Serpico Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Serpico - Essay Example An understanding of Serpico’s story helps to illuminate the importance of integrity, autonomy and responsibility in every individual involved with criminal justice. The story of Frank Serpico has proved the impetus for a variety of police reforms and attempts at reform as the public found out just how extensive the system of ‘crooked cops’ went following Serpico’s revelations to the New York Times when he found his superiors unresponsive and incapable of dealing with what he encountered. Rather than being a case of a problem that had been so long unknown that it was beyond control, much like a houseful of termites within the framework, what Serpico uncovered in the 1960s and early 1970s was a case of so many individuals embroiled in the action that it was nearly impossible to find superiors capable of following through on investigations without implicating themselves. Reading through the slightly fictionalized biography of Frank Serpico reveals not only the extraordinary conditions in which he finds himself, but the several places in his life in which he was forced to make a difficult ethical decision, often at his own perso nal cost and suggests places in which an equally ethical criminal justice administrator might have been of significant assistance. The story opens up as Serpico is being rushed to the hospital after having been shot in the face in what is still debated as possibly an arranged ‘hit’ between the drug dealers and the police officers with whom he was working. Once it is properly established that this did not prove to be a fatal shot, although it came within fractions of a centimeter of being so, the novel turns to recount the past events of Serpico’s life that had brought him to the hospital that night and why suspicions of conspiracy were circulating. Touching only very briefly upon his childhood