What a Forgotten NYPD Ghost Can Tell Us About Policing in America Today
You’ve heard about Frank Serpico, but chances are that you’ve never heard of David Durk.
In late sixties and early seventies, the New York City Police Department was awash in sea of corruption; soaking through polyester navy blue uniform shirts and permeating police culture in an insidious fashion. In those days, corruption was broken down into two main components — “grass-eaters” (e.g., the patrolman who would avoid giving tickets to double-parked cars outside of a Bronx bodega in exchange for free coffee and meals), and “meat-eaters” (e.g., narcotics officers who would shake down pushers for cash and product — heroin, mostly — and then turn around and sell it on the street through other “vendors”).
Young patrolmen just coming out of the academy were routinely paired with grizzled veterans who would indoctrinate them into police culture in two ways: first, by giving them the well-known speech that began with “forget everything you learned in the academy” and, second, by teaching them how to eat grass, or how to eat meat. In order to be accepted by colleagues who were already enmeshed in a culture of corruption, you had to choose — grass or meat — or shut up and look the other way; that was the only other acceptable option. After all, it’s kind of hard to be in a fraternity if you don’t drink and…