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YTS.MX

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[woman 1] It didn't matter
how good of a person you were...

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00:00:16,307 --> 00:00:18,560
or how well you took care of your kids.

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All of that goes out the window.

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You won't even realize it,
because you're so busy getting high.

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I lost everything.

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[sniffles]

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It's a story that has to be told.

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♪ Here it is, bam! ♪

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♪ In your face, god damn ♪

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00:00:41,374 --> 00:00:42,917
♪ This is a dope jam... ♪

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This is crack.

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You think
it's the glamour drug of the '80s?

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00:00:47,338 --> 00:00:48,923
♪ I'm talking about bass ♪

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Evidence of heavy money and heavy,
violent drug traffic is all around.

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00:00:58,391 --> 00:01:03,438
The reporting played right into all
of these stereotypes and this narrative.

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This baby girl was born
addicted to cocaine.

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[news anchor] They have now
reached school-age.

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A whole generation
has been condemned to death.

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00:01:11,362 --> 00:01:15,700
They are not just gangs of kids anymore.
They are super-predators.

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[man 1] Drugs got blamed
for all of the conditions

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that the society had allowed to fester
and were unwilling to confront.

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We must be intolerant of drug use
and drug sellers.

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00:01:32,175 --> 00:01:36,387
Take my word for it,
this scourge will stop!

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♪ I'm talking 'bout bass ♪

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[woman 2] We are still picking up
the pieces of the '80s today.

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Why?

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Because the responses were not designed
to help the people that were in trouble.

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Just say, "No."

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It doesn't make any difference.
Whether they delivered the kilo themselves

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or they turned their heads
while somebody else delivered it,

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00:02:04,374 --> 00:02:05,917
they're just as guilty.

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00:02:11,714 --> 00:02:14,425
The crack era changed everything
about the Black community,

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and it changed, eventually,
everything about America.

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[crowd cheering]

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With a deep awareness
of the responsibility

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conferred by your trust...

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00:02:37,490 --> 00:02:41,786
I accept your nomination
for the Presidency of the United States.

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00:02:41,870 --> 00:02:43,913
[crowd cheering]

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[Elizabeth Hinton] Reagan comes in
on this promise of wealth for all...

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improving the lives for all,
especially disenchanted white voters.

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Together,
let us make this a new beginning.

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[Hinton] And his way to do that was

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to stimulate a free market that would
help lift people out of poverty.

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For those without job opportunities,
we'll stimulate new opportunities,

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particularly in the inner cities
where they live.

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For those who've abandoned hope,

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we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them
into a great national crusade

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to make America great again.

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[Kool & The Gang's "Celebration" playing]

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♪ Whoo-hoo ♪

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♪ A celebration ♪

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[Nelson George] In the '80s,
you began seeing money flow.

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I always think about Wall Street

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and Gordon Gekko,
played by Michael Douglas.

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Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

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[George] It's the beginning
of the return of the city.

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You have that sense of optimism.

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Clubs are filling up again.

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♪ Celebrate good times, come on ♪

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[Geroge] It was a lifestyle
of celebration,

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and coke was part of that lifestyle.

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[Alan Charles] The first time
that I did a line of cocaine...

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I felt like...

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"Oh, my God!

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Where has this stuff been?"

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[Felipe Luciano] It was the glitzy drug,
people dancing all the time.

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Sometimes I would stay up
for three nights.

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Just drink water and keep going.

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It was accepted.

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It was accepted in the jazz world,
it was accepted in the pop world.

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It was the social drug of the elite.

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00:04:44,534 --> 00:04:46,369
Lots of people in my industry do it.

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There's a lot of pressure,
and they're making an awful lot of money.

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-[reporter] Have you ever tried it?
-A couple times.

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I love cocaine.

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I couldn't wait to finish college
and make money

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00:04:56,796 --> 00:04:58,423
'cause I wanted that lifestyle.

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[Natoka Williams] The movie Scarface
made it so popular to do cocaine.

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00:05:04,053 --> 00:05:06,597
We would be in the clubs
and have our $100 bills

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00:05:06,681 --> 00:05:08,016
and try to imitate Scarface.

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It was, like, a glamorous thing to do,

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'cause it was, like,
"People that get money do this."

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[Koe Rodriguez] Cocaine was
a luxury back then.

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It was like, people that were
driving Mercedes-Benzes

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00:05:19,652 --> 00:05:23,156
or BMWs were the ones
that were sniffing coke.

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00:05:23,239 --> 00:05:26,242
You know, that was not...
That particular drug, powder cocaine,

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was not accessible
to inner-city people of color

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because it was too expensive.

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We couldn't afford it.

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What comes with Reagan
is the proliferation of wealth for a few

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at the expense of the many.

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00:05:51,934 --> 00:05:53,353
The Reagan administration takes

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half a million people
off the welfare rolls,

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one million people from food stamps,

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00:05:57,648 --> 00:06:02,153
2.6 million American children
from lunch programs.

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We see millions of more people
coming into extreme poverty.

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[reporter 1] The line stretched
around three sides of the block

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at the state job service office
this morning.

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[reporter 2] Almost 8.5 million Americans
are without jobs.

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[Dr. Carl Hart] 1982 is one
of the highest rates of unemployment

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in the United States, ever.

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And then Black communities' unemployment,
always twice that of the white community.

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So, people were catching hell.

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["The Message" playing]

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♪ Broken glass everywhere ♪

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♪ People pissin' on the stairs
You know they just don't care ♪

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♪ I can't take the smell
Can't take the noise ♪

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♪ Got no money to move out
I guess I got no choice ♪

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Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel
painted a really crisp picture

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of what we were dealing with
in inner cities.

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♪ It's like a jungle sometimes ♪

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♪ It makes me wonder
How I keep from going under ♪

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♪ It's like a jungle sometimes ♪

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♪ It makes me wonder
How I keep from going under ♪

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[Samson Styles] I grew up
in a very impoverished neighborhood.

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The regular family there
was on food stamps.

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Wasn't even paying for food
with real money.

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It was paper money with,
you know, brown, purple and...

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Looking like you're in
a third-world country

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if you're going to spend
your money for food.

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We didn't have money,

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so a lot of times,
we were home ourselves, the kids.

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So we'd go to the corner store and steal.

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Or we'd go to the Safeway to earn money
by carrying people's groceries home.

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And sometimes we would walk with someone,
carrying their groceries home,

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we'd run off with the bags.

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I mean, we...
A lot of it was about survival.

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Sometimes I had to wear my sister's jeans,
hand-me-down jeans.

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You know, it's this classic picture
of me in the fifth grade.

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I'm sitting Indian-style
in the front with all the boys.

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Everyone's hands is on their laps,

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and mine's is on my two shoes
because I had holes in my shoes.

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00:08:01,689 --> 00:08:03,900
Sometimes we didn't have lights, gas.

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You know, we had roaches
in the house, mice.

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It was pretty bad.

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I don't think we really understand
the trauma of poverty.

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And I think any way, any thing,
any method we can employ

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to escape the fact that we are broke
and oppressed, we will do.

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Between 1982 and 1984,

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the amount of cocaine coming into
the United States increases by 50%.

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[reporter 1] Agents know the cocaine
was shipped to Philadelphia,

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then trucked to New York.

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[reporter 2] Tons came through
South Florida.

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[reporter 3] Drugs pouring
into the country.

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There is more cocaine available today
than almost any time in our history.

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[Hinton] We get 63 tons of cocaine
coming into the US.

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The consequence
of this massive insurgence of cocaine

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is that the price of cocaine falls.

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Despite our best efforts,

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illegal cocaine is coming into our country
at alarming levels,

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00:09:03,876 --> 00:09:06,712
and four to five million people
regularly use it.

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One Cuban cigar couldn't make it
into the United States.

155
00:09:13,427 --> 00:09:15,012
One little Cuban cigar.

156
00:09:15,096 --> 00:09:19,475
But you can't stop these tons
of cocaine from coming in?

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It was definitely bigger
than just the streets.

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00:09:22,895 --> 00:09:26,691
And tonight's special segment looks at
the invasion of drugs across the border.

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And the United States has used
very few resources to fight back.

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It was coming vis-à-vis Central America,
vis-à-vis the Bahamas,

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and it was coming in multiple routes,
multiple modes,

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such as airplane, boats, etc.,
so it was coming in from all directions.

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And everyone had a hand in it.

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[crowd cheering]

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Then this bomb explodes
that will affect the whole country.

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[news anchor] Fire department paramedics
found writer and comedian Richard Pryor

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00:10:01,017 --> 00:10:04,145
wandering dazed, badly burned
over the upper half of his body

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00:10:04,228 --> 00:10:06,355
near his Los Angeles-area home last night.

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00:10:06,439 --> 00:10:08,733
[George] This news report came in
about Richard Pryor

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00:10:08,816 --> 00:10:10,526
getting burnt up with this pipe.

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00:10:10,610 --> 00:10:15,239
He had used freebase, which is
a combination of cocaine and ether.

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00:10:15,323 --> 00:10:18,784
And when he ignited it, whether it was
on a cigarette, we don't know,

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00:10:18,868 --> 00:10:23,372
the ether exploded, causing his clothes
to be engulfed in flames.

174
00:10:24,540 --> 00:10:27,168
Y'all did some nasty ass jokes on my ass.

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00:10:27,251 --> 00:10:28,878
[audience laughs]

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00:10:28,961 --> 00:10:31,964
"What's that?"
"Richard Pryor running down the street."

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00:10:33,883 --> 00:10:35,760
[George] I didn't know what freebase was.

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00:10:35,843 --> 00:10:39,722
And Richard Pryor
burning himself up with it

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00:10:39,805 --> 00:10:43,893
was kind of the wake-up call
to a lot of people

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00:10:43,976 --> 00:10:47,355
that there was this other kind of way
of using cocaine.

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00:10:47,438 --> 00:10:49,440
Cocaine is a molecule.

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00:10:49,523 --> 00:10:51,233
It's called "cocaine hydrochloride."

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00:10:53,069 --> 00:10:55,738
And the hydrochloride portion is a salt.

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00:10:55,821 --> 00:10:58,908
And you can't smoke it
if that hydrochloride portion is on,

185
00:10:58,991 --> 00:11:00,785
so you gotta get rid of the salt.

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00:11:02,078 --> 00:11:05,665
So, with freebasing, we figured out
how to just get rid of the salt,

187
00:11:05,748 --> 00:11:07,375
and now you just have the base.

188
00:11:07,458 --> 00:11:08,668
So we call it "freebase."

189
00:11:08,751 --> 00:11:10,836
The base is free and you can smoke it.

190
00:11:10,920 --> 00:11:12,213
Crack is the same thing.

191
00:11:14,882 --> 00:11:16,967
[Rick Ross] Most people,
when they buy the powder,

192
00:11:17,051 --> 00:11:18,761
they would cook it for themselves.

193
00:11:18,844 --> 00:11:20,846
Almost like being a scientist.

194
00:11:20,930 --> 00:11:22,598
You know, it took a lot of...

195
00:11:24,100 --> 00:11:25,518
mixing and...

196
00:11:26,727 --> 00:11:27,812
weighing.

197
00:11:28,771 --> 00:11:31,440
What I figured out is that...

198
00:11:32,483 --> 00:11:35,111
people preferred
not to go through all that process.

199
00:11:35,194 --> 00:11:37,613
They would prefer
to have it already rocked up.

200
00:11:37,697 --> 00:11:39,115
And they call it "crack."

201
00:11:39,198 --> 00:11:41,200
["N.Y. State of Mind" plays]

202
00:11:41,283 --> 00:11:42,118
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

203
00:11:43,411 --> 00:11:44,870
♪ Ayo, Black, it's time, word ♪

204
00:11:47,123 --> 00:11:50,084
♪ I know this crackhead who said
She gotta smoke nice rock ♪

205
00:11:50,167 --> 00:11:52,837
♪ And if it's good, she'll bring you
Customers and measuring pots ♪

206
00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:55,047
♪ But yo, you gotta slide on... ♪

207
00:11:55,131 --> 00:11:57,049
[reporter] The inhaled cocaine vapor

208
00:11:57,133 --> 00:11:59,927
goes straight from the glass pipe stem
to the brain.

209
00:12:00,010 --> 00:12:01,470
[Hart] It's more efficient,

210
00:12:01,554 --> 00:12:04,515
the drug is put immediately
into the bloodstream,

211
00:12:04,598 --> 00:12:08,227
because the lungs
have a large area of blood,

212
00:12:08,310 --> 00:12:10,604
so the effects are felt,
like, immediately.

