Is it scary when putting people in jail becomes a task with a quota target? Wouldn’t it be even scarier if the person carrying out that task was a police officer? But it is a fact. It’s true for one law enforcement agency, the New York Police Department (NYPD).I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the term “whistle blower”? It refers to people who work within the state but come forward to expose irregularities and violations of the law by the authorities. Simply put, it means “I reported my leader”.
Edward Snowden is a whistleblower who has exposed the US Prism and Xkeyscore programmes, the US “core secrets” and the Wiretapgate affair. The risk of losing one’s job is certain, and it is up to the individual to decide whether or not they will be threatened by certain forces. But there are some people who are just too aggressive and would rather take the risk than expose them. Take for example the NYPD12 (NYPD 12), a group of 12 African-American and Latino minorities who are the whistle blowers of the NYPD.
In August 2015, the NYPD12 risked losing their jobs by launching a class action lawsuit against the NYPD: they exposed the NYPD’s reckless arrests to meet arrest targets and improve personal performance; they exposed racial discrimination in law enforcement, retaliation and corruption that runs deep in the police system. The story of these brave ‘whistle blowers’ has been turned into a documentary by director Stephen Maine, entitled ‘Crime and Punishment’.
In June this year, the film was selected for the Golden Goblet Award (Competition) at the 21st Shanghai International Film Festival. Let’s take a look at this rare documentary today. How terrible is police abuse? The New York Police Department uses the number of arrests as a criterion for performance evaluation, and this unreasonable system is most likely to lead to police abuse. Subsequently, it is easy to cause indiscriminate arrests and tensions between the police and the public. Demonstrators held up three photos of dead black men at the hands of police officers. Such a policy would not only tarnish the morale of police officers, but also erode the trust of the general public. The ongoing conflict has proven to be a source of social unrest. The street protests by the general public against the NYPD are also proof that relations between the police and the public have reached a fever pitch. At the same time, the use of public power by some police officers and their racial discrimination in the enforcement of the law has caused many injustices to black people for no good reason. And the internal system of the NYPD, with its suppression of newer officers by senior officers and hidden depths of corruption, has also left the entire police system confused and tainted. How do whistle blowers gather evidence? Such a dark and tawdry operation is destined to be watched by those with a hot knife, so NYPD12 steps up to the plate. ypd12 takes the risk of recording secret conversations between officers and commanders, while they get their hands on the department’s raw bills and the testimonies of a number of people in the know.
At the same time, former police officer Manuel Gomez, who had turned private investigator, gathered testimonies from some of the minorities, young people who had been viciously harassed by the police in the name of fighting crime. The tip-off to private investigator Manuel was that the NYPD12’s revelations were a damning indictment of the flawed institution, and that 12 people had broken a “blue wall of silence”. What these righteous people are hoping for is a top-down reform. What these righteous people want is a top-down reform, but such a reform is difficult to achieve, because what needs to be changed is the motivation of the people. As you can see in the film, some of the police officers are thinking about immediate arrest and summons, rather than whether the person has done anything wrong or not. The terrible motivation created by the rotten system – to arrest more people for bonuses – hurts not only innocent people, but also the supposedly clean and honest law enforcement agencies.
The documentary “Crime and Punishment” is a four-year documentary on the policing process of the New York Police Department (NYPD) from the perspective of the “NYPD 12”. It is not a mere glorification, it is one of the “whistle blowers” who are fighting against injustice with the persecuted officers. If every citizen is just a potential criminal to meet police arrest targets, then society as a whole is a vast borderless prison. But there are always those who, for the sake of justice, for the sake of conviction, swear to break through the prison of society.
