By MATT GILBERT and JESSICA ROSS
A Brooklyn-based filmmaker previewed her documentary at Ramapo College that shows the rise of law enforcement profiling and brutality cases in New York City.
Documentarian Kathleen Foster spoke at Ramapo College April 16 to show her currently in-development film Profiled. Foster wanted to show the film before completion to get opinions from students on the stories of excessive police force in the troubling cases, including the deaths of Shantel Davis, Kimani Gray and Anthony Baez in Brooklyn.
The film discussion comes at a time when protests are mounting against recent shootings of unarmed African-American citizens across America, including Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C. and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Miss.
Profiled is a 60-minute documentary which speaks about racial profiling and police brutality through stories from black and Latina mothers whose children were victims of fatal police shootings.
“We learn from these, who are at the forefront of a growing national movement for racial equality and justice,” Foster said. “Their testimony–until now rarely, if ever, heard–becomes integral to the film’s overarching narrative which seeks to reveal how this country’s racial history connects with present-day issues of life and death for people of color. The women’s stories effectively debunk the myth of a ‘post-racial’ United States.”
Stories included in Profiled received little media attention until the cases of Eric Garner, who died after police subdued him on a Staten Island street, and Brown occurred. The film is as yet unfinished, but Foster made the decision to show the approximately 28-minute segment of the documentary to receive feedback and raise public awareness in the wake of the recent shootings.
Foster has been making films since the mid-1980s for community organizations which include history, current events, and individual stories. She sheds light on women’s stories that often received little to no attention.
Foster uses these interviews with people to humanize the alarming statistics concerning police shootings primarily in New York City. One condemning statistic the film illuminates is how 600,000 people were stopped without reason by police in one year under New York City’s former stop-and-frisk; an overwhelming majority were black or Latino, according to the film. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to reform the stop-and-frisk policy.
Many of the cases discussed in the movie received little to no media attention at the time of their happening.
[AUDIO: Listen to Foster talk about the movie’s main message. Lisa Rino and John Goldfarb report.]
One segment of the film focuses on the little-known case of 16-year-old Kimani Gray, who was shot seven times by police in Crown Heights. Foster uses both TV news footage and private interviews with Gray’s mother, Carol, to express the pain that police profiling and brutality causes when it rips families apart. “No matter what race you are all lives matter,” she said.
The Kimani Gray case is one example of many unarmed black citizens gunned down by law enforcement who many said were doing nothing wrong, according to the filmmaker. In the documentary, a witness Camille Johnson said, “His hands were up, he was saying please stop, please stop.” Officers who filed the report said he pulled a gun on them and they had to act quickly.
Following the screening of the material, Foster opened up a question and answer session with students to gauge their reactions and learn from what they had to say.
“It’s not a finished product, ” Foster said, “but I think it’s a good time for me to show [the film] because I would like to get the reactions and feedback from students.”
Student reactions to the film were profound and unexpected.
[SOUNDSLIDES of the event. Photos and slideshow by Devin Hartmann and Steve Spanopoulos.]
Students Share Their Reactions to the Film
“[It was] very powerful. I know a little about what they were talking about, but I know a lot more nowl,” said Steven Dahmer, 26.
One student who only identified herself as Allison, 21, also said the film was “very emotional. The whole connection of the institutional racism was very sad.”
[Video: Audience members react to documentary. Video by Andres Castillo and Deanna Nucci.]
The Chi Upsilon Sigma National Latin Sorority Inc. sponsored the event. Keeton, who teaches in communication arts, told the audience that, “Informing people about things that are going on is the only way to create change.”
Keeton, in her message to the students, reminded those in attendance to care about social justice. “The future is yours, and you are the ones who are going to determine the society we live in.”
Ramapo Record staff contributed to this story.
[Storify produced by Michele Calicchio: Here’s what a sample of social media has said on the subject of police use of excessive force.]