213
00:12:11,272 --> 00:12:14,817
[reporter] In five to 15 seconds,
the crack user is high.

214
00:12:14,900 --> 00:12:18,946
I can get up from here now
and walk to the moon, okay?

215
00:12:19,029 --> 00:12:21,574
I can get up and walk to the moon.

216
00:12:21,657 --> 00:12:23,367
I'm good now. I'm good to go.

217
00:12:25,911 --> 00:12:29,123
[Brian Barger] Cocaine was made
more available by making crack

218
00:12:29,206 --> 00:12:32,251
and by being able to sell it
for five or ten dollars a hit.

219
00:12:32,334 --> 00:12:34,378
So, poor people now could get access

220
00:12:34,462 --> 00:12:37,715
to what previously had been
considered a rich man's drug.

221
00:12:40,718 --> 00:12:42,511
[George] It happened really fast.

222
00:12:42,595 --> 00:12:45,306
It seemed like,
"Boom. There's 20 crackheads."

223
00:12:46,056 --> 00:12:48,225
[Ross] The first hit they took,
the rest of their life

224
00:12:48,309 --> 00:12:50,394
they would be trying
to get that hit again.

225
00:12:51,312 --> 00:12:53,189
They'd just keep going over and over,

226
00:12:53,272 --> 00:12:55,941
trying to get that same feeling
they got the first time...

227
00:12:56,567 --> 00:12:58,027
which they can never get back.

228
00:12:59,779 --> 00:13:03,949
The level of euphoria was just multiplied.

229
00:13:04,033 --> 00:13:06,285
The effect is almost simultaneous.

230
00:13:06,368 --> 00:13:08,496
I'm tongue-twisted
because there's no words

231
00:13:08,579 --> 00:13:10,456
to describe how I felt at that point.

232
00:13:10,539 --> 00:13:13,709
It made me feel like
I was on top of the world.

233
00:13:13,793 --> 00:13:15,085
It's like having an orgasm.

234
00:13:15,169 --> 00:13:16,796
Once you take that first hit...

235
00:13:17,630 --> 00:13:18,464
it's over.

236
00:13:18,547 --> 00:13:22,343
From that point on, I was addicted,
and all I wanted to do was smoke.

237
00:13:22,426 --> 00:13:23,719
Everything just go...

238
00:13:24,178 --> 00:13:25,596
[mimics time slowing]

239
00:13:25,679 --> 00:13:26,764
Bing!

240
00:13:28,182 --> 00:13:31,560
[Styles] I was still in high school,
and I needed to make some money.

241
00:13:31,644 --> 00:13:35,314
I was having a baby on the way
and, you know, things were hard.

242
00:13:35,856 --> 00:13:37,900
My mother was like, "Just get a job."

243
00:13:37,983 --> 00:13:40,444
[woman 1in commercial] Hey.
Isn't that Calvin?

244
00:13:40,528 --> 00:13:42,112
[woman 2] I haven't seen him for a while.

245
00:13:42,196 --> 00:13:43,572
[woman 1] I heard he got a job.

246
00:13:43,656 --> 00:13:47,326
[Styles] Yeah, I remember that commercial
that they had of Calvin and they said,

247
00:13:47,409 --> 00:13:49,578
"Well, you could be like Calvin."

248
00:13:49,662 --> 00:13:52,998
[woman 1] Now that you mention it,
there is something different about him.

249
00:13:53,082 --> 00:13:55,918
[woman 2] Looks like responsibility's
been good for him.

250
00:13:56,001 --> 00:14:00,047
[woman 1] I'm just glad somebody believed
in him enough to give him a chance.

251
00:14:00,130 --> 00:14:01,632
[woman 2] Wonder where he's working.

252
00:14:01,715 --> 00:14:03,759
Welcome to McDonald's. May I help you?

253
00:14:04,343 --> 00:14:07,429
I remember seeing that commercial.
I was like, "I worked there."

254
00:14:07,513 --> 00:14:09,807
You only made $3.35 an hour.

255
00:14:09,890 --> 00:14:12,309
That was minimum wage, $3.35 an hour.

256
00:14:12,393 --> 00:14:15,062
And then the government's
taking taxes out of that.

257
00:14:15,145 --> 00:14:16,480
Man, fuck Calvin, man.

258
00:14:16,564 --> 00:14:18,899
'Cause that ain't gonna work for me,
you know?

259
00:14:21,902 --> 00:14:25,823
So, my man came to me and he said,
"I got a way for you to make some money."

260
00:14:26,824 --> 00:14:29,159
And he introduced the crack to me.

261
00:14:29,785 --> 00:14:32,496
They was in vials. Little vials.

262
00:14:33,080 --> 00:14:36,250
I asked him, "What is it?"
He's like, "It's cocaine cooked up."

263
00:14:36,333 --> 00:14:38,669
And he was like,
"They smoke it and they go crazy."

264
00:14:40,045 --> 00:14:41,797
He gave me a 100-pack.

265
00:14:43,048 --> 00:14:47,386
And no more than, like, 20, 30 minutes,
that was gone.

266
00:14:48,679 --> 00:14:49,805
[man] The stem talks to you.

267
00:14:49,889 --> 00:14:54,018
Walk away from the stem,
it's saying, calling you back,

268
00:14:54,101 --> 00:14:54,935
"Come here.

269
00:14:55,769 --> 00:14:57,980
Come, spend the rest of your money."

270
00:15:04,945 --> 00:15:07,197
[Ross] People would come
with a handful of money,

271
00:15:07,281 --> 00:15:10,451
like "Oh, I just want a 20,"
and they would buy 20 and...

272
00:15:10,534 --> 00:15:12,786
And, you know,
after I had learned the business,

273
00:15:12,870 --> 00:15:14,872
I was like, "He's gonna come back."

274
00:15:14,955 --> 00:15:17,082
And, eventually, by the end of the night,

275
00:15:17,166 --> 00:15:19,543
they had spent every dime
they had in their hand.

276
00:15:23,881 --> 00:15:26,508
That first day, I might have made
a few hundred dollars.

277
00:15:26,592 --> 00:15:29,470
From then, I was like,
"Yo, this is what I'm selling right here.

278
00:15:29,553 --> 00:15:31,221
I can make money quick."

279
00:15:33,557 --> 00:15:37,311
Crack, crack. Everywhere you go, crack.
You don't hear no dope, hardly.

280
00:15:37,394 --> 00:15:39,355
You don't hear no coke anymore, hardly.

281
00:15:39,438 --> 00:15:43,275
The only thing you hear
is people selling crack, crack, crack.

282
00:15:44,985 --> 00:15:49,531
[Styles] When crack came along,
it was like, "Yo, this is it right here."

283
00:15:49,615 --> 00:15:51,283
This is what we were waiting for.

284
00:15:51,367 --> 00:15:54,578
It was like the gold rush. It was like
a gold rush that hit the hood.

285
00:15:58,832 --> 00:16:01,710
[Pierce] The police didn't care.
They didn't care.

286
00:16:01,794 --> 00:16:03,420
The majority had the attitude of,

287
00:16:03,504 --> 00:16:07,007
"Let me just do my shift,
and get the hell out of this community."

288
00:16:07,091 --> 00:16:11,845
You know, it's, like... free run.
'Cause we know we ain't getting arrested.

289
00:16:12,596 --> 00:16:14,223
Cops don't damn care.

290
00:16:16,558 --> 00:16:19,061
[reporter] Suburbanites come
to this neighborhood in New York

291
00:16:19,144 --> 00:16:22,481
every Friday night,
in search of weekend supplies.

292
00:16:22,564 --> 00:16:24,400
Here, curb service is available.

293
00:16:25,526 --> 00:16:28,404
There was so many people on the street
buying crack at the time,

294
00:16:28,487 --> 00:16:30,239
it was just unbelievable.

295
00:16:31,198 --> 00:16:34,618
People would be sitting in their cars,
blowing the horn for them to hurry up

296
00:16:34,702 --> 00:16:36,996
and sell to the other person
so they could move up.

297
00:16:37,079 --> 00:16:41,000
They would actually have traffic jams
to coming in and buy drugs.

298
00:16:41,542 --> 00:16:43,377
Where was these people coming from?

299
00:16:43,460 --> 00:16:46,463
And I lived in a neighborhood
that was all Black, 99% Black.

300
00:16:47,214 --> 00:16:49,800
-[driver] You got crack?
-Yeah... but maybe tonight.

301
00:16:50,384 --> 00:16:52,928
[Pegues] White people was coming,
Spanish people was coming.

302
00:16:53,012 --> 00:16:56,390
There was people coming
from all over to buy this wonder drug.

303
00:16:56,473 --> 00:16:59,768
[child] They come around here
from New Jersey and all those places

304
00:16:59,852 --> 00:17:01,020
to get drugs here.

305
00:17:01,103 --> 00:17:03,480
-[reporter] Where do they come from?
-From New Jersey!

306
00:17:03,564 --> 00:17:08,610
I think that crack was widely seen
as a drug of the inner city,

307
00:17:09,153 --> 00:17:11,947
widely seen as an "urban" problem,

308
00:17:12,031 --> 00:17:17,453
and that meant Black and Latino people
were using it and selling it.

309
00:17:19,580 --> 00:17:23,167
I was a crack addict,
so I knew, based on my own experience,

310
00:17:23,250 --> 00:17:27,588
that this addiction crosses
all kinds of socioeconomic lines.

311
00:17:33,927 --> 00:17:36,221
[man] Hey. Money's money, you know?

312
00:17:36,305 --> 00:17:38,640
That's just the straight-out truth.
Money is money.

313
00:17:38,724 --> 00:17:40,642
I don't care if you're two years old.

314
00:17:40,726 --> 00:17:45,064
You gonna give me $35 for some crack,
I'mma give it to you.

315
00:17:45,147 --> 00:17:48,400
I've seen people sell crack
to their own mother.

316
00:17:49,693 --> 00:17:52,905
You know? Like, "Yo, she's gonna
get it from somewhere, you know?

317
00:17:52,988 --> 00:17:54,656
I might as well give it to her."

318
00:17:54,740 --> 00:17:57,743
We were just being street capitalists.

319
00:17:58,869 --> 00:18:01,663
That's exactly what we were being,
street capitalists...

320
00:18:02,331 --> 00:18:05,584
that didn't care about anything
but making money.

321
00:18:07,002 --> 00:18:09,505
♪ From sun up, sun down ♪

322
00:18:09,588 --> 00:18:11,590
♪ We getting money, money, money, money ♪

323
00:18:14,259 --> 00:18:16,845
In the days of heroin
and all the other drugs,

324
00:18:16,929 --> 00:18:18,597
you had to be brought into that.

325
00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:20,057
The mafia was involved.

326
00:18:20,140 --> 00:18:22,518
You couldn't just sell that stuff, right?

327
00:18:22,601 --> 00:18:25,979
With crack, it was sort of...
There was no middle man.

328
00:18:26,063 --> 00:18:28,982
You didn't need
anybody's authorization for that.

329
00:18:29,066 --> 00:18:31,485
Know what I mean?
You just needed a little hustle.

330
00:18:31,568 --> 00:18:35,489
You had to be a little savvy,
and you could make that happen yourself.

331
00:18:37,116 --> 00:18:39,451
[Hinton] If you have the money,
even if you're young,

332
00:18:39,535 --> 00:18:42,663
to invest a couple hundred dollars' worth
of cocaine, you can...

333
00:18:42,746 --> 00:18:46,667
Making off rock, you can easily
set up a small shop on the corner,

334
00:18:46,750 --> 00:18:50,045
and all of a sudden, groups of,
particularly, young men

335
00:18:50,129 --> 00:18:54,591
can find a way to support themselves,
support their families, and survive.

336
00:18:55,759 --> 00:19:00,681
I put together a small crew that I had
of the dudes that was in my age group.

337
00:19:01,265 --> 00:19:05,060
And we basically locked
our two buildings down.

338
00:19:05,144 --> 00:19:08,564
And then we locked it down
to, like, the projects at one time,

339
00:19:08,647 --> 00:19:13,318
that nobody can really sell throughout
the project unless it was coming from us.

340
00:19:13,402 --> 00:19:15,571
And this was at a young age.
I'm a teenager.

341
00:19:16,697 --> 00:19:19,867
[Hart] I left Miami in 1984.

