Serpico knew he could loose his pension or worse if he went through with his whistle blowing, yet he did it anyway. Earth's history is FILLED--before and since--with the exact same situation, with countless people risking it all, and paying the price, for coming forward, all around the world.
Certainly a bright and rational person would know that allowing corruption to go unopposed is a losing propostition. Sooner or later, you may just try to do your job and find out that you have run afoul of the corrupt element within the government. You may be a victim of one of the criminals left unpunished.
Some, but not all cops are there because they specificly want to fight corruption or right some other social wrong.
And some are just in it for the money and the feeling of empowerment. Some of them want a cut of the swag, a piece of the action, if you will. But fire fighters are a different sort of being entirely, in my experience.
I doubt that there are an awful lot of fire fighters who chose that line of work because it offers an opportunity for graft on anything like the same scale that being a cop would. I got into it while I was in the Air Foirce specificly becauser I viewed it as a humanitarian thing to do, avoiding any qual of conscience whioch might have bothered me because of my views on the morality of what we were doing in Vietnam.
It is also a challenging job and provided a lot of opportunities for self-examination, opportunities to push you own limits and to know who and what you really are. I will just ask those who have their doubts about me to take my word on this one thing: The second time that you stand, fully suited up and holding a chareged foam line on the edge of a pool of hundreds of gallons of burning jet fuel, and you step off into that maelstrom just for driull, you have probably answered all the important questions about who and what you are. You have little left to prove to or about yourself.
Of course, there are also those who are actually psycopathic adrenaline junkies who know that it is dangerous, but figure they have the skills to come out the other side unscathed, but also realize that **** happens. Nothing to get upset about, if it just happens because somebody screwed up. But if it happens because somebody wanted somebody to get hurt, well, getting that person off the street is a high priority.
Doing things right is the only viable option.
Keeping quite because of a pension is too clearly wrong and not conducive to one's living long enough to collect that pension anyway.
And if one of the big beneficiaries of keeping silent about things that might suggest corruption or criminal activities is someone like Rotten Rudy, there is just not that much motivation to go alng with it.