Police Brutality
The issue of police brutality happens in the first part of the movie, and because this circumstances that led to attack against Serpico’s life. Beginning with his graduation in police academy, he is a principled and idealistic young man, Serpico starts with his police career is patrolman. Therefore, he noted with concern the ethical concessions made by his colleagues in uniform in exchange for small favors, such as allowing restaurant’s employee parking in double row and does not charge them traffic ticket but need provided free lunch to the police. After, Serpico and his partner patrolling at night, when a rape case in progress is called in but his partner reject to perform because the area is not in their jurisdiction. Nonetheless,
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Then, Serpico told to the suspect he can unlock the chains and bring him to a coffee shop across the street from police station. He allowed him to order coffee and used kind gestures to persuade him in order to get the names of his cohorts. In this way, instead of the brutality actually lead to the arrest of others. Then, Serpico tracks down another two suspects at a park, but the rape case is officially under the supervision of a superior officer, he cannot follow and cannot obtain backup. This is because he is informed that his action was unauthorized and does not comply with the superior rules. Therefore, he feels uncomfortable with his coworkers’ violent methods. Soon, he requests transfer to the Criminal Investigation Bureau, always hoping to find more righteous partners and also having learned that it is a convenient route to get a detective’s shield.
According to the above description, the occurrence of police brutality is one of the plot and contains one of the ethical issue in this movie. We can see that this issue is not completely resolved. In the rape case, even if Serpico personally do not use violence to solve the problems but does not mean that another policeman would not. Frank Serpico is merely a patrolman and no power to interfere other policeman’s action. Serpico’s actions are ethical and believes in non-brutal methods to catch criminals.