More importantly, Logan told the investigators that his superiors seemed uninterested in investigating corruption cases when they arose. Phillips was a patrolman who had been with the NYPD for thirteen years when he came to the attention of the commission investigators. When they confronted him with this, Phillips agreed to play ball. Over the next two months , commission members and their attorneys grilled various witnesses, including Phillips and Logan, to establish a large-scale pattern of police corruption.
The pair had brought their complaints to different individuals within the NYPD in and They had reported misconduct by their fellow police officers to their superiors, and eventually to Jay Kriegel, an aide to the mayor. Nothing happened and nothing changed until they went to Burnham.
The call was They thought I was going to die. They expected me to die. He spent a month in hospital recovering and was left with some wounds, including deafness in his left ear. I have a bullet in my head. The commission eventually reported that major corruption did exist and structures were put in place to keep the cops honest. The movie ends with him leaving his home in the Village bound for Switzerland. He stayed there and travelled throughout Europe for the best part of 10 years.
He also co-operated on his biography with Peter Haas. The book sold three million copies and was adapted for the movie. Serpico placed great faith in Clark as a man of integrity and they became firm friends. Kelly was convicted nonetheless, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. He was one of my best friends, a man of the highest integrity.
I even produced a documentary a few years back called Citizen Clark A Life of Principle. And what did he think of the movie? The problem occurred in the shooting of a scene in which a racist cop chases a black man and shoves his head down a toilet. He said that never happened. The problem was he overacted. Down through the years, Serpico has continued to stand with those fighting injustice. He left policing at a young age, but the sense of right and wrong that prompted him to enter the force in the first place has never left him.
Whistleblowers seek him out. Groups intent on police reform use him as a sounding board. He has got involved in protecting the environment from rampant development. I have everything I need. I live in the woods in a cabin and right now I look out and all I see are the birds and trees and flowers. He talks with some passion about the dandelion, the flower that some dismiss as a weed, its beauty, its power in a world where nature is so often dismissed and abused.
And then, finally, he gets back to his other passion, the one that defined his life. They were at it back when he was a young cop, those who will abuse power, prey on the weak, smother light with their dark motives. Even Michael Dowd [a notoriously corrupt New York City police officer who later served 12 years in prison] talked about how, when he first became a cop, he was told by his fellow trainees about a cop who turned in other cops.
That guy somehow later fell off a balcony at a party and died. On and on it goes. FP: How serious a problem is the militarization of the police? FS: When I was a cop, we had. In fact, I violated the rules and got myself a Browning 9 mm automatic. The problem was when the police transferred to 9 mm, they also went to a 40 mm, even more powerful. And semi-automatic weapons. In my day, we were taught to maximize efficiency.
Off-duty, I had a snub-nosed. I always carried it, and once I got involved where I had just seen a lethal shooting, and I chased a guy and fired one warning shot and ended up apprehending the guy with four rounds in my revolver.
Today you see cops firing an entire magazine, dropping it, using another magazine, just emptying their guns and automatic weapons without thinking, in acts of callousness or racism. Amadou Diallo in New York was shot at 41 times in for no obvious reason. Officers fired 50 rounds at Sean Bell and his friends.
All this uncontrolled firepower, combined with a lack of good training and adequate screening of police academy candidates, has led to a major drop in standards. And now they come around with the tanks. It creates a war zone atmosphere on both sides. Sure, police officers have the right to defend themselves with maximum force when warranted, in cases where, say, they are taking on a barricaded felon armed with an assault weapon. But with more armament should also come more training—police have even killed some of their own with friendly fire in some cases.
The people are the eyes and ears of the community. Better public relations can create an ally. Michael Hirsh is a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy. Twitter: michaelphirsh. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort. Argument Benjamin Haddad. Argument Jake Bittle.
Report Allison Carlson , Michael Hirsh. The police is a quasi-military organization — just state instead of federal — [meant] to enforce government edicts against the mostly poor and disenfranchised. Newswire Powered by.
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