342
00:19:19,950 --> 00:19:21,785
I was headed to the Air Force.

343
00:19:21,869 --> 00:19:26,331
And then, when I came back home
on visits to see my friends,

344
00:19:26,415 --> 00:19:29,334
all of them, they were 18, 19,

345
00:19:29,418 --> 00:19:32,004
and they were on the corner slinging,
you know?

346
00:19:32,087 --> 00:19:36,383
Telling me how much loot they were making
with this, you know, rock. Crack.

347
00:19:36,466 --> 00:19:40,387
And at 18, 19, 20,
you feel like you the man.

348
00:19:40,470 --> 00:19:42,306
Everybody wanted in.

349
00:19:42,389 --> 00:19:46,143
Kids were turning into kingpins overnight.

350
00:19:46,226 --> 00:19:51,773
A kid that was broke in the projects,
wearing his brother's clothes to school,

351
00:19:51,857 --> 00:19:53,817
now he's driving a BMW.

352
00:19:53,901 --> 00:19:57,821
There was an entire economy
built around crack-cocaine.

353
00:19:58,572 --> 00:20:02,659
I wasn't even old enough to drive
and I bought a car, cash.

354
00:20:02,743 --> 00:20:04,119
I didn't know how to drive.

355
00:20:04,203 --> 00:20:07,414
I'm driving up to the high school
to show it off.

356
00:20:07,497 --> 00:20:08,707
"Yeah, I got a car."

357
00:20:09,291 --> 00:20:12,377
[Pegues] We went from making
a couple hundred dollars a day

358
00:20:12,461 --> 00:20:14,046
to thousands of dollars a day.

359
00:20:14,129 --> 00:20:18,091
I was in there for money,
clothes, jewelry, and girls.

360
00:20:18,175 --> 00:20:21,887
And it started... It was fun.
It was very fun. I had a bunch of fun.

361
00:20:21,970 --> 00:20:23,430
I could do what I want.

362
00:20:23,513 --> 00:20:24,765
I got anything I want.

363
00:20:25,224 --> 00:20:27,100
I remember, I was counting my sneakers.

364
00:20:27,184 --> 00:20:29,269
I had up to, like, 75 pairs of sneakers.

365
00:20:29,811 --> 00:20:31,688
All new.
You wear them one or two times,

366
00:20:31,772 --> 00:20:33,732
then you just get new ones.

367
00:20:33,815 --> 00:20:34,650
I had a ball.

368
00:20:34,733 --> 00:20:36,985
♪ You could say what you want ♪

369
00:20:37,069 --> 00:20:39,446
♪ Erry day getting money, money
Money, money ♪

370
00:20:39,529 --> 00:20:42,658
[man 1] $150,000, cash!

371
00:20:43,075 --> 00:20:46,036
[man 2] Can we throw these ones away,
man, since we got $500,000?

372
00:20:46,119 --> 00:20:49,414
[man 1] I'll tell you what we can do.
We can give it to the poor.

373
00:20:49,498 --> 00:20:51,500
[man 2] That's exactly what I say, too.

374
00:20:53,210 --> 00:20:56,421
At that time, I was doing...

375
00:20:56,505 --> 00:21:01,969
About a million dollars every day,
at that time, would go through my hands.

376
00:21:03,679 --> 00:21:08,725
And my profit would probably be
anywhere from 200 to 300,000, you know,

377
00:21:08,809 --> 00:21:10,227
off of a million-dollar deal.

378
00:21:11,561 --> 00:21:13,563
I was one of the richest guys in LA.

379
00:21:13,647 --> 00:21:16,024
Definitely, probably,
the youngest richest guy in LA.

380
00:21:16,942 --> 00:21:20,696
I bought things like a motel,
I bought a theater,

381
00:21:20,779 --> 00:21:26,702
body shop, junkyard, shoe store,
a beauty salon, tire and wheel shop.

382
00:21:27,369 --> 00:21:31,707
And, you know, I had about 15 to 20 guys
around here that was millionaires,

383
00:21:31,790 --> 00:21:33,959
that... I taught them.

384
00:21:36,378 --> 00:21:38,630
I made selling drugs fashionable.

385
00:21:39,214 --> 00:21:41,466
♪ Erry day getting money, money
Money, money ♪

386
00:21:43,844 --> 00:21:46,388
At that time, there was
so many people getting money,

387
00:21:46,471 --> 00:21:49,474
and everybody wanted to be on top.

388
00:21:49,558 --> 00:21:51,768
You had the user that was addicted,

389
00:21:51,852 --> 00:21:54,396
and then you had dealers
that were addicted to the money.

390
00:21:54,479 --> 00:21:55,397
That was the problem.

391
00:21:55,480 --> 00:21:57,941
[reporter] Handguns, rifles,
a bow and arrow,

392
00:21:58,025 --> 00:22:02,070
and even a 50-caliber rifle
with armor-piercing bullets.

393
00:22:02,154 --> 00:22:05,365
Police say street gangs run
the crack-cocaine trade in Roosevelt

394
00:22:05,449 --> 00:22:08,410
and now recruit in high schools
and middle schools.

395
00:22:09,036 --> 00:22:14,499
Many of these young men and teenagers
armed up to obtain or protect their turf.

396
00:22:14,583 --> 00:22:20,380
They got semiautomatic handguns,
in some cases, AK-47s.

397
00:22:21,423 --> 00:22:22,841
Very high-powered weaponry.

398
00:22:22,924 --> 00:22:26,136
You're giving a kid $100,000,

399
00:22:26,219 --> 00:22:29,765
you're giving him automatic weapons,
and you're giving him power.

400
00:22:29,848 --> 00:22:34,269
You're saying,
"You run this entire five-block stretch."

401
00:22:34,895 --> 00:22:36,938
What's a 16-year-old kid know about that?

402
00:22:37,022 --> 00:22:41,485
What crack did
is crack gave more people guns.

403
00:22:41,568 --> 00:22:43,904
More people could afford guns. And...

404
00:22:44,613 --> 00:22:48,950
more people started
to settle their differences with guns.

405
00:22:49,951 --> 00:22:53,288
[Styles] Now, you're not only
trying to survive,

406
00:22:53,372 --> 00:22:56,583
you're trying to thrive
in a pool full of sharks.

407
00:22:56,666 --> 00:22:59,586
So, that means you have to be
the biggest, baddest shark.

408
00:22:59,669 --> 00:23:01,880
And you still might get
your head popped off.

409
00:23:02,422 --> 00:23:07,344
They got Uzis.
You know, they got Glock handguns.

410
00:23:07,427 --> 00:23:11,431
So, of course we got sloppy,
things happened, you know, as a result.

411
00:23:11,515 --> 00:23:14,309
That's when, really,
the proverbial shit hit the fan.

412
00:23:14,393 --> 00:23:16,395
[woman screaming]

413
00:23:17,437 --> 00:23:19,439
[sobbing]

414
00:23:20,148 --> 00:23:23,568
[Pegues] We was making so much money.
It was fun.

415
00:23:24,152 --> 00:23:24,986
And then...

416
00:23:25,070 --> 00:23:26,196
[woman wailing]

417
00:23:26,279 --> 00:23:27,697
...it wasn't fun anymore.

418
00:23:30,117 --> 00:23:33,161
[reporter 1] As the drug trade
has escalated, so has the violence.

419
00:23:33,245 --> 00:23:35,455
Virtually every night,
police pick up bodies.

420
00:23:35,539 --> 00:23:38,250
[reporter 2] Six shootings occurred
at about 1:00 in the morning,

421
00:23:38,333 --> 00:23:42,003
and officers who arrived on the scene
said they found a bloodbath.

422
00:23:42,712 --> 00:23:44,673
[Styles] I can't count on my hands

423
00:23:44,756 --> 00:23:47,968
the amount of people
that I've seen actually get killed.

424
00:23:48,051 --> 00:23:52,097
That was normal. That was so normal.

425
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:55,851
We started being desensitized

426
00:23:55,934 --> 00:23:58,645
to our people that we were close to,
dying.

427
00:23:58,728 --> 00:24:00,105
[reporter] In northern Manhattan,

428
00:24:00,188 --> 00:24:04,192
crack-related killings are blamed
for a 63% rise in the murder rate.

429
00:24:04,985 --> 00:24:09,156
[reporter 2] Last year, there was a record
555 homicides in Los Angeles.

430
00:24:09,239 --> 00:24:12,367
[reporter 3] 387 people died
in Los Angeles County.

431
00:24:12,451 --> 00:24:15,579
[reporter 4] The District of Columbia
is the murder capital of the country.

432
00:24:17,664 --> 00:24:20,083
[Rodriguez] The police were never around
in the inner city.

433
00:24:20,167 --> 00:24:21,418
They were, like, you know,

434
00:24:21,501 --> 00:24:23,587
that scene in The Godfather
where the guy says,

435
00:24:23,670 --> 00:24:25,922
"Let 'em kill each other.
They're animals anyway."

436
00:24:26,006 --> 00:24:29,009
They didn't wanna be bothered
with this whole epidemic.

437
00:24:29,593 --> 00:24:32,512
So if they weren't around before,
they really weren't around now.

438
00:24:33,388 --> 00:24:35,974
[reporter] Officials say
the price of cocaine has declined.

439
00:24:36,057 --> 00:24:39,769
Increased violence is the result
of greater competition to make money.

440
00:24:40,395 --> 00:24:42,856
[Credle] Drug dealers were getting
robbed, kidnapped.

441
00:24:42,939 --> 00:24:44,483
They were taken out to the park.

442
00:24:44,566 --> 00:24:46,818
We found them wrapped up in duct tape.

443
00:24:47,777 --> 00:24:49,613
[eerie music playing]

444
00:24:51,823 --> 00:24:53,533
[Taylor-Bragg] It was a war out there.

445
00:24:54,451 --> 00:24:57,829
I was shot in my back,
about an inch or two from my spine,

446
00:24:57,913 --> 00:24:59,623
and it exited my chest.

447
00:25:00,499 --> 00:25:03,168
I decided if I was going to die,

448
00:25:03,251 --> 00:25:05,128
I wasn't gonna be under a white sheet.

449
00:25:05,212 --> 00:25:09,758
So, I got up, got in a cab,
and I took myself to the hospital.

450
00:25:09,841 --> 00:25:12,219
'Cause had I laid there,
I'd have smothered to death,

451
00:25:12,302 --> 00:25:15,764
'cause I was bleeding internally
and my lungs were filling up.

452
00:25:17,349 --> 00:25:21,228
Being in the streets made me very hard.

453
00:25:21,728 --> 00:25:24,898
I had to act a certain way and be tough

454
00:25:24,981 --> 00:25:27,526
so nobody would think
they could take advantage of me.

455
00:25:27,609 --> 00:25:32,781
It robs you of your true self,
because you become this hardened guy 24/7.

456
00:25:32,864 --> 00:25:34,491
You can't show any weakness.

457
00:25:34,574 --> 00:25:36,701
Then it's like,
"What is considered weakness?"

458
00:25:37,285 --> 00:25:40,413
Laughing, you know, at a joke

459
00:25:40,497 --> 00:25:43,291
that you may
have rolled over laughing at...

460
00:25:43,375 --> 00:25:44,876
You just gotta... [chuckles dryly]

461
00:25:45,418 --> 00:25:47,087
And hold all the rest of that in.

462
00:25:47,629 --> 00:25:49,047
You may go to a party.

463
00:25:49,130 --> 00:25:51,800
You wanna dance to the song,
but you can't dance,

464
00:25:51,883 --> 00:25:55,011
'cause other killers are looking,
and they'll take that as weakness.

465
00:25:55,095 --> 00:25:56,429
"Oh, he's too emotional."

466
00:25:56,846 --> 00:26:00,517
There were guys who were,
I'm talking, feared.

467
00:26:01,184 --> 00:26:04,020
When I say, "feared," I mean feared.

468
00:26:04,563 --> 00:26:08,191
There were guys who some police officers
wouldn't even mess with,

469
00:26:08,275 --> 00:26:11,027
because these guys were just...

470
00:26:11,611 --> 00:26:13,488
Just... They were monsters.

471
00:26:13,572 --> 00:26:16,366
And these are the same people,
who, a few years ago,

472
00:26:16,449 --> 00:26:19,327
were guys who you can take to church,
guys who you can...

473
00:26:19,911 --> 00:26:21,288
You let them date your sister.

