organizations of any industrial society are selections and reflections of the larger economic political and cultural order which create form and control them a criminal justice system and the practices and policies by a police department within that system is no different the police who are expected to perform within these departments often grapple in their everyday duties with the contradictions and failures of a larger political and economic system in america that practises structural racism and class warfare on the poor officers who question these arrangements are often ridiculed and punished for their resistance that they show to the police abuses set up by the political elites and departmental hierarchies of the very system sometimes a brief moment an opportunity occurs where there is some possible transformation of that structure it occurs usually when individuals in the system begin to stand up and say enough is enough it's when they've come to the point that resistance becomes the only way that allows them to live with themselves as student free speech activist mario savio put it in the one nine hundred sixty four rally at berkeley there's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part you can't even passively take part and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears upon the levels upon the wields upon all the apparatus and you've gotta make it stop there's a terrific new documentary just out that for traces one of these brief moments and opportunities it won a special jury award for social impact at the sundance film festival and captures illuminates and challenges us all about the deep perhaps intractable problems of policing in new york city and beyond the documentary is called crime plus punishment and it focuses on the background and meaning of the quota system policy of the new york police department not long ago members of the force were expected to meet monthly quotas for arrests and summons though the practice was outlawed in two thousand and ten and earlier this year d instituted mandatory no quota training for all its officers the film's director steven mang amasses evidence and testimony showing that it has persisted by different names to this very day longtime native new yorkers particularly citizens of color and including the police and selves have known of the so called unwritten unspoken quota system for years and they would appreciate how the film documents and exposes in a meticulous way what they've already known in their everyday experiences for years mang has created a masterful powerful and suspenseful film that focuses on and follows a group of officers known as the n y p d twelve mostly latino and african american officers as they go public with their case holding news conferences sitting for television interviews the twelve in a class action lawsuit argue that they had been purged pressured to meet illegal quotas and punished when they refused to comply supervisors or recorded threatening reprisals against the officers some of whom are then disciplined for trivial infractions given undesirable assignments and blocked when they see promotion the documentary offers a powerful and thorough critique of american law enforcement by digging into individual lives and circumstances allowing afaik the individuals to speak for themselves were brought into the daily lives of police officers some of them veterans with decades of service behind them who are willing to risk their careers for what they believe is right they face fear frustration and agonizing uncertainty as a case proceeds one involved officer admits that a rebellion and possible movement like this happens maybe once every hundred years were honored and proud to have three of the n y p d twelve and the director on the radical imagination today crime plus punishment is a film about the work risk sacrifice required to make the ideal of equal justice under the law anything close to reality we stand with them for their moral integrity that they show in resisting and exposing the apparatus of the machine that many of the rest of us also know to be corrupt and wrong so welcome officers waller polite go gonzales director steve mang to the radical imagination and before we meet them here's a brief trailer to the movie crime plus punishment hills crime plus punishment wow thank you so very very much all of you for being here and i just am honored to have you here this is a masterful movie the most important movies on please please years i noticed you know corners when i was undercover is just something that i spoke out then and it's something mentally i spoke out about to the day i retired which was two years ago forward where i came from washington heights in the ninety's and how crime was then and what was expected of me if i would have became a drug dealer surprise anybody i was given the opportunity to go to school i was given the when somebody in jail simply to meet a number put somebody in jail to benefit myself over time not knowing the damage that i'm courson to another kid another family let me too vell against the very powerful negative and that can cause so much pain to some kids so it wasn't something i decision it came just overnight here this was years and years and maybe i was i was for i i used to work for the school system i wanted to be a cub i want to be  so i want to go back to washington heights and walk with me there's a hope that we're going to go find some kids come from the dominican republic go from someplace and give them a not only given them an option this is what you can do you don't have to sell drugs you don't have to you know feel the status quo you don't have to do what people expected to do the opposite and this is how you can do it that's what i wanted to do and i was lying i became a police officer was like oh my god this is you know this is what i wanted to do but when we face what the reality of the job was and my moral stand that they couldn't do i couldn't do it sandy same thing with you same thing i became a police officer  want to serve my community i want it you know put the back guys in jail but when i saw that there was a machinery putting a lot of people with ma in behind bars right and some of this making money off of it and you know hurting the community you know i turned away from the system and you know as you can see in the first scene of serve the community as a service people should not be pain for the police department to perform he's not here you know what i mean by that now what have they kind of privatized the police department meaning that they have productivity productivity goals business business model that's their business does or matter productivity growth rather t v what are we selling handcuffs police records to great point we're not selling anything we should be helping the community not sucking money out of their pockets so when twenty summers as a month is not an option it's not if you don't have an option as a cop you have to you have to but what happened or else what what happened you'll