Courtesy Alpine Labs
“The criminal justice system is built to believe the words of officers, because if you don’t then that really erodes our belief in what’s right and what’s wrong,” defense attorney Ivan Bates, now the City of Baltimore state’s attorney, says into the camera.
What happens, then, when police officers routinely plant evidence and commit robbery to line their own pockets? You may have seen a dramatized version of the Gun Trace Task Force scandal on HBO’s We Own This City last year, based on reporting by the Baltimore Sun and largely from the perspective of federal investigators. Stream the new doc I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad, based on what journalists from an alt-weekly uncovered with victims at the center for more answers.
Long before Freddie Gray became a household name in 2015, journalists in Baltimore were working to uncover widespread corruption in the city police force. Stories about particular abuses by a unit of plainclothes officers were particularly galling. With a special police unit, notes one attorney in the film, came “especially bad policing.”
Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg published a book in 2020 based partially on their reporting for the Baltimore City Paper, and although the documentary version rolls out nearly three years later, the reporting for both mediums occurred simultaneously. Woods serves as an energetic narrator, and director Kevin Casanova Abrams adds powerful storytelling.
An investigation by the US Attorney’s Office eventually resulted in federal prison sentences for police involved in the criminal activity. Yet, the people whose lives they affected with false reports aren’t neatly fixed with that outcome. Lasting, systemic change remains far from reach: DOJ is yet to wrap its investigation in Baltimore. Further, this story is playing out in other police agencies across the nation, with similar “special units” terrorizing people in other cities. Five officers in the Memphis Police Department’s SCORPION Unit, for example, are charged with murder after they beat Tyre Nichols to death during an arrest last month. Closer to home, the Justice Department forced the Albuquerque Police Department to dismantle its Repeat Offender Project team in 2015 after deep reporting on a legacy of violence by a local journalist.
9
+Compelling storytelling of ubiquitous, galling police behavior
-Very complex tale for a short documentary
I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad
Directed by Kevin Casanova Abrams
Amazon, Apple TV, NR, 91 min.
