Importance and Significance of Serpico - Movie Review Example

Serpico Running head: Serpico, the Movie SERPICO, THE MOVIE In APA Style Serpico 2 Abstract This paper presents an overview of the movie Serpico, stressing its importance and significance. Then, it explores the issue of police corruption and identifies the various forms of deviance, Serpico was exposed to. Then, it dwells with police subculture and the reasons why it is powerful and then it suggests ways to change this subculture. Main Body Serpico, the movie will always be remembered. There had been a plethora of movies depicting police corruption but this one stood mainly because the actor portraying the hero, Frank Serpico, made it a benchmark, tour de force performance on that genre, a standard which to my mind only Gene Hackman of The French Connection came close to surpassing. After this movie, I entrenched the actor, Al Pacino, as occupying the third leg of my great acting triumvirate, already filled up by Dustin Hoffman and Robert de Niro. Al Pacino convincingly moved viewers all over the world by portraying a crusading cop, disgusted with the endemic corruption among his colleagues. We watched with trepidation as he single-handedly exhausted all means to weed out the corruption that also tried, albeit, unsuccessful, to siphon him inside, like a maelstrom, to its putrid miasma. We commiserated with him as his frustrations sabotaged his relationships with his girlfriends and his best friend, leaving him alone to fight his battle and leaving him only with his martyrdom to cling to. We were riveted with anxiety as his life became an easy target by fellow rotten cops who were aggrieved by the presence of a traitor in their midst, a self-righteous crusader out to wrest their sources of easy money. We watched with horror as he was from all the looks of it, trapped to be executed, getting a bullet right in the cheek. We sighed for the loss of a good man in the service, as he threw in the towel by leaving Serpico 3 the police force and eventually immigrating to Switzerland. All the idealistic men and women with an all-consuming integrity should make Serpico's battle and inner torments as their own personal battle and turmoil. This movie should have been retitled as "The Police Beat: No Place For An Idealistic Man". The Issue of Police Corruption as Tackled In This Movie The movie is basically about systemic, institutionalized police corruption in New York City and about how one honest, virtuous cop with a high sense of morals and values refuses to go with the flow and adhere to his own honorable code of conduct as police officer and in return got despised by his own colleagues and got brutalized which almost cost him his life. He has always crowed that he is meant to be a policeman. He thus entered the service first as a greenhorn police on patrol. No sooner has he started his service as he first encountered corruption in the form a free meal in one restaurant. He ordered for a particular food but was instead given something else. His colleague companion admonished him "You have to take what Charlie gives. It is for free." Charlie, the owner, intently eyed the new policeman as if saying, "You're now one of my employees. It is your responsibility to protect this place and in return your meals here are for your asking." When he was assigned as an undercover cop, minus the accouterments, things were raised to a higher level. It suddenly dawned on him, that he is waddling in a pool infested with crooked cops who like hungry crocs, eternally open their mouths and claws for bribe money, in exchange for turning a blind eye to all the crimes around them, and extortion money, in exchange for allowing organized criminals like the Mafia to go on with their operations unhampered and unmitigated. Not only do these police characters constantly get showered by protection money and pay-offs from different criminal activities, Serpico 4 they also share their loot er 'blessings' to the whole police force in the precinct. Thus, Serpico watched aghast, as a fellow cop after entering a shop, returned with a wad of money and offered him a share of the 'take' inside the patrol car. Revolted, Serpico politely declined to the consternation of the other cop who later on commented, "You cannot trust a cop who refuses to take the money." His colleagues enticed him to join the fold and accept the take rationalizing that it is justifiable due to the monetary demands of the family. Scene after scene of the movie showed that corruption has already taken deep roots as cop silence and inaction to crimes become tantamount to monetary rewards. It also showed that the police profession is indeed a profitable business. The more Serpico refuses to take his part of the loot, the more he is alienated and distrusted by his colleagues. Already branded as an outcast, he was deemed as a self-righteous man who wants to prop himself up above his peers by putting up a holier-than-thou stance. That corruption has already reared its ugly head was illustrated when a call was relayed to them while riding the patrol car that a woman was being raped. The crooked cop without batting an eyelash, refused the assignment, ostensibly because there was no grease money. Serpico rose to the occasion and saved the woman's life and dignity. Frustrated, because his colleagues are sometimes more criminal than the criminals they are sworn to arrest and because he is totally helpless about the pervading corruption as his fellow cops are already conniving with the criminals, Servico made the bold step to spill the beans before the mayor of New York. But he was more frustrated as he was told that the mayor, who was due for reelection, refuses as he doesn't want to antagonize the whole police force. Because his bosses are indifferent, he was left with no recourse but to blow the lid and expose the Shenanigans nationwide by contacting the New York Times, with the help of a police inspector , Serpico 5 David Durk. The New York Times responded by giving the corruption story, a front-page space. A cornered Mayor John Lindsay was pressured to establish the Knapp Commission to investigate the aforesaid corruption. It was successful, because the whistleblower, Serpico, left no stone unturned in exposing the hidden, putrefying corruption permeating the police force. But, Serpico had to pay a stiff price as he was left almost dead in a drug bust operation that went haywire because he was led to believe that the other policemen would stay close behind him as he tried to pry open the door of the drug dealers. He was not