Racially Charged: America's Misdemeanor Problem • Full Documentary • BRAVE NEW FILMS (BNF)

1
0:08
biggest misconception about misdemeanors is that they are minor to start hearing more and more stories

2
0:14
of voter suppression that broke my heart they're the ones that are using the

3
0:25
[Music] system

4
0:32
my grandma was fighting for integration back in her day and i'm fighting for the same thing now

5
0:41
the problem is the system is working the way it's supposed to

6
1:12
we're recording all right

7
1:17
sometimes i feel like my life ended that day my car died on the side of the road a

8
1:24
cop walked over to my car and asked me if i needed help and i said no john clark was convicted

9
1:29
on a misdemeanor gambling charge and was forced to work on a chain gang i just remember being pushed

10
1:34
like being cornered into a wall i was just starting out life and i didn't

11
1:40
think i had anything to hide mary gay was sentenced to 30 days plus court costs for stealing a hat i was arrested that

12
1:46
evening it was a misdemeanor that was the beginning of the nightmare that i had to go through

13
1:52
henry nelson was arrested for using abusive language in the presence of a female and was sent off to the coal mines he

14
1:58
said you're going to jail and i'm like what for

15
2:10
misdemeanors have historically been the chump change crimes that we didn't pay attention to

16
2:17
[Music] i just got beat up by the police last night but i could have lost my life

17
2:23
13 million well that's about 80 percent of all american criminal documents 80

18
2:30
of what our criminal courts do is misdemeanors the story of misdemeanors is the story

19
2:37
of law enforcement continuing to prioritize african americans mexican immigrants america's so-called

20
2:44
criminal class you act like i really just committed a serious crime i did do something illegal you crossed the crosswalk

21
2:50
you might see two or three police standing and waiting cops to jump out the van anytime anywhere

22
2:56
[Applause] the misdemeanor system has not gotten its fair share of blame misdemeanors

23
3:05
are the invidious first step in the racialization of crime in this country too often

24
3:11
arrests for minor crimes devolve until police violence and death for black and brown people

25
3:32
[Music]

26
3:44
they got me jaywalking not wearing a seatbelt my taillight was out i was arrested

27
4:03
how far back that goes is a really dark [Music]

28
4:12
story

29
4:18
reconstruction was an error when four million african americans made it out of bondage and were able to

30
4:24
achieve at really high levels whether it was in business in education

31
4:31
different ways of prosperity that really threatened white supremacy

32
4:37
[Music] they elected many black men to positions

33
4:42
of power [Music] of course that was a sea change from how

34
4:49
power had been exercised during slavery and a lot of white folks just didn't like it

35
4:58
they were nostalgic for the old days of overt white supremacy and so they

36
5:05
subverted reconstruction if you look at misdemeanors and you

37
5:10
track them from the reconstruction area to modern day you see the fingerprints everywhere of white supremacy and control of black

38
5:17
bodies the bland owners they had nearly lost everything

39
5:23
and the only way to get that back is to somehow corral the black labor force back into the same

40
5:29
plantations that they had once worked the most effective way of forcing

41
5:35
african-americans back into this condition that would be so similar to slavery was to begin to criminalize black life

42
5:42
itself misdemeanor offenses for incredibly trivial or made-up things

43
5:48
what should have been tiny penalties for non-existent defenses turn into years of people's lives where

44
5:55
were you taken i was taken out to the camps where did you sleep

45
6:02
slept on some hay chain was on me i'm being put into handcuffs i'm being

46
6:07
dragged into this cold space i don't have anything to cover myself and i'm asked to sit inside of this tiny

47
6:13
little room and i have no idea why i'm there was there any jury that tried you no sir

48
6:20
did the recorder ask you whether you wanted a lawyer no sir and i thought that i would have time to

49
6:25
talk to a court appointed attorney so we could talk about what happened i can ask them to get other you know pieces of evidence that

50
6:31
would prove that hey i'm poor it wasn't like i was trying to run off with this money did they furnish any copy of the charge

51
6:37
against you no sir they did not did they give you any opportunity to

52
6:43
plead to any accusation it never gave me anything at all when they asked me how i played i played no

53
6:49
contest i didn't understand that no contest is the same as guilty and that i would walk away with a

