Taking Dirty Money

For New York City's finest it was one of their busiest weeks. No sudden summer crime wave was bothering the men in blue. They were trying to cope with something more disconcerting: the biggest shake-up the police department has known in more than 20 years. Commissioner Patrick Murphy had heads rolling with considerable speed. A month ago he removed the top two officials of the narcotics division and transferred 16 other commanders. Last week he demoted two inspectors and removed six precinct captains. He replaced the high-ranking chief of patrol with Inspector Donald Cawley, who was promoted past 72 others with more seniority. He reached out of the city to appoint a former chief of police from Long Island to head a new criminal-justice bureau. A wave of resentment swept through the station houses; Edward J. Kiernan, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, accused Murphy of "the systematic destruction of the finest police department in the world."

Murphy acted because evidence of police corruption had grown too massive to ignore. Two separate investigations -one by the State Commission of Investigation, the other by the city's Knapp Commission-had turned up more than a few "bad apples," as the police like to describe their erring members. Elite units like the narcotics squad were reputed to be filled with men who were pushing drugs instead of trying to stop their spread. It had become frequent practice for a patrolman to turn in part of the narcotics he had picked up in a raid and keep the other part to be sold. In one instance a patrolman arrested a pusher on the street, while a detective seized the opportunity to burglarize the pusher's home. In another case two cops supplied heroin to an addict until her horrified boy friend went to the commissioner's office. One of the cops pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in jail; the other was merely dismissed from the force.

Personality Conflict. A cop who was not on the take was expected not to inform on fellow officers. The normal procedure would be for him to tell his superior officer that he had a "personality conflict" with his partner; the pair would then be reassigned while the shakedowns continued uninterrupted. The honest cop who did turn in another member of the force might be putting his own life in danger-and no action was likely to be taken against the offender. In an interim report issued last July, the Knapp Commission said that the "rookie who comes into the department is faced with the situation where it is easier for him to become corrupt than to remain honest."

The Lindsay administration was slow to react. Four years ago, Sergeant David Durk and Patrolman Frank Serpico went to city hall with names and dates on how cops were being paid off. Lindsay would not see them for fear of undermining his police commissioner, Howard Leary. An aide explained that the mayor was worried about the approaching hot summer and did not want to do anything to antagonize the police.

In desperation, Serpico, Durk and a group of other officers went to the New York Times last year to tell their story. The editors were impressed and decided to publish it. Once public pressure began to build up, the mayor appointed the Knapp Commission, which got its initial information from the men Lindsay refused to meet. The commission rapped Lindsay for being partly to blame for the corruption and charged that Leary, who resigned as commissioner last September, has a "lot to answer for in failing to provide leadership in the field."

Murphy was named commissioner eleven months ago to clean up the mess. He has the credentials for the job. After serving on the force in New York City, he became police chief of Syracuse, then director of public safety in Washington, D.C., and most recently police commissioner in Detroit. Looking more like a college professor than a cop, he has a B.A. in social studies and a master's degree in public administration. For all his experience and training, he is appalled by the extent of the corruption. "There has been a total breakdown of discipline," he says. "When I was a cop in New York, narcotics payments were anathema. Oh, you'd hear talk of it in the locker room, but it was scorned." Today, many cops are just as willing to take "dirty" money from drugs as they are to receive "clean" payoffs from gambling. While gambling shakedowns bring the police an estimated $7,000,000 to $12 million a year, according to joint state legislative committee estimates, narcotics operations are many times as profitable. "The temptation for cops in narcotics these days is terrific," says Murphy. "The money is everywhere. Fortunes are being made. It's not just the Mob that is involved now. Everyone is in it."

He is particularly worried about the younger men on the force. "Within the department there is a real generation gap. Many younger men don't have the respect for the job that the older men raised in the Depression had. To them the job is simply a way to make a buck." In a society given to self-indulgence, where everybody seems to be demanding something for nothing, the underpaid police ($12,350 after ten years) are asking, "Why not me?" Murphy's job is to answer that question. Somehow he must convince the police, of all people, that crime does not pay.

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