get you suffer the consequences they will go after you they will go after your job they will hurt you a heard the including trying to fire you so when you are police over saying you have a family you have a special needs child you have you need the medical you can now afford not to have medical coverage you're going to have somehow bow to them because like it's like the most needed of all government jobs and to my eyes we had a harder i mean i mean you know you spend attacked and use want to protect and when you got there everything changes so he said that the police department is basically a business you know like you only so far now you know there are some structures within the department and need to change that's what we're looking for looking to get all that power from the handful of people the ri that one that's who how do members of the community see how do you feel as you walk the streets of the community that you wanted to help them serve after what you've been you know program to do what do they see doesn't work like that so sometime we don't we understand being the color we are we understand the resentment from people at the beginning was frustrating because i just want to talk to hear how you do as a on his arm i want to buy a kid an ice cream or do something like that and they look at me like i'm an alien like reporting on the stop and frisk issue and doing some nonfiction content around that these are shorter pieces that we're looking at you know the concerns of both the community and your native new yorker or yes ok so you've been aware of that but ok got to yeah and you know so you know discriminatory policing practice has been a conversation that the nation has been divided on not just new york for decades i mean that's a great point and forgive me for interrupting but what you fashion you stop and frisk in minority neighborhoods and overused in fact so everyone thought two thousand and fourteen with mayor de blasio coming in on a police reform platform with a reform minded commissioner would officers who were coming out and one speak was that that was very far from the truth and that in a way things are getting worse because the problems now were being acknowledged this idea that stop and frisk was assumed to do be the the core problem when in fact the quota at large was you know this idea that rate the problem big knowledge about lower forms were not substantial and right so we really felt and i was really inspired by you know the early officers we met a deal pedro and derek to do a project this would be our fourth project about policing that put a face on not just the officers who were living through this kind of trauma but more importantly the collateral damage which is you know the community and so important to bring you here to the trauma that the officers are feeling and i didn't teach it john day i was told the same thing by the officers themselves how the community officers who feel very deeply and aligned with you but there is a great issue of what's going to happen and that's why this film is so important where we need to spread the word and get it out there and people and in the field need to to spread it and why don't we i know this so much to get across it but we've got some clips to show so let's let's do the first clip and then we'll comment about that ok are that ok with these the depths ok all right so here is clip one how this all got started in a meeting in the diner i think it is right  somebody you're not crazy that you know who's in your mind that there are people out there who are willing i was inspired by an event walton you know she was a one of the female officer back in the diallo case you know and her story they came up and so now we're trying to organize polanco can only do by him so we can help and when they came along i was i like please by all means come over working together organize and also together eventually they came in there it came in ventura we got twelve of us for me is this is like wow finally you know is it was very nice to see everybody come together so what we're trying to see we our unions and i helping the department is a help in the to able to sell that and people in the street are like you know what if crime is going to be this low keep stop and frisk but guess what not today last year stop and frisk is down almost ninety nine percent crime is even lower right same people couldn't believe that so that's why people were afraid that i don't want to throw my name out there as a politician then crime goes up and then it's going to be my name they're going to blame me for this cd so we say they substitute something else using a well you know that's a result of our broken windows policing theory and we have to make note that the crime levels dropping are not a result necessarily of the current policing practice that what's happening as a result of the current policing practice is there is an erosion of the trust between community and police that these guys are i've seen them all on the job i've seen them all work their asses of these are you know not what one would easily like to call lazy cops they are out there doing the work addressing crime conditions and frankly like you know dealing with the public in the most positive way is see people come up and hug these guys talk to that share their problems that will to community police if you don't use a police officer is to be physically we are in the streets homeless somebody who had to burglarize that they didn't get burglars that their report is not going to be taken for burglaries going to be taken for trespassing so that burglary never happened when somebody walked in the precinct to report a burglary back in two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven two thousand twelve some people got taken for this elderly condom because they got so frustrated about the cuts on him i'm not taking your report you it was negligent of you to leave the computer you cannot afford the computer how can you afford it i've been to places where they told people you live in housing there's no way you could afford a forty and you've got didn't happen and the classification will be lost property and it gives a false sense of safety so now we now have blinkers on a false sense of safety yet so now bloomberg is going to brag that robberies lower which is that it's about playing a broader picture around how this will impact us in the community a long time and so like how will this lead to less black bodies being violated how will this lead towards understanding right and there are people in our community there are people who act hall to come to this meeting that said i will not be b s because i don't work with police officers very and all right and they didn't come and the ones who told me they were coming that i'm not here i know exactly why they didn't show up right you or me be sitting here thinking we hear like what do you mean why but there are other elements to how do we gauge the community that some folks on the face will understand and that's