474
00:26:21,371 --> 00:26:22,747
The next thing you know...

475
00:26:22,831 --> 00:26:27,836
You're either seeing them
laying on the ground, filled with bullets,

476
00:26:27,919 --> 00:26:30,672
or you're sitting in front of them
in the office,

477
00:26:30,755 --> 00:26:33,883
because they just...
brutally just murdered someone.

478
00:26:33,967 --> 00:26:37,304
[reporter] 14-year-old David Rosario,
a boy with learning disabilities,

479
00:26:37,387 --> 00:26:40,265
was cut down by a bullet in the chest
as he rode his bicycle.

480
00:26:40,348 --> 00:26:44,060
Police believe the boy died
in the crossfire of rival drug dealers.

481
00:26:44,728 --> 00:26:46,021
[church bell tolling]

482
00:26:56,489 --> 00:26:58,199
[Felecia Pullen]
There were lots of funerals.

483
00:26:58,283 --> 00:27:01,328
Every time you would go past
some of the funeral homes

484
00:27:01,411 --> 00:27:03,872
and you see the young people outside,
you knew.

485
00:27:04,539 --> 00:27:08,543
That was another body count
as a result of the drugs.

486
00:27:10,003 --> 00:27:13,673
I did a lot of services for young people.
Some in the church,

487
00:27:13,757 --> 00:27:17,135
many in local funeral homes
all around this community.

488
00:27:17,218 --> 00:27:18,553
It hurts, man.

489
00:27:20,013 --> 00:27:22,682
And you wish you had
the right answer at the right time.

490
00:27:23,433 --> 00:27:24,934
But you often do not.

491
00:27:31,650 --> 00:27:35,028
[Charles B. Rangel] It's tragic
when a mother tells me

492
00:27:35,612 --> 00:27:39,491
that she took her nine-year-old son
to a funeral,

493
00:27:39,574 --> 00:27:45,872
and her kid said, "Please don't dress me
like our buddy, with a shirt and tie, Mom.

494
00:27:46,539 --> 00:27:49,668
I wanna be dressed
so that my friends will recognize me."

495
00:27:50,168 --> 00:27:54,798
A nine-year-old kid planning
his funeral with his mother,

496
00:27:54,881 --> 00:27:57,801
going to a funeral with someone
that he went to school with.

497
00:28:02,389 --> 00:28:05,350
[Castaneda] It was, for people
who lived in these neighborhoods,

498
00:28:05,433 --> 00:28:07,060
a horrible, terrible time.

499
00:28:07,977 --> 00:28:10,313
And many of them had longstanding ties

500
00:28:10,397 --> 00:28:13,817
to the places and neighborhoods
where they lived.

501
00:28:13,900 --> 00:28:17,237
They couldn't afford to just up and leave.

502
00:28:19,531 --> 00:28:24,285
So they lived with the stress
of living in, basically, a combat zone.

503
00:28:26,246 --> 00:28:30,500
People were afraid
to leave those homes that, at one time,

504
00:28:30,583 --> 00:28:33,378
they'd be out on the front stoop,
just hanging out, gossiping.

505
00:28:33,461 --> 00:28:36,589
They couldn't do it no more,
'cause now bullets are flying around.

506
00:28:37,757 --> 00:28:40,009
[reporter 1] Are you afraid
when you go out at night?

507
00:28:40,093 --> 00:28:41,261
-Yes.
-Why?

508
00:28:42,011 --> 00:28:44,639
There's a lot of crack dealers.
They'll be shooting.

509
00:28:45,223 --> 00:28:48,393
I'll stay in the house.
I don't wanna get shot.

510
00:28:49,269 --> 00:28:52,272
I don't even walk the streets
around here at night.

511
00:28:52,355 --> 00:28:56,443
When I come in, I lock my door,
and this is where I stay.

512
00:28:56,526 --> 00:28:58,236
[reporter 2] Citizens are pleading.

513
00:28:58,319 --> 00:29:00,905
-[woman 1] I would appreciate...
-[man] If something could be done.

514
00:29:00,989 --> 00:29:03,366
-[woman 2] At least take a drive by.
-[reporter 2] Begging...

515
00:29:03,450 --> 00:29:06,619
-[woman 1] It's making me nervous.
-...for help in their neighborhoods.

516
00:29:07,162 --> 00:29:08,663
[woman] You look down

517
00:29:08,747 --> 00:29:12,459
and you'll see a sale going on
while the police just turned his head.

518
00:29:21,009 --> 00:29:23,595
[Pegues] One day,
I come out for my shift.

519
00:29:23,678 --> 00:29:25,096
I have 300 vials of crack,

520
00:29:25,180 --> 00:29:29,309
and the blue-and-whites roll up,
right inside the park, right up to me.

521
00:29:29,392 --> 00:29:31,352
He takes the bag.
"Show me what's in the bag."

522
00:29:31,436 --> 00:29:35,273
I give him the bag and I'm like,
"Damn. I'm going to jail forever."

523
00:29:35,356 --> 00:29:40,737
I'm thinking, should I run right now?
'Cause, yo, I'm dead.

524
00:29:40,820 --> 00:29:41,863
And the guy goes...

525
00:29:42,530 --> 00:29:45,158
He looks in the bag, the cop.
There's two cops.

526
00:29:45,241 --> 00:29:48,578
He throws the bag back at me,
and looks at me and says,

527
00:29:49,204 --> 00:29:51,206
"Tell your boss I did you a favor."

528
00:29:51,289 --> 00:29:55,960
So, I run over to his house, like,
"Yo, you ain't gonna believe this shit.

529
00:29:56,044 --> 00:29:58,963
I just got popped by the cops.
The whole package."

530
00:29:59,047 --> 00:30:00,632
He's like, "What you talking about?

531
00:30:00,715 --> 00:30:03,593
Man, we paying them off.
Man, get your ass back out there."

532
00:30:03,676 --> 00:30:05,762
So, I'm like, "You serious?"

533
00:30:05,845 --> 00:30:08,681
He's like, "Get back out there to work.
We're losing money."

534
00:30:09,307 --> 00:30:13,436
And that's how I found out
we was paying off the police.

535
00:30:14,187 --> 00:30:18,066
♪ It's like that
And that's the way it is ♪

536
00:30:18,149 --> 00:30:22,028
♪ Because it's like that
And that's the way it is ♪

537
00:30:24,197 --> 00:30:28,535
There was so much money floating
that it corrupted almost everyone.

538
00:30:28,618 --> 00:30:31,955
It corrupted the whole neighborhood
in some form or fashion.

539
00:30:33,456 --> 00:30:36,251
A long investigation into
the New York City Police Department

540
00:30:36,334 --> 00:30:39,879
has uncovered a network of corruption
that extends deep within its ranks.

541
00:30:39,963 --> 00:30:43,258
♪ Money is the key
To end all your woes ♪

542
00:30:43,341 --> 00:30:45,426
♪ Your ups, your downs... ♪

543
00:30:45,510 --> 00:30:47,345
Seven other Miami officers went on trial

544
00:30:47,428 --> 00:30:49,973
accused of ripping off
other cocaine dealers

545
00:30:50,056 --> 00:30:51,432
and dealing drugs themselves.

546
00:30:51,516 --> 00:30:53,268
-♪ It's like that ♪
-♪ What? ♪

547
00:30:53,351 --> 00:30:55,270
♪ And that's the way it is ♪

548
00:30:55,353 --> 00:30:59,148
[reporter] Fourteen officers were indicted
for shaking down drug dealers,

549
00:30:59,232 --> 00:31:01,568
stealing their dope, then reselling it.

550
00:31:02,068 --> 00:31:06,906
Nationwide, 351 law enforcement officials
were charged with drug-related corruption.

551
00:31:07,365 --> 00:31:11,035
♪ Because it's like that
And that's the way it is ♪

552
00:31:11,119 --> 00:31:12,370
♪ You know it's like that... ♪

553
00:31:12,453 --> 00:31:13,913
[senator] What would you steal?

554
00:31:13,997 --> 00:31:15,957
Money, drugs, and guns.
Whatever was there.

555
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:19,210
I remember reaching
into a box full of cocaine

556
00:31:19,294 --> 00:31:21,421
and taking out two big handfuls

557
00:31:21,504 --> 00:31:23,631
and putting them in my pocket
and walking out.

558
00:31:23,715 --> 00:31:26,885
It's not that difficult to take money
and drugs from any drug dealer.

559
00:31:26,968 --> 00:31:28,428
He's standing on the corner.

560
00:31:28,970 --> 00:31:31,639
He's got drugs.
He's knows he's going to jail if you want.

561
00:31:32,390 --> 00:31:35,393
So, instead of sending him to jail,
you take his drugs and money.

562
00:31:36,519 --> 00:31:40,481
Were you ever afraid that one of
your fellow officers might turn you in?

563
00:31:41,065 --> 00:31:41,900
Never.

564
00:31:43,026 --> 00:31:43,943
[senator] Why not?

565
00:31:45,904 --> 00:31:47,864
'Cause it was the blue wall of silence.

566
00:31:48,865 --> 00:31:50,283
Cops don't tell on cops.

567
00:31:51,034 --> 00:31:52,952
-♪ It's like that ♪
-♪ What? ♪

568
00:31:53,036 --> 00:31:55,038
♪ And that's the way it is ♪

569
00:31:57,332 --> 00:31:59,208
[Luciano] We knew that they were in on it.

570
00:31:59,292 --> 00:32:02,045
We knew that they were taking payments
openly, sometimes.

571
00:32:02,128 --> 00:32:04,088
We knew that they could not be trusted.

572
00:32:04,172 --> 00:32:06,174
We knew that
they were dealing on the side.

573
00:32:07,091 --> 00:32:11,888
So, you can't blame Black folk
for not putting faith in the police.

574
00:32:22,106 --> 00:32:24,567
-[dealer 1] What you need?
-[dealer 2] Yeah, how much you need?

575
00:32:24,651 --> 00:32:27,195
[man 1] Yeah, give me one. Give me one.

576
00:32:27,278 --> 00:32:31,240
[Susan Burton] In the Bible,
they talk about the locusts coming

577
00:32:31,324 --> 00:32:35,286
and converging on all the wheat
and taking and killing all the crops.

578
00:32:35,370 --> 00:32:36,913
-[man 2] You got 25?
-[man 3] How much?

579
00:32:36,996 --> 00:32:39,165
[Burton] Crack devastated our community.

580
00:32:39,248 --> 00:32:40,458
[dealer 3] Here you go, $20.

581
00:32:40,541 --> 00:32:42,543
[Credle] Crack was like a virus.

582
00:32:43,461 --> 00:32:45,588
As if something was in the air.

583
00:32:45,672 --> 00:32:47,215
[man 4] I used to sell crack myself.

584
00:32:47,298 --> 00:32:50,093
[Credle] It changed an entire culture.

585
00:32:50,176 --> 00:32:53,221
-[dealer 4] This is crack.
-[man 5] Wait a minute. I wanna get high.

586
00:32:53,304 --> 00:32:54,305
[dealer 4] Yeah, I know.

587
00:32:54,389 --> 00:32:58,393
[Rodriguez] The blocks were all decimated.
Now, there's just trash everywhere.

588
00:32:59,477 --> 00:33:02,689
It looked like a scene
from a George Romero film.

589
00:33:03,189 --> 00:33:04,732
Night of the Living Dead.

590
00:33:04,816 --> 00:33:05,650
[man 6] All right.

591
00:33:05,733 --> 00:33:07,777
-[man 7] Vials...
-[woman] How many do you want?

592
00:33:07,860 --> 00:33:09,529
-[man 8] Well, I use crack.
-[man laughs]

593
00:33:09,612 --> 00:33:11,990
[Louisa Waverpool] Crack changed
my whole personality.

594
00:33:13,032 --> 00:33:15,576
It made me don't care about people.

595
00:33:16,452 --> 00:33:18,162
-I know, man.
-You got two for 20?

596
00:33:18,246 --> 00:33:19,080
How many you need?

597
00:33:19,163 --> 00:33:21,457
[Pierce] I saw myself
going down more and more,

598
00:33:21,541 --> 00:33:24,293
but I wouldn't and I couldn't stop.

599
00:33:24,377 --> 00:33:26,170
-What does he want?
-What you need?

600
00:33:26,254 --> 00:33:28,506
[Waverpool] I start losing weight,
losing weight.

601
00:33:28,589 --> 00:33:31,843
My waist's getting skinny.
My shirt's getting too big.

