Crime + Punishment

2018, Hulu Original. Produced and directed by Stephen Maing 1:52:00

Police corruption is pernicious and pervasive, a bigger threat to the public then all the terrorists in the world, and all the nuts with guns.

People tend to think of police corruption in terms of “cops on the take.” Officer Krupke pops by the local gambling dives and whore houses and takes his 10% of the profits, or he is part of the blue wall, protecting bent cops.

Those were the good old days. There are still cops who are shakedown artists and thieves; that hasn’t changed. There are bigots and Nazis on the forces, too.

But back in the 80s the political right came up with the notion that crime should pay; communities should fund their police forces with the revenue generated by traffic stops, court fines, and property seizure.

At the same time, police were under enormous pressure to be “tough on crime”, which meant they needed to make a lot more arrests to show the public that they were doing something about the crime wave.

Thirty years later, the crime wave, a product of population demographics, has receded. Crime is the lowest it has been in a half century or more. But the paranoia of the 80s left in its wake a completely suborned and corrupted legal system, one that needs many tickets to support itself.

Many more arrests that can result in fines in the event of a plea bargain is an obvious solution.

With public defenders overwhelmed, people who hauled in on charges of disturbing the peace or resisting arrest will jump at the chance of avoiding years in jail if they can plea bargain it down to probation and a stiff fine.

Not surprisingly, cops were busting a lot of people on made up charges, knowing they would settle and pay rather than fight in a rigged system.

In New York City, with a 36,000 member police force (larger than Ferguson, Missouri!), cases of false arrest, intimidation and coercion made it to the courts, which on two occasions ruled that “quotas” (requirements that individual cops make at least one arrest a month and write x number of citations) were illegal and unconstitutional because they fostered corruption.

The court could strike it down, but they couldn’t replace it with a less corrupt way of financing the city. That was up to the city council, and the state legislature, and they failed miserably.

Not surprisingly, cops are rousting the people least likely to be able to fight back, minorities and the poor, and shoving them into the maw of the money-press machine some people jokingly refer to as the “justice system.”

It was so appallingly bad that morale among cops crashed. They could see what was happening, and many, perhaps most, wanted nothing to do with it it. But the higher echelons, from the Commissioner on down, put enormous pressure on the cops to meet the non-existant quotas, threating their careers and even terminating those who didn’t get enough arrests and tickets.

Twelve very brave cops sued, defying their superiors, the city government, and every bent cop in the NYPD who preferred peace and quiet in their cushy positions to the public welfare any day of the week.

Crime + Punishment details how the case came about, and what was done to the cops to punish them. It is detailed, very personal, and searing. It shows some of the victims of the same sort of organized shakedown that triggered riots in Ferguson, and some cops who weren’t part of the suit but who were courageous enough to speak out.

Higher ups, of course, hid behind their desks and refused to be interviewed.

If you believe systemic police corruption is a serious problem, you need to see this documentary.

And if you don’t believe it is a serious problem, then you DEFINITELY need to see this documentary.