Good Cop, Bad Cop

Award-winning journalist Mike McAlary pulls the curtain and reveals the details of a disturbing case of police corruption based on the confession of NYPD officer Michael Dowd and the testimony of Sergeant Joseph Trimboli, the detective investigating the case and a key witness.

New York City investigators sat in stunned disbelief as rogue NYPD police officer Michael Dowd recounted the criminal activities perpetrated by his band of corrupt fellow cops, from drug dealing and extortion to theft and racketeering.

For NYPD Det. Sgt. Joseph Trimboli, the witness as the 1933 Mollen Commission hearings on police corruption, vindication had arrived. His heroic five-year investigation of Dowd was finally being recognized.

From award-winning journalist Mike McAlary—whose front-page New York Post coverage of Trimboli’s investigation helped spark the Mollen Commission—comes an unforgettable account of the worst case to rock New York since Frank Serpico testified before the Knapp Commission in 1972.

Against the backdrop of the NYPD’s “blue wall of silence,” McAlary tells the compelling story of a cop intoxicated by the power his badge conferred, the man willing to sacrifice everything to put him away, and a police department on the brink of chaos.