There's something very depressing about a story like this: a cop who is faced with the widespread corruption of his colleagues, but who is consistently thwarted in his efforts to combat this by his superiors, who are either on the take themselves or too politically and ethically gutless to do something about it. No surprise that things finally started moving when Frank Serpico had enough of banging his head against a brick wall and went to the press instead. It reminded me, very clearly, of the epidemiologist Peter Buxtun, and how he tried for years to get the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment shut down, and who eventually had to go to the press when the American medical establishment showed no inclination to behave with any ethics whatsoever. 

Both whistleblowers finally involved the press in the early 1970s, and it was a successful move for both of them. Clearly, allowing organisations to police their own corruption is a risky endeavour, and I'm not convinced that the fifty odd years that have passed since then have seen any great change in this regard. The media is not always reliable (and should be held to account by outsiders to that industry as well) but as always: sunlight is the best disinfectant.