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Serpico

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Serpico
Jermaine Carmichael
Criminal Justice 102
Ms. Naide
03/26/14

The reason I chose Serpico is because I thought this book would talk about a cop trying to do the right thing, which was to change the crooked system that allowed corruption. This non-fiction talks about the criminality that takes place in this book. For example Serpico was plainclothesmen which was patrolmen working out of uniform on special assignments like narcotics, prostitution, and gambling, so it was a lot of opportunities and temptation for graft to occur. This book proves the point that people in power always abuses it because the plainclothesmen were just out to get a profit from illegal activities that you were hired to prevent.
The topic this book expounds on is about Brooklyn born, Italian cop with long hair, scruffy beard and a taste for opera and ballet music, name Frank Serpico. He was a man that couldn’t be hushed nor brought with felonious money, so he decided to change this nefarious system called the police force, that enable the law enforcement to flourish off of bribery, graft, and comprise. After Serpico made this decision to try and change the fraud happening in law enforcement, he had gained a lot of enemies rather than allies due to the reputation he garnered. For example during a drug raid his fellow partner was reluctant to come to his aid, so he was shot in the face. From then on, Serpico was life was put into danger by his fellow colleagues. Police Officers were baffled and confused on why Serpico broke an unwritten code that meant that cops can’t turn in other cops. Apparently Serpico didn’t care about that code because his main concentration was advancing to detective rank and being a good example of cop, so his peers can learn from it. Police Corruption is the abuse of police authority for the gain. The connection it has to the criminal law is corruption undermines the rule of law, good governance, tarnishes the public image of the law enforcement, protects

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