54
6:55
misdemeanor that would affect my ability to get hired

55
7:06
the justice system after emancipation was weaponized against black people

56
7:11
it perpetuated slavery by making the mechanisms of enslavement

57
7:17
pretty much the same family separation back-breaking labor people having no rights

58
7:24
you could be sold on the steps of the courthouse that you were convicted in and given to the highest bidder a whole

59
7:32
separate criminal code that applied to african americans

60
7:37
was established many misdemeanor offenses are best understood as mechanisms of

61
7:44
social control they're not designed to catch dangerous or guilty people

62
7:49
but rather they are tools we give them to police as additional ways of exercising their authority

63
7:57
some of these laws were overtly race-based and with others then and now the

64
8:03
understanding was that the laws would look race neutral but they would be applied and

65
8:08
enforced almost exclusively against black people for these governments to sell prisoners

66
8:14
into slavery you first have to arrest lots of people there's a big problem with that though

67
8:20
there's just not enough crime for this system to work and for it to be profitable the state

68
8:26
governments of the south had to invent new crimes

69
8:33
southern legislatures which are essentially run by confederates at that time

70
8:38
are trying to re-inscribe a form of slavery through a system of laws called black codes

71
8:47
a whole category of new statutes passed in almost every southern state that attached these enormous penalties

72
8:54
to what were in reality very minor thefts those were laws and

73
9:00
many others like it that were only ever enforced against african americans

74
9:05
and so it became a way to have a basis for arresting huge numbers of black people

75
9:11
i don't remember much about writing the check john owen was caught taking six years of

76
9:17
corn from a cornfield and was arrested under the black codes

77
9:23
this is four dollars and we have one two three four five six seven seven times

78
9:30
four is twenty eight dollars so just this pile right here is how much i went to jail for owen was

79
9:36
put in jail for months until he was finally tried for theft i have a theft charge it's

80
9:42
death by check i had money in the bank but i didn't know how long it took for checks to process like i know better now

81
9:50
i could have donated plasma gotten 25 under a sentence owen was leased in the

82
9:57
convict labor and sent to the chain gang where he served two years for the corn and a third year for the court costs i

83
10:04
was in the hayes county jail for a total of 45 days for 25 worth of food michael brown

84
10:13
who was the teenager who was killed by police in ferguson whose death led to the

85
10:18
explosion of the black lives matter movement he was stopped for jaywalking he stepped

86
10:26
off the sidewalk and was walking in the street and there was a local criminal ordinance that made it a crime

87
10:32
to do so african americans are being cited for jaywalking

88
10:38
at three five ten times the rate of white pedestrians the legislatures of

89
10:44
the white south make it a crime to walk alongside a railroad in an era which there are no paved roads the

90
10:50
easiest way for a poor person to get from one place to another is to walk alongside a railroad that law

91
10:56
didn't say this only applies to black people but those were laws that were only ever enforced against

92
11:02
african americans all of us engage in what would be considered to be

93
11:08
minor crimes and for some people it's crossing the street at the wrong time

94
11:13
but if you're black or brown then it becomes categorized as something that's criminal

95
11:19
so what are you doing didn't use the crosswalk all i'm trying to do is go home man i'm tired i just got off of work

96
11:26
nandi kane says he was walking home from work when it happened since i felt like they were going to

97
11:31
draw a gun out and shoot me in my back i'm tired of all this [ __ ] man

98
11:54
um vagrancy laws were passed that

99
12:00
essentially meant any black person who was found on the streets unemployed and couldn't show evidence of work

100
12:06
was a criminal a vagrant trespass laws originate from this idea that african americans only belong

101
12:13
in certain spaces and at certain times and so they give police officers the ability under the guise of law to

102
12:21
dictate where an african-american person can be what time they can be there and how they

103
12:26
can operate in certain spaces my kids daycare was inside of one of the buildings to the um skyway

104
12:33
so i figured i'd take a walk find somewhere to sit down and um wait on them to get there i'm going to new horizons to pick up my kids i was

105
12:39
sitting there for 10 minutes monroe dolphis was standing in the train yard when he was grabbed by the

106
12:45
sheriff's deputy monroe stated that he had not committed any crime why are you going to go to

107
12:50
jail i'm not doing anything wrong hold on hold on can you hold on please i'm not no no come on brother brother this is the

