The former undercover detective testified about endemic corruption in the New York Police Department in 1971.
NEW YORK — More than 50 years after Frank Serpico testified about endemic corruption in the New York Police Department, the department finally recognized his service and injury in the line of duty with an official certificate and inscribed medal of honor.
The former undercover detective, 85, received the honor in the mail Thursday, the New York Daily NewsSerpico testified in December 1971 to a panel appointed by Mayor John Lindsay to investigate police corruption, breaking the “blue wall of silence,”Al Pacino went on to portray him in the hit 1973 movie “Serpico,” and his story is also relayed in a book by Peter Maas.in December about the 50th anniversary of his appearance before the Knapp Commission.
“I felt that finally I was going to tell the world and nobody’s going to interrupt me,” Serpico told the newspaper, speaking from his home in upstate New York. “I thought, ‘I know the truth.’ ... Every single word was mine, and it came from the heart.”Serpico was shot in the face during a drug arrest in Brooklyn in 1971 months before he testified and has maintained that the other officers he was with never made a call for an “officer down.
While the department gave Serpico a medal recognizing his injury in 1972, it was handed over without ceremony or the accompanying certificate, he told the newspaper. Mayor Eric Adams responded to the coverage, saying Serpico’s “bravery inspired my law enforcement career. Frank — we’re going to make sure you get your medal.”of the framed medal of honor and certificate that reads in part, “in recognition of an individual act of extraordinary bravery performed in the line of duty.
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