Copwatch

Ramsey has just been arrested for filming the police.

Back up.

Why are you standing in front of the camera?

Sir, you've got to get...

Get back on that sidewalk. Go back over there and film over there.

They haven't told me why am I being arrested.

This is my mom's name, Emily.

This was actually my first tattoo. I remember I was told,

I wouldn't be able to get tattoos

unless it was my mom's name.

So, I went behind my mom's back for Mother's Day

and got her name tattooed, and since then, I've just been addicted to it.

Eyes of a dead man.

A part of my life where I felt like I didn't have no soul,

I didn't have no heart and everything was cold around me.

This is actually a victim to the police brutality and stuff.

This signified how cops were killing us.

Ex gang-member, Ramsey Orta, faces years in jail.

It all started when he shot a video of his friend, Eric Garner,

being stopped by undercover officers

on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes.

For what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me.

I'm tired of it. It stops today.

This guy right here is forcibly trying to lock somebody up.

That day changed my life.

I wish it didn't have to happen this way.

Don't touch me, please.

Do not touch me.

- Why are they doing that to him? - Damn, man.

All right, he's down.

Lift your hands, buddy.

Put your hands behind your head.

I can't breathe! I can't breathe!

I can't breathe! I can't breathe!

Officer had his knee

on Eric's neck like this.

And basically holding him down, trying to restrain him,

while other officers was twisting his arm.

I can’t breathe. I can't breathe!

Everybody back up. Back up.

Watching it now, it's like... It hurts.

I get goosebumps,

'cause I feel like I could've done a lot more

than just stand there and videotape.

He can't breathe.

They don't even try to take the cuffs of him and give him CPR.

They don't even try to put an oxygen mask over his face.

I mean, they just left him there.

Laying on his side, with his eyes rolled back and his mouth open.

And I'm like, "I killed him."

Back up.

I was here watching the whole shit.

You watched everything. You know everything.

I couldn't believe it at first, and then...

I went home and took a shower and it hit me like,

"Damn, they just killed my friend."

Two days after a New York City grand jury

cleared a white police officer

in the choke hold death of an unarmed black man,

the protests are growing larger and spreading across the country...

Ramsey's video triggered demonstrations across America.

I can't breathe!

Hundreds shut down major highways in multiple cities.

For many, including the city's medical adviser,

this was a homicide caught on camera.

I can't breathe!

Summer, 2016.

Ramsey's video has still not led to any arrests.

But it has inspired a network of people

who use technology to watch the police.

They're taking on the largest force in America,

the NYPD.

Brooklyn, New York City.

Dennis Flores is a government employee by day.

By night, he runs a team that intercepts police radio

to film arrests as they happen.

342 tenth Street.

Can you check if that's between third and fourth Avenue?

Let's roll with it.

We want to deter police abuse.

So, if our cameras are out there, it's going to help prevent it

'cause they know there's extra eyes on them.

These cameras are bad-cop repellent.

While it's legal to film the police,

Dennis has been arrested dozens of times.

Sometimes aggressively.

So, these cops came, grabbed me, handcuffed me,

and then body-slammed me here, like about five or six cops.

Slammed me to the floor.

This one police officer grabbed his walkie-talkie

and cracked my head open

as all these other cops came and kicked me, punched me.

And they dragged me out of here

and charged me with assaulting the police.

Now, Dennis never films alone.

He and his team have filmed multiple cases

of what New York's zero-tolerance policing means in practice.

So, this is where Ray Tillery was standing

when he flicked the cigarette onto the street.

The police around him, swarmed him around this entrance.

As we see in the video,

right in here, in front of this dollar pizzeria shop,

he gets arrested.

What? What are these guys trying to do?

-Are they trying to handcuff him? - Turn around.

Over ten police officers, aggressively, take him down

for flicking a cigarette in the street,

something that thousands of New Yorkers do every day.

He can't throw a cigarette butt down?

Come on, man.

For every ten people stopped by the NYPD, eight are Black or Hispanic.

Literally, like, the police have a license to hurt, arrest,

and kill people and get away with it. Nothing happens to them.

Even those who intervene run the risk of arrest.

Sebastian Lemos, he was right here and the police were arresting him.

And as they approached, the mother,

she started telling the cops what you're doing to her son was wrong.

She's six months pregnant.

She has a belly out to here.

You see them struggling with her and he slams her to the floor.

He puts his knees on her back.

Another woman approaches,

and the cop tosses her, flips her over,

and she hits the ground and fractures her kneecap.

These are crimes being committed by police officers.

That's why cop watching is effective.

Because here we are, keeping a track of all the corrupt cops.

We're making it public to make sure that people know what's going on

and this doesn't just get swept under the rug.

Police officer shot in the shoulder.

Now they've got an investigation of the three individuals.

Two of them have been apprehended. The officer has got shot in the shoulder.

And one individual's still at large.

Anthony Miranda has spent his life in the NYPD.

They're doing an infrared and heat

to try to locate people, probably in the backyards.

A senior detective, he's investigated homicides,

organized crime and police corruption.

They shot one cop, they wouldn't hesitate to shoot another.

It's highly unusual

for a police officer to speak out against his own.

But after 20 years of service,

Miranda can no longer keep quiet about the behavior of the police.

The enforcement against African-Americans and Hispanics

is ten times more than it is against any other community out there.

When cops become abusive is when the they start believing the mentality

that it's us against them.

And that starts from day one in the police academy.

Any police indoctrination, it trains officers

to disassociate with the communities they grew up in,

not to identify with the people,

sometimes not even to identify with their own family members.

They have no screening process whatsoever for racism.

They don't do it.

Imagine if the police department can hire somebody

who has a tattoo on his arm of a hanging...

Of a black person hanging,

they still qualify to be a New York City police officer.

- Have you seen that? -Yes.

White people don't get arrested as much.

The criminal justice system doesn't prosecute them as much.

It doesn't charge them

the same way that they charge African-Americans and Hispanics.

There's a total imbalance to the process that nobody wants to pay attention to.

Miranda is aware that by making allegations of systemic racism,

he's pitting himself against the NYPD.

People say, "Well, these guys are in uniform

and they're talking about discrimination.

These guys are in uniform and they're talking about the abuses

that are going on in our community."

These were things that were unheard of, you would never do that.

You're taking your life in your own hands.

The Police Department is the biggest gang in New York.

You mess with the Police Department,

and the retaliation is direct and absolute.

The NYPD has 36,000 officers,

and a budget of five billion dollars.

It can control every corner of New York.

In multi-ethnic areas like the Bronx,

the department operates a fleet of mobile observation towers.

These are deployed 24/7 in poor areas.

The whole place is lit up.

It's like it is a war zone.

It's an occupying force.

Crime rates have fallen to record lows.

But Jose LaSalle, who runs the local Copwatch team,

believes this is because the entire community is under siege.

I'm just filming the lights all around.

Kind of give people an idea of how police has actually took over

these projects in the Bronx.

I mean, there's no problem having police, you know, around.

My problem is when they just don't follow the proper procedures

and protocols, and take this to a point

where they just become more of a harassment.

Suddenly, Jose intercepts a police request for backup

on a possible domestic violence incident

and disappears down the road.

Jose films as two officers lead a vocal but handcuffed man

to their vehicle.