108
12:56
fault at this moment i saw my children's daycare class and their teachers and

109
13:01
everything um walking past while this was happening he took the taser and drove it into my leg and pretty much

110
13:08
at that point it lost all control of the leg the deputy later claimed that the crime committed by dolphus

111
13:14
was taking a 25-cent tent of fish from the lunch pail of a southern railway worker unable to provide any evidence to

112
13:20
support this the charge was changed to vagrancy and i kept asking them what i was being

113
13:26
charged with they'll create false charges just to make sure that everything is perpetuated judge

114
13:34
longshore found dolphis guilty of misdemeanor vagrancy and sentenced him to five months and 20

115
13:40
days of hard labor and the minds of tennessee coal iron and railroad

116
13:46
going back to the vagrancy laws of the late 19th century the people who make those laws have in

117
13:52
mind another group of people for whom there is an inherent threat to their livelihood like breaking

118
14:00
barbecue ordinances and public parks or sleeping in dormitories that white people don't think you live there

119
14:06
i have every right to call the police it allows law enforcement to regulate whether or not certain

120
14:12
behavior for one group of people is deemed a criminal and another group of people is just

121
14:19
frivolous activity many people remember the starbucks debacle in philadelphia there were two

122
14:25
african-american men at a starbucks the employee had them arrested for loitering where they're clearly not

123
14:31
engaging in that behavior

124
14:37
loitering is a police tool of choice it's the go-to offense that police often use to impose

125
14:43
their authority in the misdemeanor system there is no conduct to minor no act too small that the state cannot

126
14:51
render a crime black people charged with a misdemeanor are 75 percent more likely to be locked

127
14:58
up than white people you have to realize that these laws didn't happen by chance they were

128
15:03
part of a a system to continue to oppress black bodies our misdemeanor system

129
15:10
includes all kinds of offenses and some of them can be quite serious domestic violence

130
15:16
dui but most of the time we treat minor harmless conduct

131
15:22
as misdemeanors traffic offenses jaywalking order maintenance offenses spitting

132
15:29
driving on a suspended license for failure to pay a fines and yet these minor meaningless

133
15:35
misdemeanors can have terrible consequences for individuals

134
15:43
[Music] to understand the misdemeanor system

135
15:50
follow the money the accused are paying for the judges

136
15:56
the prosecutors and three and a half million dollars off phone commissary at the jail it's a

137
16:02
known money maker they call it the 20. family member transferred money

138
16:21
today's system is estimated at 80 billion dollars

139
16:27
the misdemeanor side of it it is a way of saddling people with fines and fees

140
16:32
that will put money in the pockets of the administrators of that system the first time i got a

141
16:38
ticket my insurance had lapsed so i got the speeding ticket and i got a no insurance ticket at the

142
16:44
same time the next time i got pulled over i was arrested for driving with a suspended license i paid the tickets

143
16:50
pay the court costs paid my fees and fines but they said we're driving with a spinner license the punishment for that is we're going

144
16:56
to suspend your license for two years i would often have to choose between paying my inspection or my registration

145
17:02
or paying my light bill or other bills that i had i had to drive my car to get to work

146
17:08
because i had a construction job if i needed to take material to the job i couldn't take plywood or two by fours on a bus

147
17:20
i felt like there was no way i was going to be able to take care of the kids on my

148
17:26
own while you were out because i didn't know how long you were going to be in jail this officer saw me a young hispanic guy

149
17:33
driving a 63 impala and said you know what that guy he's up to something i was trying to go to work

150
17:39
trying to pay bills and he's treating me like a hardened criminal that misdemeanor charge ended up becoming something that i

151
17:46
couldn't get rid of

152
18:00
they are being treated as revenue sources charged daily fees for being in jail

153
18:07
supervision fees tether fees drug testing fees database fees to fund bail bondsmen

154
18:14
private probation companies electronic monitoring companies drug testing companies

155
18:19
it is disturbingly similar to the way that we saw african-americans being exploited in the

156
18:25
post-war south

157
18:47
[Applause]

158
18:54
i'm the mario davis uh linebacker of new orleans saints i was born and

159
18:59
raised in mississippi pretty much raised by a single mom entering into my second year of college

160
19:05
me and a teammate were caught shoplifting groceries from from walmart it kind of

