fully accountable police force.

-Jon Baumann