602
00:33:31,926 --> 00:33:33,469
-How many you need?
-You got 25?

603
00:33:34,178 --> 00:33:36,305
[Pierce] Some of us tried
to hide it at first,

604
00:33:36,389 --> 00:33:39,934
but when it got worse,
we didn't care who saw us.

605
00:33:40,018 --> 00:33:42,645
-What you need?
-What's up, man?

606
00:33:43,646 --> 00:33:46,024
I ain't been home in four days.

607
00:33:46,107 --> 00:33:48,526
Ain't got no sleep in four days.
I've been eating.

608
00:33:49,068 --> 00:33:51,029
Weigh 95 pounds.

609
00:33:51,487 --> 00:33:52,530
[reporter] You have kids?

610
00:33:52,613 --> 00:33:54,782
Yeah. I got one. Eleven.

611
00:33:57,201 --> 00:33:59,620
-[reporter] Eleven-year-old?
-Mm-hmm. Boy.

612
00:34:00,663 --> 00:34:02,832
-Where is he?
-He's with my mother.

613
00:34:03,332 --> 00:34:04,876
Last time you saw him?

614
00:34:05,293 --> 00:34:06,919
A year and half ago.

615
00:34:07,462 --> 00:34:08,296
What's his name?

616
00:34:09,088 --> 00:34:09,922
Angelo.

617
00:34:10,465 --> 00:34:11,716
Do you miss him?

618
00:34:11,799 --> 00:34:12,675
Yes, I do.

619
00:34:13,843 --> 00:34:17,722
[George] That drug separated people
from themselves.

620
00:34:19,015 --> 00:34:21,851
And in so doing,
separated them from their families.

621
00:34:23,519 --> 00:34:27,732
And it felt like the... range of the drug,

622
00:34:27,815 --> 00:34:30,276
in terms of its impact,
was wider on women.

623
00:34:32,028 --> 00:34:33,237
[Burton] I had a son.

624
00:34:34,197 --> 00:34:35,448
He was five years old.

625
00:34:36,240 --> 00:34:38,076
And he was killed.

626
00:34:39,077 --> 00:34:43,748
My grief and my rage consumed me,

627
00:34:43,831 --> 00:34:48,002
and crack helped me to escape.

628
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:52,256
When I used the crack,

629
00:34:52,965 --> 00:34:57,386
I experienced this silence.

630
00:34:59,388 --> 00:35:03,810
All of the chatter, all of the pain,
all of the hurt,

631
00:35:03,893 --> 00:35:06,145
all of the grief was gone...

632
00:35:08,022 --> 00:35:09,690
for that period.

633
00:35:11,150 --> 00:35:14,237
[Pierce] When I started using this,
I was working. You understand?

634
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:16,697
I had just had my first daughter.

635
00:35:16,781 --> 00:35:20,076
You know, my first apartment
and everything.

636
00:35:20,701 --> 00:35:25,456
Soon as I get home from work, she'd eat,
I'd wash her up, I'd check her homework.

637
00:35:25,540 --> 00:35:28,084
"Go take your bath."
Then we're going to bed.

638
00:35:28,668 --> 00:35:32,380
That used to be our routine
until I started messing with that crack.

639
00:35:33,172 --> 00:35:38,302
It got so far out of control...
to where I lost my children.

640
00:35:38,928 --> 00:35:41,556
You know, my sister had to take my kids.

641
00:35:42,181 --> 00:35:45,434
I had just had my third daughter.
She was a newborn.

642
00:35:46,727 --> 00:35:47,562
And...

643
00:35:52,066 --> 00:35:53,359
She don't even know me.

644
00:35:54,986 --> 00:36:01,117
So many women that were mothers and aunts
that was just doing anything for crack.

645
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:05,788
Once they started on that particular drug,
it was just a wrap.

646
00:36:05,872 --> 00:36:07,915
Once you're addicted,
you need to make money.

647
00:36:07,999 --> 00:36:09,792
A man could go out and beat someone up.

648
00:36:09,876 --> 00:36:11,169
A man could go out and rob.

649
00:36:11,294 --> 00:36:13,671
A man could go and do a B&E,
breaking and entering.

650
00:36:13,754 --> 00:36:16,132
Women couldn't.
At least, they thought they couldn't.

651
00:36:16,215 --> 00:36:20,720
You would see women
selling their children's toys.

652
00:36:20,803 --> 00:36:23,222
You would see them doing the unthinkable,

653
00:36:23,306 --> 00:36:25,600
that they probably would not have done

654
00:36:25,683 --> 00:36:28,019
if they were not under
the influence of crack.

655
00:36:28,978 --> 00:36:31,939
[woman] I had to have sex with other guys.
Like, prostitute or whatever.

656
00:36:32,481 --> 00:36:33,816
It's the drugs.

657
00:36:34,358 --> 00:36:35,860
I mean, you're not in control.

658
00:36:36,986 --> 00:36:40,740
I seen women have sex
with three men at one time,

659
00:36:40,823 --> 00:36:43,367
four men at one time,
five men at one time.

660
00:36:43,451 --> 00:36:45,161
When you didn't have the money,

661
00:36:45,244 --> 00:36:48,080
they might take you on the roof
to have sex with you.

662
00:36:48,164 --> 00:36:49,790
You might do it in the elevator.

663
00:36:50,374 --> 00:36:53,628
Anywhere they want to do it,
you're gonna, 'cause you want that crack.

664
00:36:53,711 --> 00:36:56,422
On my block,
we actually had an abandoned van.

665
00:36:57,006 --> 00:36:59,634
We had a van.
So some of the drug dealers would...

666
00:36:59,717 --> 00:37:02,803
Women would come up and be like,
"Yo, I'll suck you off for one."

667
00:37:02,887 --> 00:37:04,263
Depending on how they look...

668
00:37:04,347 --> 00:37:06,724
If they really cracked out,
you ain't mess with them.

669
00:37:06,807 --> 00:37:08,893
If they was in the beginning,
gave them one,

670
00:37:08,976 --> 00:37:11,562
did whatever you did and left. It was...

671
00:37:11,646 --> 00:37:12,855
And women was doing that.

672
00:37:13,439 --> 00:37:15,900
You know, I was even guilty of that
at one time, too.

673
00:37:15,983 --> 00:37:18,277
I looked at it as, you know...

674
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:21,656
Somebody gotta do it.

675
00:37:21,739 --> 00:37:24,075
Might as well be me
that capitalized off of it.

676
00:37:24,617 --> 00:37:26,619
[eerie music playing]

677
00:37:37,255 --> 00:37:39,423
When you lose a woman to this drug...

678
00:37:40,424 --> 00:37:44,762
you lose a mother, you lose a provider.

679
00:37:46,722 --> 00:37:50,977
When the woman is destroyed,
the community is just destroyed.

680
00:37:52,270 --> 00:37:57,942
Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!

681
00:37:58,025 --> 00:38:00,444
Don't take my mother, please!

682
00:38:00,528 --> 00:38:03,489
Mommy! Don't take my mother, please!

683
00:38:03,572 --> 00:38:05,032
[speaks indistinctly]

684
00:38:09,787 --> 00:38:12,790
[Burton] Why was our community saturated

685
00:38:13,541 --> 00:38:16,794
with such a devastating chemical?

686
00:38:19,755 --> 00:38:21,549
I've heard of chemical warfare...

687
00:38:22,967 --> 00:38:27,596
and that was kinda like
chemical warfare...

688
00:38:28,514 --> 00:38:30,057
on Black communities.

689
00:38:31,767 --> 00:38:33,227
Where did it come from?

690
00:38:34,353 --> 00:38:36,939
And most of all... why?

691
00:38:38,733 --> 00:38:41,068
[announcer] This is an NBC News
Special Report.

692
00:38:47,241 --> 00:38:50,494
From the White House,
President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan.

693
00:38:50,578 --> 00:38:52,163
A message on drugs.

694
00:38:53,372 --> 00:38:54,915
Drugs take away the dream

695
00:38:54,999 --> 00:38:58,377
from every child's heart
and replace it with a nightmare.

696
00:38:58,461 --> 00:39:03,132
Nancy has been intensely involved
in the effort to fight drug abuse.

697
00:39:03,215 --> 00:39:04,175
Not long ago,

698
00:39:04,258 --> 00:39:07,887
I was asked by a group of children
what to do if they were offered drugs.

699
00:39:08,471 --> 00:39:10,723
And I answered, "Just say, 'No.'"

700
00:39:13,100 --> 00:39:15,102
♪ We're the LA Lakers
And we're here to say ♪

701
00:39:15,186 --> 00:39:17,104
♪ That the drugs are killing every day ♪

702
00:39:17,188 --> 00:39:19,690
♪ Cocaine and crack
It's all got to go ♪

703
00:39:19,774 --> 00:39:21,692
♪ We got to learn to just say no! ♪

704
00:39:22,568 --> 00:39:25,780
[Harry Levine] The "Just Say No" campaign
was unprecedented

705
00:39:25,863 --> 00:39:28,366
in its scope and its intensity.

706
00:39:29,075 --> 00:39:31,786
That's right.
Say no to crack so you can live.

707
00:39:31,869 --> 00:39:33,537
If you've gotta die for something...

708
00:39:34,580 --> 00:39:36,207
this sure as hell ain't it.

709
00:39:36,290 --> 00:39:37,750
Crack isn't just wrong.

710
00:39:38,751 --> 00:39:40,211
It could be dead wrong.

711
00:39:40,294 --> 00:39:45,966
The anti-crack campaign was the biggest
anti-drug campaign in American history.

712
00:39:46,050 --> 00:39:47,802
-♪ Don't need it ♪
-♪ Say no ♪

713
00:39:47,885 --> 00:39:49,428
-♪ Don't need it ♪
-♪ Say no ♪

714
00:39:49,512 --> 00:39:52,139
♪ Just say no to drugs
Defeat it ♪

715
00:39:52,223 --> 00:39:53,349
This is your brain.

716
00:39:54,183 --> 00:39:55,559
This is drugs.

717
00:39:57,103 --> 00:39:59,105
[sizzling]

718
00:40:00,189 --> 00:40:01,774
This is your brain on drugs.

719
00:40:02,858 --> 00:40:04,235
Any questions?

720
00:40:04,902 --> 00:40:07,446
What will you do
when someone offers you drugs?

721
00:40:07,530 --> 00:40:09,573
[crowd] Just say no!

722
00:40:10,199 --> 00:40:11,700
I can't hear you. Louder!

723
00:40:11,784 --> 00:40:13,911
[crowd] Just say no!

724
00:40:15,204 --> 00:40:17,164
[Nancy laughing] That's wonderful.

725
00:40:21,544 --> 00:40:22,378
Please.

726
00:40:23,212 --> 00:40:25,131
That's your slogan? "Say no to drugs"?

727
00:40:25,965 --> 00:40:28,717
What about helping the inner cities

728
00:40:28,801 --> 00:40:31,804
with the problems where
they don't have to say no to drugs?

729
00:40:31,887 --> 00:40:34,056
To us in the community,
it's just political.

730
00:40:34,723 --> 00:40:39,979
The "Just Say No" to drugs campaign
by Nancy Reagan...

731
00:40:40,646 --> 00:40:44,358
It was...
It felt extraordinarily hypocritical...

732
00:40:45,401 --> 00:40:49,488
because this was happening
at a time when the US government was

733
00:40:49,572 --> 00:40:53,367
turning a blind eye to cocaine smuggling
into the United States.

734
00:40:54,785 --> 00:40:56,996
I was getting my cocaine from Nicaraguans,

735
00:40:57,079 --> 00:40:58,038
the majority of it.

736
00:40:58,122 --> 00:41:01,500
You know, there was other sources
that I have gotten cocaine from,

737
00:41:01,584 --> 00:41:04,170
but my main source was Nicaraguans.

738
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:14,096
Central America was going
through violent civil wars at the time,

739
00:41:14,180 --> 00:41:19,351
in Guatemala, Honduras,
El Salvador and Nicaragua.

740
00:41:20,936 --> 00:41:22,188
[guns firing]

741
00:41:27,318 --> 00:41:31,238
[Barger] The United States had supported
a dictatorship in Nicaragua.

742
00:41:32,364 --> 00:41:37,369
That government was overthrown
by the Sandinista movement in 1979.

743
00:41:38,704 --> 00:41:43,000
It was pretty much a ragtag band
of leftists and Marxists.