why as they back to us as the activists what do we careers on the line so in order for this to be taken serious we need we've already been in during the television for not conforming to the quota but at this point they're going to try to  valuation like this and if i never have to be promoted so my people can be treated better you can keep a promotion wow this is so now you're dealing with the diverse community response to what you're trying to gain their support and it's sort of a mixed bag there too right this is this is really funny and this this is the picture that i get out of this the mayor now the chief now everybody speak about community their first work out of their mouth is community community policing community event community community community this is the topic of the do you see that community do you see the level of trust they have for cops and the by the way this is the members of just listening member of the just this is very progressive is people from the community who are who we are trying to come to and to say to them right we are police officers yes but we are not them we are not the system we are basically against the system and they trying to say we understand you to the level that we are here sitting with you something that they never done before but they need us to understand that the public trust is not there that we have to gain it because you got it from all sides because no matter what we do you know i still see in us as police officer it tell you about the hypocrisy of the mayor's office and police commissioner about they according to them the relation between cops and police is beautiful we like all everybody is holding him which is not these people they have a big level of thing having observed these guys for many many years you know in some cases i've known you know some of the officers on this ten years these guys are not they have chosen an easy road and so if anybody were you know on the public to were to want to claim this is being done for you know the term motives personal gain you know you have to have the system to get back and have an endeavor that you know they just don't want to do the work if you didn't want to do the work you would not put yourself in such a precarious professional and also personal life his situation i mean these guys have chosen a hard road where even the advocates that you would ideally want them to come rushing to their support have a tremendous difficulty turning that you want existing yeah and that really believing the overture that their constituents will support them even if these organizers as you see us on the scene do and so you know there's this kind of question of like what will it take for officers who are trying to like shed light on real common sense for for measures to actually convince lawmakers and public policy makers academics and the public at large to support them i mean you know as edwin says this is you don't get this all the time and we can only lose from this because for sample people we meet we have nothing to gain we the retaliation that we go through the things sometime we question ourselves like is this even worked but i really need to go through this with just keep my mouth shut and just make my life easier but then you you hit it with your conscious where you know some people just go with the flow not because they want to be part of when that was a pain joy but it's easy to go with it than to fight it and i thought i thought right and the mayor came in and police reporter who's in charge of community affairs chief whatever whatever chief or i will whatever it was a captain when the quarter was going on and the quarter his system and his precinct went three times higher when he was a the problem is what if you want to do that wouldn't it be fair to say oversupply langkow for example started talking about community policing when was prohibited that that the wall or house of twenty three years working in brooklyn and he has a quality to work in the community and when raman is a sergeant i should be working for the mains office and you know what to do right out of line is that by they have the wrong people trying to do the right job and the people who are they have now trying to reform the police department were the same ier with with and with in the parliament and internal affairs in this whole you know all these machinery within the department that is all meant to protect the quota system you know you're talking about institutions organizations structures it will just as a cat or me that are rooted in the sort of career assume you're talking about have a stake in getting the grants that will you know in a little modified walk way study the same ole same ole the same old people are being controlled and manipulated in different ways they don't believe that a police officer cannot be can be a enormous price for this and and for a young person like pager hernandez who we haven't actually gotten to feature yet in this program right who is fighting of i believe eight falsified arrest charges right even one falsified arrest charge that he's going to bring you through the court systems in this kind of like cyclical orwellian nightmare that is so hard to extract yourself from because there's tremendous pressure to take a plea deal and when you know the reason for that is because it's going to get you out of jail i going to get you to rikers he was in jail for a long twelve months twelve twelve months this kid and after twelve months no sorry no anything no apology just you know the d a decides to drop the charges because it turns out there wasn't any sufficient evidence mean what kind of system would allow even that single person to go through a nightmare like that and i mean you know we can't even begin to talk about the personal psychological emotional trauma that it had on a young person like pedro hernandez and the race you can assume it did because this is a young man who was a student he was he received a full scholarship during his time in rikers was helping other young people get over their beef right there's a lot of tension within the prison system right and study for the g d this is a good kid and so we have good cops making claims on one hand we have good people good families who are on the receiving end of a kind of like policing system and model that is unfairly targeting them at a rate of what i found in some recent n y p d data was that and i actually did the film as a result is that it's that rate of over five point six to one that the minority communities are being criminal some criminally some and more than white communities for some of the top earning summonses like open container marijuana possession their quality of life quality of life the corrections that can turn your life it's playing until september sixth we're hoping with more attendance it'll get extended additional weeks of absolute has to you know because that will help send a message and it's also going to it's available on hulu streaming and if anybody want to host a community screening