They Wished They Were Honest: The Knapp Commission and New York City Police Corruption ISBN: 9780231526982 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Columbia University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Being the chief counsel to New York City's Knapp Commission, Armstrong was on the scene from the beginning of the citizens commission on police graft in the 1970s and knows the perils and pressures faced by the panel before its eventual success. Armstrong, currently chair of the New York City Commission to Combat Police Corruption, plots the Knapp Commission's genesis from a 1970 New York Times article with bombshell revelations from rebel cop Frank Serpico, then details Mayor John Lindsay's lukewarm support of the commission and full-out resistance from police hierarchy until the public breakthroughs. The panel, headed by noted lawyer Whitman Knapp, survived crisis after crisis, tallying payoffs, illegal gambling, loan sharking, and drug sales, with a series of heroes and robbers. Armstrong provides some color and flash with chapters on truth-seeking TV newsman Gabe Pressman, Serpico, a pair of flamboyant patrolmen known as "Batman and Robin," honored cop and thief extraordinaire William Phillips, and Xaviera "The Happy Hooker" Hollander, who counted powerful politicians and cop bag-men as clients. Anyone interested in urban law enforcement and big city politics will find this book an important, surprising expose of the corruption and reform of police power. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Michael F. Armstrong is a partner at the law firm Lankler and Carragher in New York. He was the chief counsel to the Knapp Commission and an assistant United States attorney in theSouthern District of New York (chief, Securities Fraud Unit), as well as district attorney for Queens County, New York. Currently chair of the New York City Commission to Combat Police Corruption, he served as advisor to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo regarding allegations of political influence in the state police and continues to work on high-profile cases, which have involved such people as financier Louis Wolfson, boxing promoter Don King, accused would-be wife killer Claus von Bülow, and Queens County Borough President Donald Manes.
