This past Monday, Hulu invited guests to the Tribeca Film Center for a private screening of Stephen Maing’s documentary ‘Crime and Punishment’ which received a special impact award at Sundance.
The documentary provides overlapping perspectives on quota policing in New York City by focusing on Private Investigator Manuel “Manny” Gomez and his cases, as well as the creation of the NYPD12: a Latino and African American group of 12 officers, former and current, who banned together to speak out on the injustices practiced at their precincts. Together, they filed a class action lawsuit against the NYPD.
The outlawed quota system enforces that cops make a certain amount of arrests in order to be promoted. If the desired number isn’t met, the officers could possibly be marked for dismissal. With that in mind, many officers make false arrests that end up being dismissed in court due to lack of probable cause. This was the case for 900,000 summons collected between 2007 to 2015. After witnessing the police force disenfranchise minority communities to generate revenue that the city’s budget heavily depends on, these officers felt justice needed to be served.
“Leading up to the moment was tough but I reached a point of frustration where I said, ‘What’s the point of having all this knowledge and not making it tangible?’ I’m not going to say it was easy, but I didn’t care about consequences,” said Lieutenant Edwin Raymond after the screening.
As predicted, there certainly were consequences for speaking out. In the film Raymond shows a newspaper with the story that his subordinates accused him of not arresting and/or charging criminals of color. Despite these claims effecting his promotion, officer Raymond officially became a Lieutenant on November 20.
“I get a lot of dirty looks, a lot of people aren’t happy about me being in this position,” Raymond admits. “Thankfully many officers have expressed gratitude nationwide. What the film did was it gave a voice to the officers who never have a voice in these things. It’s either you’re a pro cop or an anti cop. There are many cops who needed a job and had no idea this is the system they’d be sucked into,” he says.
A Q&A with Raymond, Maing and Gomez was moderated by activist Shaun King after the screening at the restaurant next door, Locanda Verde. The conversation exposed life for the men after the film had been seen which Maing was glad to jump into.
“Like two weeks after we got back from Sundance the Chief of the Department of the Commission released a couple of memos internally to all uniformed personnel that said there’s no quota and that everyone’s required to take a no quota retraining,” Maing explained. “That’s when we really realized that’s one of many ways that they were going to plant seeds of disinformation.”
As for hopes for the future, King wraps the evening with a very strong remark. “Now New York’s entire legislature is controlled by Democrats. I just want to see what they’re going to do with it,” King explains. “We have a democratic Governor, a liberal progressive Mayor, 96 percent of the City Council are Democrats, and for the first in generations every Congress person is in NYC in now a Democrat but what are we actually going to do? They will do with it what we demand they do with it.”
Be sure to subscribe to Hulu to watch Crime and Punishment to get informed. Continue to spread awareness on quota policing and join the movement by sharing the movie with family and friends.