744
00:41:46,086 --> 00:41:51,592
The Sandinista dictatorship of Nicaragua,
with full Cuban-Soviet Bloc support,

745
00:41:51,675 --> 00:41:56,430
not only persecutes its people,
the church, and denies a free press,

746
00:41:56,514 --> 00:41:59,934
but arms and provides bases
for communist terrorists

747
00:42:00,017 --> 00:42:01,769
attacking neighboring states.

748
00:42:02,895 --> 00:42:05,814
The United States said,
"We're not gonna tolerate

749
00:42:05,898 --> 00:42:08,025
Marxists in Central America,"

750
00:42:08,108 --> 00:42:11,695
so they started working
with bands of guerrillas...

751
00:42:13,989 --> 00:42:19,370
facilitating them to take on
the Marxist government in Nicaragua.

752
00:42:20,579 --> 00:42:22,039
Those were the Contras.

753
00:42:22,665 --> 00:42:27,795
They were fed, fueled and paid for
by the United States government.

754
00:42:31,507 --> 00:42:34,009
President Reagan
was holding press conferences

755
00:42:34,093 --> 00:42:37,137
and doing speeches
almost on a daily basis.

756
00:42:37,221 --> 00:42:41,767
Those freedom fighters
are inside Nicaragua today

757
00:42:41,850 --> 00:42:43,978
because we made a commitment to them.

758
00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:47,147
He was hailing the Contras

759
00:42:47,231 --> 00:42:50,734
as being the moral equivalents
of our Founding Fathers.

760
00:42:50,818 --> 00:42:54,321
Are we going to cut them off now
and leave them defenseless?

761
00:42:55,030 --> 00:42:59,618
If we do, who will ever trust
in the United States of America again?

762
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:04,415
Congress does not want to support
a civil war in Central America.

763
00:43:04,498 --> 00:43:08,294
I oppose any aide and assistance
to the Contras.

764
00:43:08,377 --> 00:43:11,839
I believe that the American people
do not want wider war.

765
00:43:11,922 --> 00:43:15,009
I believe the American people
want to give peace a chance.

766
00:43:15,092 --> 00:43:16,218
The time has come

767
00:43:16,302 --> 00:43:20,806
to put this policy of this administration
of support to Contras to bed.

768
00:43:21,348 --> 00:43:24,351
This was a policy
that was born in deception,

769
00:43:24,435 --> 00:43:27,855
born in lies, born in cover-ups.

770
00:43:27,938 --> 00:43:31,483
Before we invest one more dime
in Central America,

771
00:43:31,567 --> 00:43:34,320
let's take care of the people
who live in this country.

772
00:43:34,403 --> 00:43:39,742
[Sterling] So, Congress says we cannot use
federal money to support the Contras.

773
00:43:39,825 --> 00:43:41,952
Can't buy them weapons,
can't buy them uniforms,

774
00:43:42,036 --> 00:43:43,329
can't buy them ammunition.

775
00:43:43,412 --> 00:43:46,457
At that point, the Reagan administration
began to look

776
00:43:46,540 --> 00:43:48,876
for alternative sources of funding.

777
00:43:48,959 --> 00:43:54,089
And one of those sources of funding became
profits from the sale of arms to Iran.

778
00:43:56,550 --> 00:44:00,638
We started selling
missiles and rockets to Iran, illegally,

779
00:44:00,721 --> 00:44:05,684
and taking the profit
that amounted to 15, 30 million dollars,

780
00:44:05,768 --> 00:44:08,145
that could be shifted to pay

781
00:44:08,228 --> 00:44:12,608
for what was now an illegal Contra war
that Congress would not fund.

782
00:44:17,029 --> 00:44:21,158
We worked with pilots
who were flying aid down to the Contras.

783
00:44:21,742 --> 00:44:24,203
And US officials
not just looked the other way,

784
00:44:24,286 --> 00:44:30,626
but collaborated with just about
any unsavory and dirty individual.

785
00:44:32,795 --> 00:44:35,047
[Barger] I was working
for the Associated Press

786
00:44:35,130 --> 00:44:39,426
on the story about the US involvement
with the Contra rebels in Nicaragua,

787
00:44:39,510 --> 00:44:41,011
we kept hearing these stories,

788
00:44:41,095 --> 00:44:44,890
and it was all kind of
in the realm of disbelief for me.

789
00:44:46,392 --> 00:44:49,436
We had more than three dozen sources

790
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,981
describing one or another element
of cocaine smuggling

791
00:44:53,065 --> 00:44:54,983
by the Nicaraguan Contras.

792
00:44:56,694 --> 00:44:57,903
[imperceptible]

793
00:44:57,986 --> 00:45:00,906
[Barger] John Kerry was newly elected
to the United States Senate

794
00:45:00,989 --> 00:45:03,117
when we published our story,

795
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,537
and he sent some of his staff out
to start looking into this.

796
00:45:07,955 --> 00:45:14,253
Today, we are going to proceed to tell
a piece of the Contra drug story.

797
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:21,427
After the guns were unloaded,
was something loaded into the airplane?

798
00:45:21,510 --> 00:45:24,221
Yes. I loaded about 17 duffel bags

799
00:45:24,304 --> 00:45:26,598
and five or six, uh...

800
00:45:28,058 --> 00:45:31,186
two-foot square boxes in the aircraft.

801
00:45:31,270 --> 00:45:33,981
-[Kerry] What was in the duffel bags?
-Coke. Cocaine.

802
00:45:34,648 --> 00:45:35,649
And in the boxes?

803
00:45:35,733 --> 00:45:36,567
Cocaine.

804
00:45:37,901 --> 00:45:40,863
This was a scandal
of very large proportions.

805
00:45:40,946 --> 00:45:46,660
The White House involved
in secretly funneling guns

806
00:45:46,744 --> 00:45:48,704
to a rebel group in Central America...

807
00:45:50,164 --> 00:45:53,834
financed by sales of missiles to Iran.

808
00:45:54,793 --> 00:45:58,005
At least turning a blind eye
to cocaine smuggling

809
00:45:58,088 --> 00:46:02,342
into the United States
to finance this secret and illegal war.

810
00:46:02,426 --> 00:46:04,845
[dramatic music plays]

811
00:46:04,928 --> 00:46:08,557
[Mattes] It was a perfect template
for drug smuggling.

812
00:46:11,435 --> 00:46:14,813
When you shipped guns to Central America,

813
00:46:14,897 --> 00:46:19,193
you could unload the guns
and put on duffel bags full of cocaine,

814
00:46:19,276 --> 00:46:21,153
fly it back to the United States.

815
00:46:21,779 --> 00:46:25,073
It profited for the Contras.

816
00:46:25,157 --> 00:46:26,742
It profited for the smugglers.

817
00:46:26,825 --> 00:46:30,454
It was a cozy arrangement
that worked for everyone,

818
00:46:30,537 --> 00:46:32,122
except the American people.

819
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:37,711
[Kornbluh] The Reagan administration
either looked the other way,

820
00:46:37,795 --> 00:46:41,215
knew about,
or collaborated with drug smugglers

821
00:46:41,298 --> 00:46:44,635
in their quest to overthrow
the Sandinista government.

822
00:46:44,718 --> 00:46:48,972
Our goal was to defeat communism
in Central America,

823
00:46:49,056 --> 00:46:52,643
and if that meant drugs got in
and the youth of America used them,

824
00:46:52,726 --> 00:46:54,770
well, that was the way it was gonna be.

825
00:46:56,939 --> 00:46:58,899
[announcer 1] So Bias comes out
for the steal.

826
00:47:04,571 --> 00:47:07,866
Nice move by Lenny Bias!
And gets the score and it...

827
00:47:07,950 --> 00:47:11,870
One big turning point was Len Bias,

828
00:47:11,954 --> 00:47:14,164
a basketball star
at the University of Maryland.

829
00:47:14,832 --> 00:47:18,210
[announcer 2] Lead catch. Adrian Branch.
Great feed back to Bias!

830
00:47:18,794 --> 00:47:21,880
Everybody in Washington,
we knew who Len Bias was.

831
00:47:21,964 --> 00:47:25,926
People loved him.
He was an attractive and clean-cut guy.

832
00:47:26,009 --> 00:47:28,720
[announcer 3] Bias at the baseline,
goes by Hale, reverse!

833
00:47:28,804 --> 00:47:31,473
-[commentator] Oh, my!
-[announcer] Holy cow! What a shot!

834
00:47:31,557 --> 00:47:34,351
[Sterling] And his big rival
in the conference

835
00:47:34,434 --> 00:47:35,978
was down in North Carolina.

836
00:47:36,562 --> 00:47:38,772
[announcer] And Michael Jordan
guarding Len Bias.

837
00:47:38,856 --> 00:47:41,525
Big ball game.
Double clutch and he made it.

838
00:47:41,608 --> 00:47:43,902
Two of the finest athletes in the country,

839
00:47:43,986 --> 00:47:46,655
Michael Jordan and Bias,
going up side-by-side.

840
00:47:46,738 --> 00:47:48,198
Bias just out-hung him.

841
00:47:48,282 --> 00:47:51,410
[Sterling] His dream was
to play for the Celtics.

842
00:47:51,493 --> 00:47:54,037
The Boston Celtics select

843
00:47:54,121 --> 00:47:56,832
Len Bias of the University of Maryland.

844
00:47:57,374 --> 00:47:59,918
[Sterling] And their top pick
was Len Bias.

845
00:48:01,545 --> 00:48:05,048
He goes back to his dormitory
at the University of Maryland, and...

846
00:48:05,132 --> 00:48:07,509
he's partying down with his friends.

847
00:48:08,927 --> 00:48:10,971
[man on phone] Send someone
as soon as you can.

848
00:48:13,181 --> 00:48:14,349
It's no joke.

849
00:48:16,226 --> 00:48:18,061
We're giving him mouth-to-mouth.

850
00:48:19,771 --> 00:48:21,148
This is Len Bias.

851
00:48:22,691 --> 00:48:24,943
You have to get him back to life.

852
00:48:27,571 --> 00:48:29,072
There's no way he can die.

853
00:48:30,866 --> 00:48:32,117
Send someone quick.

854
00:48:33,702 --> 00:48:37,080
A local success story
took a tragic turn this morning.

855
00:48:37,164 --> 00:48:40,125
Len Bias,
the Maryland University basketball star,

856
00:48:40,208 --> 00:48:43,378
on his way to becoming
a world champion Boston Celtic,

857
00:48:43,462 --> 00:48:45,213
died of an apparent heart attack today

858
00:48:45,297 --> 00:48:47,716
at Leland Memorial Hospital
in Prince George's County.

859
00:48:47,799 --> 00:48:51,303
[reporter] If police were shocked to hear
the news of Len Bias's sudden death,

860
00:48:51,386 --> 00:48:54,306
they were just as shocked to hear
crack may have been involved.

861
00:48:54,389 --> 00:48:56,934
Right now, police say
the case is labeled "suspicious",

862
00:48:57,017 --> 00:48:58,977
and that's all they're saying in public.

863
00:48:59,478 --> 00:49:03,023
Tonight, NBC's Jim Kaiserski reports
how the Len Bias tragedy

864
00:49:03,106 --> 00:49:05,859
is bringing the message home,
cocaine kills.

865
00:49:05,943 --> 00:49:07,945
[eerie music playing]

866
00:49:12,991 --> 00:49:16,244
[Hinton] When the media gets hold
of the story, the assumption is...

867
00:49:16,328 --> 00:49:17,996
that Len Bias had been smoking crack...

868
00:49:20,707 --> 00:49:23,251
and that had been responsible
for his death.

869
00:49:24,169 --> 00:49:27,547
Then he really becomes
the kind of poster child for crack

870
00:49:27,631 --> 00:49:29,841
and the beginning
of a new national discussion.

871
00:49:29,925 --> 00:49:33,929
The American media
had gotten a hold of "crack" now.

872
00:49:34,012 --> 00:49:38,016
And now it had taken
a different trajectory or narrative.

873
00:49:38,100 --> 00:49:39,851
Not only did they say he smoked crack,

874
00:49:39,935 --> 00:49:41,979
they said it was
his first time smoking crack.

875
00:49:42,646 --> 00:49:45,774
"This is how powerful and dangerous
this drug was," they said.

876
00:49:47,526 --> 00:49:51,530
At Len Bias's funeral, Jesse Jackson says,

877
00:49:52,072 --> 00:49:56,743
"Dope has taken more Black lives
than the Ku Klux Klan rope."

