No fault of the revolver, some people believe he was set up to be killed. He was working with three other officers, his job was to force the door open and arrest the suspect. In his own words this is what happened next:
One officer was standing to my left on the landing no more than eight feet away, with his gun drawn; the other officer was to my right rear on the stairwell, also with his gun drawn. When the door opened, I pushed my way in and snapped the chain. The suspect slammed the door closed on me, wedging in my head and right shoulder and arm. I couldn’t move, but I aimed my snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver at the perp (the movie version unfortunately goes a little Hollywood here, and has Pacino struggling and failing to raise a much-larger 9-millimeter automatic). From behind me no help came. At that moment my anger got the better of me. I made the almost fatal mistake of taking my eye off the perp and screaming to the officer on my left: “What the hell you waiting for? Give me a hand!” I turned back to face a gun blast in my face. I had cocked my weapon and fired back at him almost in the same instant, probably as reflex action, striking him. (He was later captured.)
Read more, it will discuss you for the next paragraph was:
When I regained consciousness, I was on my back in a pool of blood trying to assess the damage from the gunshot wound in my cheek. Was this a case of small entry, big exit, as often happens with bullets? Was the back of my head missing? I heard a voice saying, “Don’ worry, you be all right, you be all right,” and when I opened my eyes I saw an old Hispanic man looking down at me like Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan. My “backup” was nowhere in sight. They hadn’t even called for assistance—I never heard the famed “Code 1013,” meaning “Officer Down.” They didn’t call an ambulance either, I later learned; the old man did. One patrol car responded to investigate, and realizing I was a narcotics officer rushed me to a nearby hospital (one of the officers who drove me that night said, “If I knew it was him, I would have left him there to bleed to death,” I learned later).
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-police-are-still-out-of-control-112160.html#ixzz3M7MvIeln
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-police-are-still-out-of-control-112160.html#ixzz3M7MS3YKm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Serpico
His latest writing on police corruption written in October 2014:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-police-are-still-out-of-control-112160.html#.VIW-_WTF_8M
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