Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crime + Punishment’, Hulu’s Sobering Documentary About Police Abuse

Police abuse has been a major focus in recent years, primarily covered in stories that typically end in needlessly tragic deaths. But Hulu’s latest documentary, Crime + Punishment, seeks to tell a slightly different story, one that focuses on the day-to-day harm that comes from racial profiling, law enforcement prejudice, and police quotas. By following the NYPD 12, a group of officers who have publicly spoken out about this unfairness, this documentary examines the more subtle cruelties of our legal system. 

CRIME + PUNISHMENT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: This critically-acclaimed documentary and Sundance winner outlines a landmark class action lawsuit against the NYPD over illegal police quotas. The roughly two-hour film focuses on two sides of this problem: a group of black and Latino whistleblowers who have witnessed these injustices firsthand and the young minorities whose lives are being ruined by these undue arrests and accusations. By jumping between the crimes this system is being accused of and heartfelt portraits of its victims, Crime + Punishment seeks to fully portray a complicated and shocking dynamic that has plagued New York City for decades.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Crime + Punishment highlights police corruption and complicated civilian relationships in a way that’s reminiscent of acclaimed documentaries like The Seven Five and The Thin Blue Line. But there’s also a genuine sense of intimacy in the film, similar to HBO’s superb Abortion: Stories Women Tell. It’s a pointedly emotional and sympathetic look at a system of corruption with no easy answer.

Performance Worth Watching: There are several incredible men and women in this portrayal of systematic mistreatment, but veteran NYPD detective Derick Waller is especially compelling. Crime + Punishment shows the extreme lengths he takes to show he’s part of the community while on duty. As civilians give him hugs while he patrols, he sometimes jokes with locals and other times breaks up heated arguments without violence or a threat of a ticket. Law officers are supposed to be responsible for keeping the peace, and that’s what Waller seems to do in a genuinely heartfelt way.

So when the documentary turns, following Waller as he accuses the job he loves of demanding racially prejudiced ticketing against innocent people, it’s shocking. And when he confesses that he’s seen his co-workers carry out these illegal demands, it hurts.

Memorable Dialogue: One of the most powerful and sobering statements in this documentary actually comes from a segment that’s aired before. In 2016, the I-Team of New York NBC interviewed the NYPD 12. After Waller explained to reporter Sarah Wallace that officers often go “hunting” to ticket innocent people in order to fill a quota, officer Adhyl Polanco explained exactly who the cops are hunting.

“The problem is when you go hunting, when you put any type of numbers on a police office to perform, we are going to go after the most vulnerable,” he said. “We’re going to go to the LGBT community. We’re going to go to the black community. We’re going to go to those people who have no vote, that have no power.”

Polanco’s explanation is hard to hear. But it’s his use of “we” that’s hard to swallow.

Single Best Shot: Though it happened in the first five minutes of the documentary, the full impact of the officer graduation doesn’t hit until its end two hours later. When the NYPD graduation is first shown, it’s presented in a celebratory way. This is a group of men and women who have achieved their dreams through hard work.

But by the documentary’s end this same image is haunting for everyone involved. This is now a group of men and women who will be pressured to give out false tickets to meet arbitrary quotas. Because of this, some of these officers will defy their core mission of helping civilians. Others will be forced to sacrifice their career prospects in order to reject an unfair and illegal practice. Either way innocent people’s lives will be ruined because of the systematic pressure for these quotas.

Sex and Skin: There’s absolutely none, and there shouldn’t be.

Our Take: Crime + Punishment is many things — damning, emotional, painful. But above all else this documentary is intimate. The real story rests with the NYPD 12 and the steps they’ve taken to fight this corrupt system. But its the victims who stand as the humanizing force of this film.

In a series of interviews Jessica Perez explains what needless police summons have cost her son. His extensive record of arrests that were later dropped has cost him time he could have spent bettering his life, his youth, and possibly his future. At the time of filming he was imprisoned on Rikers Island partially because of an arrest record that had a huge amount of paperwork and no convictions. But before we even meet Perez, Crime + Punishment tells us that this story is just one of 900,000 criminal summons that were later dismissed in New York for lack of probable cause.

This documentary takes care to detail the many injustices the NYPD has been accused of and is still being accused of because of illegal quotas. But its only through the film’s profiles of some of the people who have been harmed by this system that the documentary’s scathing finger-pointing sticks. This is a national problem that Crime + Punishment gives a face.

Our Call: Stream it. Crime + Punishment is an expertly crafted documentary that’s as infuriating as it is compelling.

Stream Crime + Punishment on Hulu