only left alone to face the drug dealers but the others left the area and didn't even call police dispatch after he was shot at close range in the face. It was as if Serpico was lured to be executed at the hands of the drug dealers. The Knapp Commission recommended that the corrupt policemen be outright eliminated from service and be sued for graft and corruption. The Various Forms of Deviance Serpico was Exposed To In this movie, there are two sources of deviance that Serpico was exposed to. The first, comes from the usual deviates- the criminals, the thugs and the organized criminal syndicates. Here, there are crimes galore: rape with kidnapping and sodomy; drug pushing and dealing; illegal gambling; prohibited activities of the loan sharks. The second source, comes from the policemen themselves. Of course, the free restaurant meal had earlier been discussed. Then there was police brutality to which Serpico didn't even have the heart to gaze at. There was also the extortion of business establishments and the offer to divide the loot followed by extortion of money from local criminals, bribery, acceptance of kickbacks and protection money and finally shakedowns, in which policemen accepted money from citizens in lieu of enforcing the law. Here, there are so many exchanges of dirty money that we may safely estimate that it could Serpico 6 amount to millions of dollars. The Police Subculture And Why It Is Powerful Police subculture is defined as the set of norms and values that govern police behavior, brought about by stressful working conditions plus daily interaction with an often hostile public. John Demsey noticed that cops even after office hours, hang out only with each other, thus effectively isolating themselves from the rest of the society and forming a well-knitted group that may as well borrow the Three Musketeer's motto, 'all for one, one for all' (Demsey, 2007). This camaraderie may as well be likened to teenage gangs whose negative after-effect is the absorption by osmosis of some deviant behavior by all those in the group until the gang becomes a gang of criminals. This isolation and screen that separates police from civilians is called Blue Curtain. In the movie Serpico, the loot from extortion and protection money is being distributed around to those belonging to the gang, which is the police force. In order to belong, the cop has to accept the take or he becomes a pariah. Police subculture is "often considered to be both a cause of political deviance and an obstacle to police reform" (Foster, 2005, p.108). The police, through unity and cooperation, attains greater police power than the powers granted them by laws and the Constitution. Through unionization, like the Fraternal Order of Police with its 324,000 police members, cops can wield so much power than they realize, which they may use or abuse. And power blinds. Suddenly, there is a discovery that they may earn so much money through case fixing, shakedowns, private security work, kickbacks, bribery, patronage and protection of illegal goods and services such as drug dealing, gambling and prostitution. Indeed, money is the root of all evil. There is an endemic police corruption because the police subculture has warped the moral Serpico 7 values and norms of these policemen. It is further strengthened when policemen develop a cynical attitude that crime, as they often see it, is a normal fabric of society that even the powerful and the dignified indulge in. Thus, crime is a game, that one must partake and take his share of. It becomes more powerful because society not only tolerates police crimes but sets them in motion. Because people give bribes and other dirty money, then it is etched in the police ethos that such are normal. If ever cops are roused to the reality that these are intrinsically evil, police subculture has a ready answer: in this life, there are bad presidents, bad judges, bad priests, bad husbands and thus bad is not abnormal. There has to be bad cops too. This is called rotten or bad apples and rotten barrels syndrome. Frank Schmalleger, who is concerned with the changing and the rectification of the system-perpetuated corruption and the supplanting of "new standards of equity, compassion, understanding, fairness and heartfelt justice for all" (2006), introduced the concept of 'meat eaters' and 'grass eaters' which the Knapp Commission used to distinguish the intrinsically corrupt policeman from the not-so-corrupt cop. Schmalleger defined 'grass eaters' as those policemen who accept gratuities and minuscule amounts from gamblers, contractors and the like and are into it because of peer pressure. Likewise, 'meat eaters' are those who are aggressively and premeditatedly extorting money from business establishments and from drug dealers and the like. They are therefore policemen who "spend a good deal of time aggressively looking for situations they can exploit for financial gain" (Schmalleger, 2006). Hopes To Change The Police Subculture To my mind, the criminalities and corruption displayed by the rotten cops are heinous and deserve an electric chair or hanging because they failed society who reposed so much Serpico 8 trust and confidence in them. The world needs more of a Serpico and he thus deserves the accolades heaped upon him including a golden badge. As to whether there is hope of changing this police subculture, such task is formidable and gargantuan because it is already deeply rooted in the policeman's ethos and had been there for centuries. Possibly retraining will help. Maybe by "filtering out unsuitable applicants through psychological testing and background checks",(Bannish & Ruiz, 2003, p.831) there is a faint hope. Applicants must meet diagnostic criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder. Individual police departments must tighten their entrance requirements so as to bar those with Antisocial Personality Disorder. But to my mind, God and the fear of God must be inculcated and instilled in the mind of each and every policeman. There must be a sanctification of the police department and all its members. Serpico 9 REFERENCES Bannish,H. & Ruiz, J. (2003). The Antisocial Police Personality: A View From The Inside. International Journal of Public Adminstration, 26, 831-881. Demsey, J. (2004). An Introduction To Policing: New York: Thomson Learning. Foster, J. (2005). Political Cultures. Handbook of Policing, Portland, Oregon: Willan Publishing Schmalleger, F. (2006). Criminal Justice Today: An Introduction Text For The 21st Century. 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