Flex Your Rights, producers of the excellent short documentary “Busted,” which has been shown on college campuses everywhere, has upped the ante with their new film, which I just watched tonight:
10 Rules for Dealing with Police
This 40-minute movie should be shown on college campuses, but also in community centers and black churches in inner cities. It deals with the rights of all of us, but particularly focuses on the kinds of encounters that are most likely to plague those who are disproportionately targeted by police.
Trial lawyer William “Billy” Murphy, Jr. leads an audience of individuals from all walks of life who have had negative encounters with the police. He patiently and painstakingly takes them through the basic principles that guide all encounters, including having them memorize such incredibly useful phrases such as:
- I don’t consent to searches
- I’m going to remain silent. I’d like to see a lawyer.
- Are you detaining me or am I free to go?
- I can’t let you in without a warrant.
Parts of it are also a little bit depressing, hearing Murphy explain how flimsy some of our rights have become.
All of the encounters are acted out (with much better production values than “Busted”) and I found the 40 minutes flew by.
It was also fun to see some familiar faces in drug policy reform sitting in the courtroom audience.
But the pièce de résistance has to be the performance by our friend Scott Morgan who blogs at Stop the Drug War. Scott plays Thug #1. Oh, yeah. Not Thug #2, which is played quite competently by Steve Silverman. No, the number one thug in this movie is definitely Scott Morgan.
I’m thinking there may be an Oscar nomination. That lean-back double-take when he starts running from the police is exceeded in style only by the intentional dive and double roll shortly after, ending with his grotesque mug frozen on the screen, which left me doubled up with laughter (and will give me nightmares tonight). Please, please, please, flex your rights.org — turn that sequence into a youtube video so I can watch it over and over again!
Seriously, there’s some excellent stuff on the entire video, and the story of the older woman who lets the cops into her home is very powerful.
Bonus features on the DVD include “10 Rules for Non-Citizens” and “Q&A with 10 Rules’ Creators” (from a session at the 2009 Drug Policy Conference).
Buy 10 Rules for Dealing with Police – it’s only $15. Be entertained and enlightened by it. But don’t stop there. Show it to a group. A large group. There’s no extra charge to do so. Maybe you can get your local library to show it as part of their citizenship series.
Is that busted the same as “Busted:The Citizens Guide to Police Encounters” put out by the ACLU?
Yes, it is.
It was such a riot to sit a the preview of the movie and chant those 4 big’uns listed in the article. Sure beats some of the AA stuff 🙂
Excellent movie
It is early spring,time to get your ground ready and start your plants inside. We,the people can reduce the cartels cash flow by 70%,just by growing our own. We the people,can overgrow our government. They are broke and cannot,nor do they want to throw us all in prison,after all,who would pay the tax dollars needed to fund their bureaucracies if they lock everyone up?
Plant your seeds in every courthouse shrubbery plot,every city park,every state park across the nation,in any conspicuous plot of dirt. Even they know that they cannot find them all and if we give them enough work to do just cleaning up what they can find,it will give them something to talk about and keep them busy, that enough will grow where they can’t find it to reduce the cartels cash flow.
After proliferating the obvious places,then go and find your hidden grow.
Some areas of the country are not suited for unattended growing,but a lot of this country is and those areas that are,can produce enough homegrown to lower the profits of the cartels and we can start keeping some of America’s money in America.
Plant date: 4/20/10
Maybe it is time for us to huddle together in prayer and support our warrior President in this war against drugs – perhaps it is time to put in gaol all the users – teach them value of freedom – we can win this war as sure as the war on terror and freedom has been won!
I love your review, Pete. Thanks so much. And yes, I think you will get a video of me falling over and over again. The thing is, we actually did several takes. My ass was horribly bruised. I’ll see if I can get the outtake footage. It will be classic.
Somebody needs to return to their mud hut.
All they have to do is claim that the police video was just grey static, as done to me by criminal Fairfax, Virginia:
http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html
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