161
19:11
felt a lot more like a drug bust than uh us having stole some groceries

162
19:18
the bail was set at ten thousand dollars and you know i have ten thousand dollars the football coaches bailed us out a

163
19:25
misdemeanor is supposed to be able to uh be in front of the judge within 90 days but this is not happening this is

164
19:32
not happening in our country we have people who are spending seven eight months in jail who

165
19:37
have not even been

166
19:44
[Music]

167
19:50
sentenced cop arrested me and i was charged with the misdemeanor the term chain gang

168
19:56
was coined on account of the shackle worn by convict laborers they said okay listen we're gonna let you go home now

169
20:02
but scram's gonna come and uh put a monitor on you they were taken to an anvil where a

170
20:08
rivet was pounded into the ankle cuffs to keep them closed then the cuffs were chained together the

171
20:13
initial fee to get on this ground was 250 that's just to have it put on then after

172
20:20
that they charged me 220 a month for the actual monitor many of the convicts suffered from shackle sores

173
20:27
ulcers were the iron ground against their skin gangrene and other infections were also

174
20:32
common right after they put it on me you start causing these really severe sores and rashes

175
20:38
and their attitude pretty much is it's court-ordered it's by a judge and you'll wear it or you can go back to

176
20:45
jail the emaciated convict laborers worked their entire days barefoot but the shackles were always on their

177
20:51
ankles they mined in them slept in them and those who died of disease or beatings

178
20:57
were buried in them what they're doing is unjust what they're doing is profiteering because you you're paying

179
21:02
them you're their slave with their shackle on your foot

180
21:28
i remember this hopeless feeling just overcome me i couldn't take care of my family the

181
21:34
biggest misconception about misdemeanors is that they are minor the full consequences of getting a

182
21:41
misdemeanor can be astronomical it hurt me for 10 years and it

183
21:47
completely disrupted my life and i have been trying to figure out how to get my life back on track

184
21:53
this will be a part of my story for the rest of my life when people

185
21:58
are booked into jails for a week or a year or even a day you just

186
22:06
cannot avoid the trauma that inflicts upon you the moment you hit the jail you don't

187
22:12
come out of that unchanged or untouched you witness trauma you witness violence

188
22:18
and it changes you it changes your community i tried to get a job at amazon where my

189
22:23
roommate worked i called to walmart and i called to several other retail stores

190
22:29
i got turned away because i had a misdemeanor charge for theft not enough people talk about what it

191
22:35
means to have a misdemeanor on your record it can determine the kind of job that you get to the kind of housing that you

192
22:41
can qualify for to the kind of schools that you can go to a lot of people

193
22:46
are harmed for life because of the smallest infractions they're being rendered homeless they're

194
22:52
going without food without medication their children are suffering due to misdemeanors i lost my housing

195
22:59
shortly after that i lost my vehicle which led to me losing my job and it was

196
23:05
just one thing after another like like kicks to the face

197
23:10
i had full custody of my children they had to get to school we had to

198
23:18
sleep in the car waking up at like four in the morning getting to a laundromat to make sure that they have

199
23:25
clean school uniforms and work so hard and all of that was ruined by one charge

200
23:31
one misdemeanor ruined my ability to get even just basic work

201
23:43
they can't get a job if they have to check a box that says they've been convicted of a crime they can't even

202
23:51
rent housing because they got poor credit when they received a ridiculous

203
23:57
500 dollar speeding violation so this system was designed both to extract

204
24:03
from people but also to marginalize their presence in society

205
24:24
it's going to be a mass grave site this is the dormitory we stupid crowd

206
24:30
these are the beds they're right beside each other and this is the space everybody just

207
24:36
dying and getting sick and [ __ ] like this [ __ ] serious as [ __ ] bro you all right

208
24:42
you want me to go get the police no what have you done this [ __ ] you ain't gonna do nothing about it

209
24:49
this [ __ ] literally in this [ __ ] dying bro i don't know what to do

210
24:55
one of the worst places to be during this pandemic is locked up in jail the

211
25:02
same horror story is emerging of the unchecked spread of infection and inmates essentially being left to

212
25:07
die now jaywalking or theft of a small amount or any sort of vagrancy type of behavior

213
25:16
can lead to your incarceration and eventual contracting of the virus and death