878
00:49:58,328 --> 00:50:01,456
The following week, Don Rogers,

879
00:50:01,540 --> 00:50:04,334
the cornerback for the Cleveland Browns...

880
00:50:05,752 --> 00:50:08,338
he dies of a cocaine-related death.

881
00:50:08,422 --> 00:50:10,966
They alluded to the fact
that he had crack.

882
00:50:11,466 --> 00:50:13,427
This is what the narrative was.

883
00:50:15,053 --> 00:50:18,015
"It's an epidemic! Of young Black men...

884
00:50:19,016 --> 00:50:21,309
strong athletes, dying from cocaine."

885
00:50:22,436 --> 00:50:25,647
So all over the country, people went,
"Cocaine." "Cocaine." "Cocaine!"

886
00:50:25,731 --> 00:50:27,691
The media is going bananas.

887
00:50:27,774 --> 00:50:30,027
The crack problem
has become a crack crisis,

888
00:50:30,110 --> 00:50:31,486
and it's spreading nationwide.

889
00:50:31,570 --> 00:50:33,947
Two words that were used
again and again for crack

890
00:50:34,031 --> 00:50:35,490
were "epidemic" and "plague."

891
00:50:35,574 --> 00:50:39,244
"The drug epidemic is as dangerous
as any terrorist that we face.

892
00:50:39,327 --> 00:50:42,330
It is serious.
It is an epidemic and it can kill."

893
00:50:42,789 --> 00:50:45,542
Just some of what was said
to House and Senate committees...

894
00:50:45,625 --> 00:50:47,419
They were used to scare people.

895
00:50:48,378 --> 00:50:51,798
Politicians used them to scare people.
The media used them to scare people.

896
00:50:51,882 --> 00:50:52,716
And it worked.

897
00:50:53,216 --> 00:50:56,511
[reporter] The drug so powerful,
it will empty the money from your pockets,

898
00:50:56,595 --> 00:51:00,891
make you sell the watch off your wrist,
the clothes off your back...

899
00:51:01,016 --> 00:51:02,100
Or kill your mother.

900
00:51:04,853 --> 00:51:07,481
[Sterling] If I want
to show the drug problem,

901
00:51:07,564 --> 00:51:10,901
send the camera crew
down to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue,

902
00:51:10,984 --> 00:51:13,653
and we'll show some young Black men

903
00:51:13,737 --> 00:51:17,074
sitting on a stoop
or standing in front of a store.

904
00:51:17,657 --> 00:51:21,036
"There's the crack problem!
There they are! There they are!"

905
00:51:21,119 --> 00:51:22,871
What CBS News called Crack Street

906
00:51:22,954 --> 00:51:26,208
clearly stretches into cities and towns
across the nation.

907
00:51:26,291 --> 00:51:29,461
[reporter] Los Angeles gangs
have franchised crack operations

908
00:51:29,544 --> 00:51:30,879
in more than 25 cities.

909
00:51:31,463 --> 00:51:34,633
Towns as unlikely as Omaha,
Kansas City, Denver.

910
00:51:34,716 --> 00:51:37,803
Even York, Pennsylvania.
Bedrock Middle America.

911
00:51:39,513 --> 00:51:43,183
The media was generating these frenzies
about crack and its impact,

912
00:51:43,266 --> 00:51:44,643
who was using crack and where.

913
00:51:44,726 --> 00:51:47,521
Police in Kansas City, Missouri
are searching this morning

914
00:51:47,604 --> 00:51:52,150
for a woman who swapped her infant son
for $20 worth of crack-cocaine.

915
00:51:52,776 --> 00:51:55,320
The four-month-old boy
was turned over to social workers.

916
00:51:55,403 --> 00:52:00,283
We see stereotypes about
the, kind of, pathology of Black women

917
00:52:00,367 --> 00:52:03,954
and Black women mothers,
poor Black women mothers,

918
00:52:04,037 --> 00:52:06,081
get translated in the context of crack.

919
00:52:06,164 --> 00:52:09,459
The crack plague is showing
a new and frightening dimension,

920
00:52:09,543 --> 00:52:12,754
the damage it does
to the children of crack addicts.

921
00:52:12,838 --> 00:52:15,674
Investigative report tonight,
cocaine kids.

922
00:52:15,799 --> 00:52:18,301
Infants born to cocaine-addict mothers.

923
00:52:18,802 --> 00:52:21,471
[Geraldo Rivera] Her mother was
so stoned at the time of delivery,

924
00:52:21,555 --> 00:52:25,851
she didn't realize until sometime
the next day that she had given birth.

925
00:52:27,519 --> 00:52:33,441
The whole crack baby thing
was based largely on one paper published

926
00:52:34,109 --> 00:52:39,489
by a guy named Ira Chasnoff,
a Chicago pediatrician.

927
00:52:41,908 --> 00:52:46,454
[Lynn M. Paltrow] Ira Chasnoff suggested
that there were extreme and unique harms

928
00:52:46,538 --> 00:52:48,874
from prenatal exposure to cocaine.

929
00:52:49,541 --> 00:52:52,335
His research,
based on approximately 23 babies,

930
00:52:52,419 --> 00:52:54,880
could not, should not, ever have led

931
00:52:54,963 --> 00:52:57,632
to the kind of alarm
and reporting that happened.

932
00:52:57,716 --> 00:52:59,009
-Drug babies--
-Coke babies--

933
00:52:59,092 --> 00:53:02,137
Crack kids.
They have now reached school age.

934
00:53:02,429 --> 00:53:04,681
[Paltrow] There was
hyperventilating reporting

935
00:53:04,764 --> 00:53:07,100
in everything from the New York Times

936
00:53:07,184 --> 00:53:09,561
to "Crack Kids" in TIME Magazine.

937
00:53:10,353 --> 00:53:12,689
And you had headlines such as,

938
00:53:12,772 --> 00:53:15,901
"Crack Babies:
The Worst Threat Is Mom Herself."

939
00:53:18,028 --> 00:53:20,947
And those stories featured
pictures of Black children.

940
00:53:22,157 --> 00:53:24,492
[sighs] It's hard
to really talk about this,

941
00:53:24,576 --> 00:53:25,785
'cause it was such bullshit.

942
00:53:26,286 --> 00:53:30,457
Stuff like that actually paraded
as real information.

943
00:53:30,540 --> 00:53:34,002
And so that played a large role
in this notion of "crack babies."

944
00:53:34,085 --> 00:53:37,923
Of course, we now know it was a lie.
We now know that.

945
00:53:38,006 --> 00:53:40,258
It was the epidemic that was not.

946
00:53:41,259 --> 00:53:45,513
[Dan Rather] One hundred thousand
crack babies are being born each year.

947
00:53:45,597 --> 00:53:48,225
And now it appears
they may be damaged for life.

948
00:53:48,308 --> 00:53:51,853
[reporter] A potential horror story
as these children reach school age.

949
00:53:51,937 --> 00:53:56,942
In a few short years, these children may
comprise as many as 60% of students

950
00:53:57,025 --> 00:53:58,902
in some inner-city classes.

951
00:54:00,028 --> 00:54:04,282
[Hinton] In reality,
only two to three percent of children born

952
00:54:04,366 --> 00:54:08,286
during this period were discovered
to have any cocaine in their system.

953
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:12,749
The real, kind of, maternal issue

954
00:54:12,832 --> 00:54:15,460
had to do much more
with alcohol abuse and marijuana.

955
00:54:15,543 --> 00:54:17,921
Yet that's what gets sold
to the American public,

956
00:54:18,004 --> 00:54:21,925
and also introduces
a new kind of level of criminalization.

957
00:54:22,008 --> 00:54:23,260
in the lives of Black women

958
00:54:23,343 --> 00:54:25,762
living in communities
that are already being targeted.

959
00:54:28,390 --> 00:54:30,392
[imperceptible]

960
00:54:30,517 --> 00:54:32,936
[Jennifer Johnson] I was abandoned
by my children's father

961
00:54:33,019 --> 00:54:34,938
and I felt very alone and isolated.

962
00:54:35,605 --> 00:54:37,357
In my crisis,

963
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:43,071
I shared with my doctor that, you know,
I had a substance abuse issue.

964
00:54:43,154 --> 00:54:46,283
And he literally turned my case
over to the police.

965
00:54:47,367 --> 00:54:51,037
Despite the fact that she was
completely honest about her drug problem

966
00:54:51,121 --> 00:54:54,958
in the hope that medical people,
the healthcare system,

967
00:54:55,041 --> 00:54:57,919
would somehow connect her
to treatment she needed,

968
00:54:58,003 --> 00:55:01,548
instead she was arrested
and charged with child abuse

969
00:55:01,631 --> 00:55:03,466
and delivery of drugs to a minor,

970
00:55:03,550 --> 00:55:07,178
as if she were a drug dealer
or a drug peddler.

971
00:55:09,931 --> 00:55:12,851
[reporter] Last year, a Florida woman
was convicted of administering

972
00:55:12,934 --> 00:55:15,979
cocaine to a minor, 
via the umbilical cord.

973
00:55:16,062 --> 00:55:18,606
Several other states
are trying the same thing.

974
00:55:19,691 --> 00:55:22,235
[Paltrow] We believe
it was the first time a prosecutor

975
00:55:22,319 --> 00:55:25,905
charged a woman
with dealing drugs to her newborn

976
00:55:25,989 --> 00:55:28,908
in the 60 seconds after the baby was born,

977
00:55:28,992 --> 00:55:31,703
but while the umbilical cord
was still attached.

978
00:55:32,954 --> 00:55:35,206
They had no direct evidence whatsoever

979
00:55:35,290 --> 00:55:38,710
that in fact there was
any transfer of anything.

980
00:55:38,793 --> 00:55:41,546
So, what was being punished?
What was the crime?

981
00:55:41,629 --> 00:55:43,715
I was able to deliver two healthy babies.

982
00:55:43,798 --> 00:55:47,802
Despite the myth
and scientific misinformation.

983
00:55:49,054 --> 00:55:51,139
But my family was being divided.

984
00:55:51,848 --> 00:55:55,560
And my kids went
to long-term relative care, out of state.

985
00:55:56,519 --> 00:55:57,562
It was devastating.

986
00:56:00,315 --> 00:56:03,193
The judge had
no understanding of addiction,

987
00:56:03,276 --> 00:56:06,488
which was, she didn't have choice,
she didn't have control.

988
00:56:06,571 --> 00:56:08,490
She needed help. She asked for help.

989
00:56:08,573 --> 00:56:12,077
She wasn't able to get that help.
It was never offered to her.

990
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:14,162
It didn't exist
at the time she was asking.

991
00:56:18,166 --> 00:56:19,459
Around the same time,

992
00:56:19,542 --> 00:56:21,586
a white nurse named Shirley Brown

993
00:56:21,669 --> 00:56:24,547
at the Medical University
of South Carolina

994
00:56:24,631 --> 00:56:27,342
began drug-testing
her Black patient base.

995
00:56:27,967 --> 00:56:32,639
And she would secretly search pregnant
Black women for evidence of cocaine use.

996
00:56:33,223 --> 00:56:35,767
You wanna just tell me
how you obtain your drugs? Is it...

997
00:56:35,850 --> 00:56:39,270
Do you buy them? Do you trade it for sex?

998
00:56:39,854 --> 00:56:41,606
What are these questions going in?

999
00:56:41,689 --> 00:56:43,983
I mean, who you gonna give
these answers to?

1000
00:56:44,067 --> 00:56:45,735
These answers are for me.

1001
00:56:46,986 --> 00:56:49,614
[Paltrow] She made that
available to the police

1002
00:56:49,697 --> 00:56:52,367
and helped the police
come to the women's bedside

1003
00:56:52,450 --> 00:56:54,077
and take them out of the beds,

1004
00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:58,289
either while they were still pregnant
or shortly after they had delivered,

1005
00:56:58,373 --> 00:57:01,793
while they were still bleeding
from having delivered their babies.

1006
00:57:01,876 --> 00:57:03,878
[sad instrumental music playing]

1007
00:57:12,345 --> 00:57:15,598
[Asha Bandele] It was a concerted effort
to criminalize Black women.

1008
00:57:15,682 --> 00:57:17,767
The way you could
criminalize Black women,

1009
00:57:17,851 --> 00:57:19,853
or you could criminalize
virtually any woman,

1010
00:57:19,936 --> 00:57:23,314
is by saying she's harming children.
And that's what they did then.

