When he joined the New York City police department in 1963, David Durk thought he had found the perfect job. The department was not so sure. Durk's previous experience included graduating from Amherst College, studying law at Columbia University, and importing African tribal carvings. He also believed the police should not just enforce the law but be positive agents of social change. In short, he ranked low on the traditional measures of qualification for the police department - he was not blue collar, Irish, or Italian, and none of his relatives were cops.Durk turned out to be a model police officer with a nose for crime and the highest rate of collars among all the rookies in his first precinct. But within the culture of the police, Durk was a problem. Not only did he like to arrest criminals on and off duty, but he quickly saw that the entire structure of the department was rife with corruption. Durk discovered that supervisors at the highest levels, even in the city government, didn't care about graft, extortion, and sloth, and even created the environment where they could flourish. Most cops wanted to be honest, but they were trapped in a system that rewarded them for neglecting their duty and punished them for fulfilling it. The beat cop's unofficial motto was not "To protect and serve," but "Twenty years and out."In the late sixties, after years of fighting quietly through recognized channels, Durk and fellow cop Frank Serpico finally went to the press. Their efforts inspired the formation of the Knapp Commission, which launched the largest investigation of police corruption ever and made Durk and Serpico famous. After Knapp, Serpico left law enforcement forever. Crusader is the story - part adventure, part tragedy, and part inspiration - of what came next for David Durk, who stayed on.Durk dreamed of using his fame to help eliminate corruption and make the department the place he'd thought it should be when he entered it. He learned many things as he followed the trail of misconduct through every borough of the city, through drug busts and undercover operations, through garment-center stings and tax-evasion scams, from East Harlem drug dens to the offices of Fortune 500 companies. He learned how the city really works. He learned about how the people with flags in their offices feel about a guy who spends his life investigating the people in power. About why you keep it up, when any normal person would keep quiet. Read Less