214
25:21
i've been in jail for two and a half months for a ready death a non-violent crime that carries a

215
25:27
misdemeanor charge for the price value of um less than a hundred dollars there's been three deaths

216
25:33
two being inmates one being a guard as far as like people who are working for the facility

217
25:38
they're like intertwined they could easily be catching it that's how one of the guards caught

218
25:43
it my life is in danger

219
25:56
[Music] these human beings aren't valued enough

220
26:04
for us to apply the same kinds of safety measures there that we are in other sectors of society

221
26:10
if it wasn't already bad enough that you are booked into jail because you didn't have the money to pay

222
26:16
the ticket and your license is suspended that is now life threatening to you

223
26:22
sheriff's office is now releasing non-violent inmates as a next step in mitigating the spread of copenhagen

224
26:28
hundreds of inmates have been released from shelby county's jail in an effort to put fewer people at risk

225
26:33
for coronavirus

226
26:41
19 thousands of misdemeanor defendants are rightly being released it's clear that these individuals should

227
26:47
have never been incarcerated in the first place we can tell by the fact that after these

228
26:53
releases we haven't seen any sort of crime wave

229
27:01
there's a different type of crime wave that should concern us though and that's the crime of violence against black

230
27:06
people post civil war [Music] [Applause]

231
27:15
state violence has historically been used to intimidate people of color especially black people

232
27:21
we see this all throughout history

233
27:30
misdemeanors they have almost nothing to do with public safety

234
27:36
what misdemeanors do is give police an extraordinary amount of

235
27:42
discretion with any minor offense premised on the idea that the black man is a threat

236
27:53
misdemeanors are a very specific mechanism that legalize violence toward black

237
27:59
people and keep them in a very particular place not just as individuals but as an entire community of people

238
28:08
when we look at so many cases in history often what started as an investigation or a claim of a petty misdemeanor

239
28:14
offense led to police officer supported and sanctioned racial terrorism

240
28:21
all too often we see police exercising that terrible authority of violence

241
28:27
against people who have only been suspected of the most minor of crime

242
28:35
the problem isn't bad apple cops the problem is the system is working the

243
28:41
way it's supposed to

244
28:51
[Music] police shot this boy outside my

245
28:57
apartment they kill him

246
29:15
[Music]

247
29:36
pretty good

248
29:42
[Music] i'm so sorry

249
30:06
why gray appeared to be unable to walk and was screaming as he was carried

250
30:12
feet dragging on the ground to a police van

251
30:18
[Music] i know i know you just on your job

252
30:43
[Music] please

253
30:50
my life could have so easily been taken in that skyway

254
30:56
george floyd goes to show further that the most minor offenses

255
31:03
even no offense at all could result in death the very purpose of racial terrorism is

256
31:11
control is social control what we have seen in the killings of

257
31:18
those accused was that misdemeanors became the gateway for police violence and murder

258
31:32
[Music]

259
31:41
we are seeing decriminalization we are seeing citations instead of arrests we are seeing people let out of jail we are

260
31:48
seeing pushback against fines and fees but at the same time there is so much more work that needs to be done

261
31:56
who defined what a misdemeanor is the whole thing was built on exploitation on racial violence

262
32:04
on building up industrial capitalism we should not be locking up people who speed who are too poor

263
32:12
to pay a fine or a fee who loiter or trespass or jaywalk they're not dangerous they're

264
32:19
not scary there's never been a good reason to lock

265
32:24
up anybody for petty offenses like slavery back in the day the law

266
32:30
itself is doing the work of oppression the criminal law is providing the

267
32:36
authority to arrest black people to punish black people to kill black people

268
32:44
and ultimately the real crime is that we're black

269
32:56
[Music]

270
33:34
when officers use their discretion and still choose to arrest low-level offenders instead of siding and releasing them

271
33:40
they are choosing to lock a human into a cage we wouldn't even put our dogs in

272
33:55
we got 123 people out of the hayes county jail yesterday

273
34:06
it eliminated the penalty for being caught driving with a suspended license from another two-year suspension to a

274
34:12
90-day suspension

275
34:22
don't allow the outside world to corrupt you don't don't allow the

276
34:28
outside world to tell you who you are

277
34:37
i wanted to be a voice for those who are not able to be a voice for themselves

278
34:48
[Music]

279
35:53
you