Serpico Redux

by digby

I recently linked to a post by Frank Serpico recalling once what happened to him when he exposed corruption in the NYPD. The wall of silence that keeps cops from policing themselves is isn’t so thin. Here’s a recent example of it:

Before he became public enemy No. 1 inside the Baltimore Police Department, Det. Joseph Crystal was considered one of its rising stars.

The son of two NYPD cops, Crystal was put in charge of his police academy cadet class on day one.

He was promoted to detective before he reached his second year on the force.

And he went on to lead his violent crime unit in gun arrests, racking up high-profile collars that made the evening news.

For Crystal, rooting out crime in one of the most violent cities in the nation didn’t even feel like work.

“Being a cop was all I ever wanted to do,” he says. “A dream come true.”

But that dream turned into a nightmare four years ago when his brothers in blue turned on him – bombarding him with taunts and threats, refusing to come to his aid during drug busts and even leaving a dead rat on his windshield.

His crime? He reported a case of police brutality.

Crystal drew the ire of his department after coming forward to report the 2011 beating of a drug suspect by a fellow officer. Crystal’s subsequent trial testimony helped secure convictions against the cop who carried out the beating and the sergeant who helped facilitate it.

Crystal says the pattern of abuse that followed led him to resign from the job he loved.

“I never imagined that doing the right thing as a cop could cost me so much,” Crystal, 31, told the Daily News this week in his most extensive interview to date.

You should read the whole article with all the details of what happened to him. It’s chilling. He’ could have been killed as a result of some of the behavior of his fellow cops. In fact, it seems as though that was the idea.

There have been boatloads of words spilled about this problem over the years. But it never changes.

Crystal and his wife now live in Florida where he’s working as an officer with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office.

Crystal understands that some might draw parallels between his case and the coordinated displays of disrespect shown to Mayor de Blasio by NYPD officers at the funerals of slain cops Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

But Crystal doesn’t see a connection.

“I see people here as they’re hurting and upset right now at the loss of two of their own,” Crystal said. “I saw what happened to me as somewhere along the line we lost our way.

“What I saw was criminal. What I see here is an emotion,” Crystal added. “And those are two very different things.”

He tried for months to get a law enforcement job near Maryland but found no takers.

“Looking back, I still can’t fathom what happened,” Crystal said. “How do you honestly expect people to have faith, to trust the cops, when they let this happen?”

This youtube called “watching Serpico with Serpico” from the New York Times is a fascinating little look at the problem: