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THE
POLITICAL FILM SOCIETY GIVES FOUR AWARDS
FOR 2002
Members
of the Political Film Society have voted for to recognize
outstanding achievements in raising political consciousness
among feature films for 2002 to the following in four categories
of awards:
DEMOCRACY Y
Tu Mamá También (Alfonso
Cuarón, director)
EXPOSÉ Antwone
Fisher (Denzel Washington, director)
HUMAN RIGHTS Ararat (Atom
Egoyan, director)
PEACE The
Quiet American (Phillip Noyce,
director).
 DARK
BLUE BOLDLY DEMONSTRATES WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE
LAPD
Sometimes described as a paramilitary organization, the Los Angeles Police
Department has several geographic divisions and often establishes special units
in which officers are given autonomous authority apart from other police, developing
their own headquarters, jargon, logos, radio frequencies, rituals, and slogans,
with no direct supervision. LAPD also pioneered "scientific policing," in
which officers are evaluated by the number of arrests that they make. From
the 1980s, the densely populated Rampart Division, located halfway between
Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, began to bulge at the seams with recent
immigrants from Central America. Within the Rampart Division, which had the
highest crime rate in the city, the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums
(CRASH) team was established to crack down on some 403 gangs of Hispanics selling
drugs and collecting protection money. Evidence of police misconduct was overlooked
in light of the gigantic task of fighting crime.
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Dark Blue, directed by Ron Shelton,
begins with the March 3, 1991, videotaped beating of Rodney
King, and the story ends April 29, 1992, when the City of
Angels is ablaze. There is yet another set of bookends--an
action plot in which Sergeant Eldon Perry (played by Kurt
Russell),
a member of the film's so-called Special
Investigations Squad (a stand-in for CRASH), first participates in and finally
exposes the sleaze. How is the LAPD screwed up, according to the fictional
story, which is a vast exposé based on fact? Arrests have been made
on flimsy or manufactured evidence just for the sake of arrests, often because
potential witnesses, living in mortal fear, have refused to testify. Some presumed
suspects have been killed or severely beaten to get them to confess or to divulge
evidence. Evidence, in turn, has been tampered with due to internal politics
within LAPD. The intrigue and power struggle within LAPD is the specific focus
of Dark Blue, a film with plenty of action and violence. As Sergeant Perry
drives to the Police Academy to accept his promotion to Police Lieutenant,
the LA riots break out. After fighting through South-Central traffic, he takes
the microphone to denounce not only police misconduct but also the plot of
a police chief aspirant to kill him because he has evidence of the latter's
massive bribery and corruption. Perry, thus, is a transparent stand-in for
Rafael Perez, who copped a plea in 1999 to expose others in CRASH. As a result,
the LA police chief (who gave no orders on what to do as the riots broke out
because he asked not to be bothered while at a Brentwood gala reception) resigned,
LAPD disbanded all anti-gang units, fired five officers and disciplined thirty
others, and three were convicted of felonies. Victims, meanwhile, brought civil
suits for harassment, false convictions, and wrongful death. More than 100
convictions of civilians have been reversed, and LAPD has been sued for millions
of dollars in damages in more than 200 separate cases. Filmviewers graphically
see the interplay between ambition, corruption, and misconduct, and they will
easily infer LAPD's role as an underlying cause of much behavior during the
LA riots. The Political Film Society has nominated Dark Blue for
an award as best film exposé of 2003. MH
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