Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Crime in the Media Fall 2020

For my third and final media blog post I chose to watch the Hulu documentary, “Crime + Punishment.” This documentary is all about the corruption of the New York City police department. In New York innocent people are harassed every day by the police for doing nothing but maybe looking suspicious to the officer. In the New York City police department, even though it is illegal, have quotas that must be met, so much so that police are making arrests with no information to back them up, making up fake charges, and most arrests end up being dismissed. While it may be good temporarily that all of these innocent people’s arrests are being dismissed, at some point they are going to get stuck with something only because the judge sees how many times they were arrested and does not the that they were being bullied by police officers. In the documentary we follow NYPD officer Sandy Gonzalez, along with some other police officers, and Private Investigator Manuel Gomez as they try to expose the corrupt system that is the New York City Police department.

Sandy Gonzalez is a police officer in the NYPD who wanted to become a cop so he could bring change and help people. Unfortunately, what he found was crime and corruption. In the beginning of the documentary, we see that Sandy is being accused of not making his quotas and being talked down to by his sergeant saying, “everyone is moving ahead of you.” Sandy is a man with good intentions and did not want to be part of the corruption, and for this he was punished by his fellow officers. The NYPD essentially put him on the police version of a time out and made him do tours around the city in the freezing cold, and to add insult to injury they told him he was out of uniform because he was wearing his hat when it was 38 degrees and not 32 degrees. Sandy is working alongside ex police officers in order to give them information so they can make a change in the city. We find out that between 2007 and 2015 the NYPD issues nearly 900,000 criminal summonses that were all later dismissed because of lack of probable cause, and this is exactly the thing they are trying to stop. We are even able to see how the same situation Sandy is in is also happening to other police officers, in another case the sergeant is heard being racists towards his own officers and making their lives hell because of the way they look. A lot of the time the police desperately do want to help people but n situations like this they feel conflicted, the country needs more officers like Sandy if there is ever going to be a difference.

Manuel Gomez is an ex-military intelligence officer who once tried to be a police officer, but when he saw the corruption being done withing the agency he decided to leave and become a private investigator, in an attempt the get justice for the people of New York. Many people come to Manuel from all over New York, from people in prison under false charges to parents desperately trying to keep their family safe. Manuel goes out to the street where crimes occurred and talks to the people, he hears their stories and their experiences with police brutality and then offers them advice and teaches them their rights. He also helps those who have been arrested and had their cases dismissed make CCRB complaints. Manuel Gomez does what too many people are afraid to do, and he does it with the intent on helping and education those who do not know.

After watching this documentary my eyes really opened to just how bad the idea of the blue curtain really is. With the officers out there keeping secrets in order to protect each other and their department it is not hard to see how all of these problems keep happening. These police officers are out there breaking the law in order to meet illegal quotas and harassing the citizens of the town they swore to protect, and when confronted about it they shrug their shoulders. However, even without any confessions from officers the boat load of dismissed arrest cases is proof enough for me. We need more officers out there like Sandy and his group who are not afraid to come forward and speak the real truth, and we need more people like Manuel who are willing to fight for those less fortunate. There needs to be a change in the way police handle their business and if there is none all we are going to get is more of the same.

Sources:

Hulu documentary “Crime + Punishment”