I read a story recently about Jesse James, a criminal in the Wild West era of the 1800’s. A couple of weeks later, I read a story about the less well-known Frank Serpico, who was a police detective with the NYPD in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Two completely different characters who lived their lives on opposite sides of the law, but they had something in common.
They lived in different times, with contrasting lifestyles, but they were both betrayed by their own people. Jesse James was shot in the back by a member of his own gang while Frank Serpico was set up by his fellow officers and left to die after being shot in the face. Serpico didn’t die though, he lived to tell the tale, a tale of a police force that was up to its eyes in corruption.
But let’s start with Jesse James. According to Biography.com, James was born in 1847 in Missouri and was only 16 years old when he and his brother Frank took the law into their own hands and began robbing trains, stagecoaches and banks. They became a feared band of outlaws, responsible for the murders of countless individuals who stood in their way and stealing an estimated $200,000 in the process.
Things took a turn for the worse in 1869, when the gang robbed a bank in Missouri and Jesse shot a teller in the heart. Local newspapers labelled the actions vicious and bloodthirsty and called for the gang’s capture. From then on, members of the James Gang had a price on their heads and were wanted dead or alive.
They were always on the move after that and had planned another robbery with the Ford brothers, Charlie and Bob, but they didn’t know that the Governor of Missouri had put a bounty on their heads so large that the Fords couldn’t resist it.
In 1882, when Jesse was at home, he went to straighten a picture on a wall and while his back was turned, Ford shot him in the back of the head. Jesse died instantly at age 34. Three months later, Frank James surrendered but the jury wouldn’t convict him on meagre evidence, so he was freed.
It was ironic that having lived such a violent lifestyle, Jesse James ended his days while doing something as mundane as straightening a picture on the wall. Ford was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang but was quickly pardoned and moved to Colorado where he opened a saloon. In 1892 Ed O’Kelley entered the saloon carrying a shotgun and shot him dead and became the “man who killed the man who killed Jesse James.”
The second guy in this story is Frank Serpico, an NYPD officer whose stand against police corruption was celebrated in the film starring Al Pacino. Now well into his eighties, he still recalls how he was appalled by the bribes he witnessed in the 1960s.
On his very first day on duty, he was introduced to the way his fellow police officers went to local cafes for their free lunch. Serpico refused to be part of it and paid for his meals. He could tell that the café owners resented the practice and he felt that police on the take lost the respect of the public. There was worse to come.
Serpico witnessed a driver giving a policeman a $35 bribe to avoid a ticket for going through a red traffic light. He refused to take half, which was meant to be his share of the money. He soon realised these were both the accepted and the expected ways for police to behave when on patrol duty.
When he became a detective, he realised that plainclothes officers had a reputation for graft and corruption which Serpico ignored until an envelope with $300 inside was thrust into his hand. He reported the matter to his captain who suggested Serpico had two options. The first was to persist with the complaint and end up face down in the East River and the second was just to forget the whole thing.
Three months after receiving the envelope, Serpico was transferred to another plainclothes group, and he soon found out it was the worst place for blatant graft and corruption he had come across.
By October 1967 Serpico’s position was becoming untenable. He was doing his job and arresting individuals for illegal gambling while they were paying his colleagues for protection. With nobody prepared to do anything, he took his story to The New York Times. They knew immediately this would become one of the biggest stories of the year.
On the night of February 3, 1971, Serpico was brought along on the arrest of a drug dealer in a Latino neighbourhood of Brooklyn because he spoke Spanish. Accompanied by a couple of backup officers, Serpico was instructed to just get the apartment door open and leave the rest to his colleagues.
But when the door was opened and Serpico rushed it, it was slammed on his shoulder and head, wedging him halfway inside. Frank Serpico called to his two backup officers for assistance, but no help came, and he was shot in the face.
Both of the backup officers fled, and it was an elderly Hispanic man who called 911 on his behalf. A single patrol car responded to the incident and the officer who responded allegedly muttered, “If I knew it was Serpico, I would have left him bleed to death.”
He barely survived and today he still doesn’t know the full story behind his shooting because an investigation was never conducted. Serpico continues as an activist, speaking out against police corruption and brutality, lecturing to students at universities and serving as a mentor to officers in situations similar to what he endured.