Precinct Seven Five

Dir: Tiller Russell

2015

****

Precinct Seven Five is a look at the truth behind one of New York's most corrupt police precincts during the peak of the city's crime-wave of the late 1980s. Films such as Brooklyn's Finest and Pride and Glory are compelling dramas based on such real events but neither are quite as intense and frightening as Tiller Russell's thrilling exposé. Russell manages to record interviews with every person connected to this particular crime ring, including its main player, his heavies, the man that snitched and a feared Dominican drug-lord. He sets the scene and paints the picture effectively by using beautifully stark photos taken around the time, police recordings, surveillance tapes and court footage. Officer Michael Dowd makes Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant look like.....a good Lieutenant and he sounds like a character straight out of Goodfellas. After stopping a young criminal driving erratically one evening, he soon learned there were easy ways to make money while wearing the uniform and soon he was stealing drugs and money from dealers, robbing victims, running drugs for serious organisations and indulging in general acts of corruption. An unhealthy cocaine habit and crazed paranoia came to a head but not before years of serious crime and the death of a fellow officer. Everyone interviewed has either been cleared of all charges or have served their sentences, so everyone is frank and quite brutally honest about what happened and what crimes they committed - the honour between officers having been broken many years previous. It seems long stretches in prison have created quite brilliant story-tellers, with each interviewee describing events (and each other) with intensity and a rather animated manner. It's sometimes easy to forget that it is a documentary as it often feels just like an episode of The Wire and the way the character talk, you'd think it all happened yesterday, rather than nearly twenty years ago. It's an exciting, shocking and fascinating study of greed and dishonour, with a brilliant soundtrack to boot.