Monday, September 7, 2009

FAMOUS HISTORICAL FIGURES I'D LIKE TO MEET

Frank Serpico.

Talk about a guy with balls. When the early 70's NYPD was crawling with corruption, whether minor or frickin' huge, he wanted none of it. No protection money, no scraping off the top of impounded cash, none of it. He ended up with a bullet in his face, and when the call was made to the dispatcher of the officer down, he turned to another dispatcher and said, "Hey, guess who got shot, Frank Serpico." To which the other replied, "Did a cop do it?"

If you weren't on the take to some degree in NYC at that time, you weren't trusted by the other boys in blue, and thusly feared for what you knew, and could possibly testify about. Still, Serpico didn't flinch. As a matter of fact, he faced the intimidation, the violence, and the fact that due to his immense inquisitiveness and hunger for knowledge on all things from literature to ballet, many cops thought him weird, or even gay. he waltzed through all of that, gunshot wound and all, and ended up through his testimony through the Warren Commission, brought them all down. A truly admirable modern day cowboy.

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