Knapp Commission

[1] The creation of the Commission was largely a result of publicized accounts of police wrongdoing, as revealed by Patrolman Frank Serpico and Sergeant David Durk.

Lindsay's action was also prompted by a front-page exposé in The New York Times on April 25, 1970 that documented a vast scheme of illicit payments to police officers from businessmen, gamblers and narcotics dealers.

Concurrent with the Knapp Commission inquiry, Mayor Lindsay directed Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy to implement NYPD reforms.

These included proactive integrity checks, large-scale transfers of senior personnel, mandatory job rotation in key areas, ensuring sufficient funds to pay informants, and cracking down on citizen attempts at bribery.

[12] "Grass eating" was something that a significant number of officers were guilty of, and which they learned to do from other cops or from imitating the deviants they watched and investigated every day.