The New York City Police Department in the mid-nineteen-sixties projected the image of an inbred and secretive culture. This impenetrable world has been graphically described in books and motion pictures about two police officers, officially commended within the department, unofficially reviled among their peers. Frank Serpico and Robert Leuci, memorable for their devastating revelations, (Serpico, book and movie and Robert Leuci, Prince of the City, book and movie and his later memoir, All the Centurions,) were largely responsible for the reorganization of the methods used by the police department of their era to enforce the existing narcotics and vice and gambling laws.
Serpico had worked in the vice and gambling enforcement system, then called simply “plainclothes.” Police officers, officially designated “plainclothesmen,” investigated and arrested those involved in bookmaking, the illegal numbers racket, prostitution, and the unlawful sale of alcohol. Serpico had struggled futilely against the inherent corruption then existing in plainclothes and elsewhere. He could not accept the idea that collecting money from bookmakers and numbers bankers was part of the everyday business of gambling and vice enforcement. Leuci became a detective in Narcotics and did at first succumb to the temptations of a sub-world awash in cash. Both episodes were related admirably in their stories and the films recounting them. These old ghosts are invoked here to illustrate the climate of the Department as it then existed. In time gone by it became inevitable that at some juncture in a police career, especially in sensitive assignments, choices had to be made. Often peer pressure impelled participation in activities that would later prove ill-advised. Serpico fought against it, Leuci became enmeshed in it.
From the investigations that ensued, the Department reorganized. It entrusted to the newly formed Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB) both narcotics and vice and gambling enforcement. The reorganization provided these units with closer supervision. It abolished decentralization and significantly impeded the organized conspiracies rife among plainclothes units. Plainclothes details had operated within division and borough offices, but burdened by the enormous task of managing the precincts under them, the commanders of these larger departmental subdivisions relied on sergeants and lieutenants to supervise their plainclothesmen. Often these supervisors themselves became part of the problem.
In the Narcotics Bureau, then grouped within the Detective Division, a central squad, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), achieved a certain dark celebrity. (Remember the French Connection?) In addition, outlying squads were stationed in detective borough offices throughout the city. In the shadowy world of narcotics trafficking, enormous amounts of money were available to these detectives. There was nothing about such enterprises not understood by everyone from the Commissioner to the average uniformed officer working on the street.
Such conditions existed forty years ago, but the structure of the NYPD is now vastly different. The significant resources and talents of the Department are enlisted to address the many urgent missions that confront modern police work. Further, there is no implication that every police officer of the time was dishonest. Quite the contrary, most members of the force served honorably. There were many highly decorated and brave men and women called upon to shed their blood, and too often they gave their lives in service to the people of New York City.
Call it tradition, culture, climate, an expectation had existed in some quarters that there was money to be made. The political powers that ran the City turned a blind eye. Not only was it expedient to ignore the obvious, there was always the danger that some blame would wash over the courts, the District Attorneys’ offices or City Hall, were too much scrutiny brought to bear. An examination of the history of the era will disclose that often such seats of power were themselves engulfed by scandal. Political pressure had inevitably blunted the impact of most investigations focused on these governmental agencies. Nonetheless, influential men spent sleepless nights waiting for the drop of the next tasseled loafer. The Police Department took most of the blame; low-ranking cops and detectives bore many of the accusations and suffered the larger share of the indictments.
The Knapp Commission, appointed by the mayor and chaired by Whitman Knapp, a prominent attorney, focused media attention on the ugly underbelly of the Department. They held televised hearings and received continuous front-page coverage in the New York newspapers. The New York State Special Prosecutor’s Office, appointed by the governor, employed especially ruthless tactics in their efforts to “root out corruption.” Headed by Maurice Nadjari, a former prosecutor from Suffolk County, New York, the Special Prosecutor’s office used their own extraordinary Grand Jury subpoena power and slanted press releases to intimidate and denigrate those who surfaced in their crosshairs. No entity was spared. Judges, attorneys, police officers, anyone unfortunate enough to attract their attention was subpoenaed to testify. Carefully timed articles in the press announced those to be called before a Grand Jury, often publicly tarring the reputations of targets who had no provable involvement in wrongdoing. The office did not prosecute many cases before it was disbanded. Eventually, even the press turned on them. Their heavy-handed and barely ethical methods were repugnant to any right-minded observer. Federal prosecutors in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York demolished the Narcotics SIU due in large measure to the cooperation of Bob Leuci who was compelled finally to give up his fellow detectives. The department restructured internally and placed the gambling and narcotics enforcement squads within the OCCB. Not much was left to pursue with regard to major integrity cases of which Nadjari’s Office was aware.
The fog of secrecy began to lift, the code of silence penetrated. Slowly and painfully the Department faced what it should have confronted long before. Many more sad chapters were written; more police officers were indicted, tried and sentenced. The light of public attention was focused where it had seldom shone before and at great human cost. The passage of time will validate whether these lessons were fully absorbed by those who oversee the Department.
There was, however, one particularly ill-fated aggregation that did come to the attention of Nadjari’s office. In many precincts, groups of uniformed sergeants formed into what were euphemistically called “Sergeants’ Clubs.” Difficult to infiltrate, protected by an unarticulated secrecy, this tradition continued unabated and unprosecuted. The scheme involved precinct sergeants who visited businesses involved in marginal or minor unlawful activities. Illegal parking in front of stores, unlicensed sidewalk vending, and various code violations were typical infractions that brought harassing police enforcement and expensive summonses unless the merchants were forthcoming with regularly scheduled payments. As in other situations, detection could only occur when a participant overstepped or when an insider reported the arrangement and dragged the whole group into the unwelcome spotlight.
One such hapless sergeant in Queens was overheard on a Federal eavesdropping device focused on an unrelated criminal target. Apprehended by Internal Affairs and forced to cooperate, he wore a body wire against his colleagues. Virtually an entire complement of sergeants from one precinct was compelled to divulge their own involvement, testify before the Special Grand Jury and implicate their brother sergeants. All were prosecuted criminally. One sergeant who denied his participation was indicted, tried for perjury and sentenced to prison.
