Crusader: The Hell-Raising Police Career of Detective David Durk

David Durk is a crusader in the best and worse sense of the word. He relentlessly fought for justice, despite the apathy and corruption of the New York City Police Department. For his noble efforts, he was rewarded with a partial pension, a long list of powerful enemies and an exile in upstate New York. It is a travesty that someone who devotes his life to helping people would receieve such horrible treatment himself. This book made me angry and sad but also hopeful that someone like David Durk exists to fight the system. I hope one day he wins out.

David Durk did not fit in the NYPD of the sixties and seventies from the start. A tall, wiry, Jewish college graduate-- it never quite seemed that Durk was going to be a typical cop; and he wasn't. Durk was to be a true Crusader, along with his acolyte and friend, Patrolman Frank Serpico, Durk the Idealist would go on to expose the massive amounts of corruption that lay undisturbed, rife within the NYPD. Durk's obsessive love of the truth and his equally obsessive love of policing led these dramatic changes. The NYPD is less corrupt today than it was thirty years ago, and we have David Durk to thank for that. This book retells, in startling detail, the methods which Durk employed to achieve his goal; to rid the NYPD of corruption.