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Permanent Surveillance. Though the names of most of the corrupt cops were omitted from the hearings that concluded last week, the commission suggested that numerous indictments would be forthcoming. The public can only reply that it has heard all this before; corruption is exposed, an uproar is created that soon subsides. The cops revert to their old practices, if they ever really abandoned them. But it is possible that this time the outrage may be sustained. Chairman Knapp proposed that a permanent investigation commission be set up once his group disbands. That will be after further hearings next month when Mayor Lindsay's aides will be called to testify. The commission is expected to ask the Lindsay administration why the mayor failed to respond when two policemen, David Durk and Frank Serpico, reported corruption among fellow officers to the mayor's office as long ago as 1967.
Another hopeful sign for combatting corruption is the leadership exercised by the police commissioner, Patrick Murphy. Though he has rebuked the Knapp Commission for smearing the whole force with the tainted testimony of a few rogue cops, he has been making wholesale transfers and demotions to weed out graft in the department. He has also shifted accountability for corruption from headquarters to the precinct level. The commission hearings have strengthened his hand. Now he does not have to bear the burden of shaking up the force alone; he can point to public pressure as forcing him to act.
Neither Murphy nor anybody else will be able to eliminate payoffs entirely. Says Harvard Professor of Government James Q. Wilson: "It's very difficult for an officer to refuse a free cup of coffee; the person who offers it to him regards it as criticism or repudiation if the officer makes a big deal out of not accepting." The problem is at what point a tolerable gratuity slides into graft. The line cannot be officially drawn, since the department must be on record in favor of total purity. But word will filter down; though only de facto, it will be no less binding. "One of the problems so characteristic of any democratic society," says Wilson, "is that to achieve a very important objective, you have to be able to claim that you're trying to achieve an impossible objective."