1011
00:57:24,065 --> 00:57:25,942
Sheryl! Come on!

1012
00:57:26,025 --> 00:57:28,027
[dogs barking]

1013
00:57:29,571 --> 00:57:31,739
Keep your baby out the street.

1014
00:57:31,823 --> 00:57:33,658
She gonna get hit one of these days.

1015
00:57:34,242 --> 00:57:38,580
You got some blow? You got some rock?
I'll suck your dick.

1016
00:57:38,663 --> 00:57:40,874
Just keep the baby out the streets.

1017
00:57:40,957 --> 00:57:42,000
[sighs]

1018
00:57:42,083 --> 00:57:44,836
[Bandele] Popular culture
picked up on the idea

1019
00:57:44,919 --> 00:57:50,508
that the primary user of crack
was this pathological Black woman

1020
00:57:50,592 --> 00:57:53,553
who loved crack
more than she loved her children.

1021
00:57:54,220 --> 00:58:00,310
And gave her absolutely no dimension,
even in telling that story.

1022
00:58:00,393 --> 00:58:02,479
She just sort of appeared out of nowhere,

1023
00:58:02,562 --> 00:58:05,023
some loser, smoking crack,
throwing her kids away.

1024
00:58:05,106 --> 00:58:06,858
We don't know anything else about her.

1025
00:58:06,941 --> 00:58:10,320
♪ Here's a story 'bout a girl
Who was trickin' on the ave ♪

1026
00:58:10,403 --> 00:58:14,365
♪ It might be your mama
But don't you laugh ♪

1027
00:58:14,449 --> 00:58:16,409
♪ Your mama's on crack rock ♪

1028
00:58:16,493 --> 00:58:18,036
♪ Not my mama ♪

1029
00:58:18,119 --> 00:58:20,330
♪ Your mama's on crack rock ♪

1030
00:58:20,413 --> 00:58:21,873
♪ You guys lyin' ♪

1031
00:58:21,956 --> 00:58:24,876
[Hart] The people who were smoking crack
were vilified...

1032
00:58:25,710 --> 00:58:29,088
giving the impression to the country

1033
00:58:29,172 --> 00:58:32,592
that these people were out of control

1034
00:58:32,675 --> 00:58:35,803
because they used this substance.

1035
00:58:35,887 --> 00:58:41,601
"These people deserve no help from us
because they use this substance.

1036
00:58:42,060 --> 00:58:44,604
These people we can disregard."

1037
00:58:45,230 --> 00:58:47,315
That's why it's so dangerous.

1038
00:58:47,398 --> 00:58:49,108
♪ Your mama's on crack rock ♪

1039
00:58:49,192 --> 00:58:50,777
♪ You got my mama beat ♪

1040
00:58:50,860 --> 00:58:53,071
♪ Your mama's on crack rock ♪

1041
00:58:53,154 --> 00:58:55,448
♪ 'Cause she's a crackhead ♪

1042
00:58:56,491 --> 00:58:58,493
[Bandele] When you say
that somebody uses crack,

1043
00:58:58,576 --> 00:59:00,745
you don't have to talk
about anything else.

1044
00:59:00,828 --> 00:59:03,039
You don't have to talk
about the lost jobs.

1045
00:59:03,122 --> 00:59:06,125
You don't have to talk about
if someone's been sexually assaulted

1046
00:59:06,209 --> 00:59:07,460
and is self-medicating.

1047
00:59:07,544 --> 00:59:10,255
You don't have to talk about anything.

1048
00:59:10,338 --> 00:59:11,798
You can throw away.

1049
00:59:11,881 --> 00:59:15,927
We agreed that some of our people
were worthy of being thrown away.

1050
00:59:16,010 --> 00:59:17,845
And that's what happened on our watch.

1051
00:59:18,471 --> 00:59:21,933
[reporter 1] Since crack appeared,
thousands of residents in the Bronx

1052
00:59:22,016 --> 00:59:24,269
have worked to demand
more police protection

1053
00:59:24,352 --> 00:59:27,272
to drive drug dealers
out of their neighborhoods.

1054
00:59:27,355 --> 00:59:29,566
[crowd chants] Down with dope!
Up with hope!

1055
00:59:29,649 --> 00:59:32,026
[reporter 2] In Florida,
citizens protest against drugs

1056
00:59:32,110 --> 00:59:34,279
and in favor of law enforcement,

1057
00:59:34,362 --> 00:59:35,822
sending dealers the message.

1058
00:59:35,905 --> 00:59:36,739
Down with dope!

1059
00:59:36,823 --> 00:59:38,950
[Hart] You got people
in the Black community

1060
00:59:39,033 --> 00:59:40,660
saying something has to be done.

1061
00:59:41,911 --> 00:59:44,455
Crack kills! Crack kills!

1062
00:59:44,539 --> 00:59:47,625
[reporter 3] In Miami, at the request
of church and civic groups,

1063
00:59:47,709 --> 00:59:51,254
police added
special anti-crack motorcycle patrols.

1064
00:59:51,838 --> 00:59:54,382
-You're glad to see them, though?
-Yes. Yes, I am.

1065
00:59:54,507 --> 00:59:56,759
Somebody has to do something.

1066
00:59:56,843 --> 00:59:58,970
Hey, pusher! Hey, you!

1067
00:59:59,053 --> 01:00:01,097
Black men out here are watching you.

1068
01:00:01,180 --> 01:00:03,182
Hey, pusher! Hey, you!

1069
01:00:03,266 --> 01:00:05,852
[Butts] People were frightened.
They didn't know what else to do.

1070
01:00:06,978 --> 01:00:09,314
When you're surrounded
by that much violence,

1071
01:00:09,397 --> 01:00:10,607
that much ugliness...

1072
01:00:12,066 --> 01:00:15,903
They resort to what they think
will stop the madness.

1073
01:00:17,947 --> 01:00:21,326
If I had my way,
I'd borrow the Ringling Brothers' cages

1074
01:00:21,409 --> 01:00:25,622
and cage these drug pushers
and exhibit them in all the neighborhoods

1075
01:00:25,705 --> 01:00:29,125
so the kids can see scum.
That's what they are, scum.

1076
01:00:31,085 --> 01:00:35,590
[Hart] We have our congressman
from Harlem, Charlie Rangel at the time,

1077
01:00:35,673 --> 01:00:37,091
and he's telling Ronald Reagan,

1078
01:00:37,175 --> 01:00:39,385
"You're not doing enough
for the Black community.

1079
01:00:39,469 --> 01:00:40,678
You don't care about us."

1080
01:00:40,762 --> 01:00:42,513
In order to win a war,

1081
01:00:42,597 --> 01:00:46,142
you have to have the resources,
and resources cost money.

1082
01:00:46,225 --> 01:00:48,645
And there's no question in anybody's mind

1083
01:00:48,728 --> 01:00:51,814
that the American people
are prepared to pay for it.

1084
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:54,651
[Rangel] Lock them up,
get them off the street.

1085
01:00:54,734 --> 01:00:59,364
There was no question in my mind
at that time the community was behind it.

1086
01:00:59,447 --> 01:01:01,282
And the ministers...

1087
01:01:02,492 --> 01:01:05,620
they would just raise hell
with the politicians.

1088
01:01:05,703 --> 01:01:09,749
"Why have we elected you?"
"Why aren't our streets safer?"

1089
01:01:09,832 --> 01:01:13,044
You can buy crack
when you can't buy a bottle of milk.

1090
01:01:13,127 --> 01:01:15,338
And I'm saying sentence them for life.

1091
01:01:15,421 --> 01:01:16,547
[crowd] No more crack!

1092
01:01:16,631 --> 01:01:17,965
We want our building back!

1093
01:01:18,049 --> 01:01:19,967
No more drugs! No more crack!

1094
01:01:20,051 --> 01:01:21,636
[Butts] It was so crazy...

1095
01:01:22,512 --> 01:01:26,099
parents would beg
to lock their own children up...

1096
01:01:27,392 --> 01:01:31,187
because they were out here
dealing in drugs.

1097
01:01:31,270 --> 01:01:33,356
People have to take a stand,
like we're doing.

1098
01:01:33,439 --> 01:01:35,358
If they want drugs
out of the neighborhood,

1099
01:01:35,441 --> 01:01:36,776
they've got to take a stand.

1100
01:01:36,859 --> 01:01:38,861
[crowd continues chanting]

1101
01:01:39,404 --> 01:01:42,073
[Hart] So, the community think it's wrong,

1102
01:01:42,156 --> 01:01:46,035
politicians think it's wrong,
Republicans and Democrats.

1103
01:01:46,119 --> 01:01:48,329
I mean, it was a politician's wet dream.

1104
01:01:48,413 --> 01:01:53,626
It's sleazebags of greed and slime
that make millions.

1105
01:01:53,710 --> 01:01:56,713
Our children are gonna
continue to be exposed

1106
01:01:56,796 --> 01:02:01,259
to that horrible,
horrible new concoction called crack.

1107
01:02:01,342 --> 01:02:04,387
Cocaine used to be
the exclusive pastime of the wealthy.

1108
01:02:04,470 --> 01:02:06,723
Now, it can be bought
with allowance money.

1109
01:02:07,682 --> 01:02:11,227
So, it's 1986.
There's gonna be an election.

1110
01:02:11,310 --> 01:02:14,897
All the members of the House
of Representatives are up for re-election.

1111
01:02:14,981 --> 01:02:15,940
And now,

1112
01:02:16,566 --> 01:02:21,779
"The War on Drugs is an opportunity
to talk about how tough I am."

1113
01:02:23,322 --> 01:02:25,908
The Speaker of the House is Tip O'Neill.

1114
01:02:25,992 --> 01:02:30,371
And he says,
"I want a comprehensive anti-drug bill."

1115
01:02:30,955 --> 01:02:33,207
And he wants it done in four weeks,

1116
01:02:33,291 --> 01:02:37,837
so that members can go campaign
on what they've accomplished.

1117
01:02:37,920 --> 01:02:39,589
How tough they've been.

1118
01:02:39,672 --> 01:02:42,383
How to stop this plague in its tracks.

1119
01:02:42,467 --> 01:02:43,718
If I had my way,

1120
01:02:43,801 --> 01:02:48,389
I would take all the drug pushers,
take Alcatraz,

1121
01:02:48,473 --> 01:02:52,894
and send them there for life
without the privilege of any visitors.

1122
01:02:53,770 --> 01:02:57,815
[Sterling] It's hard, generally,
for the public to appreciate

1123
01:02:57,899 --> 01:03:04,113
how long it takes for a bill to go from
first being introduced to finally passing

1124
01:03:04,197 --> 01:03:06,866
the House and the Senate
and being signed by the President.

1125
01:03:06,949 --> 01:03:10,119
In Washington, it might take years.

1126
01:03:10,203 --> 01:03:11,496
[all applauding]

1127
01:03:11,579 --> 01:03:14,499
[Sterling] But Tip O'Neill wants this done
in four weeks.

1128
01:03:15,500 --> 01:03:17,794
So, in that window,

1129
01:03:17,877 --> 01:03:21,464
in pretty much the last week, it comes up,

1130
01:03:21,547 --> 01:03:27,512
"Let's write these mandatory minimums
and throw the book at these dope dealers."

1131
01:03:28,054 --> 01:03:31,599
Today, it gives me great pleasure
to sign legislation

1132
01:03:31,682 --> 01:03:34,769
that reflects the total commitment
of the American people

1133
01:03:34,852 --> 01:03:37,814
and their government
to fight the evil of drugs.

1134
01:03:37,897 --> 01:03:39,899
[crowd applauding]

1135
01:03:44,445 --> 01:03:48,407
It was the most unjust federal law
ever written.

1136
01:03:48,950 --> 01:03:52,870
It has a ratio of powder cocaine...

1137
01:03:53,579 --> 01:03:56,123
100 grams gets you a certain sentence,

1138
01:03:56,207 --> 01:03:58,876
one gram of crack
gets you the same sentence.

1139
01:04:00,962 --> 01:04:05,299
If you've seen a sugar packet
in the restaurant, that's one gram.

1140
01:04:05,800 --> 01:04:08,594
There's a tiny amount of stuff.

1141
01:04:09,136 --> 01:04:15,268
Five of those tiny amounts of crack
would get you a minimum of five years,

1142
01:04:15,351 --> 01:04:20,690
up to 40 years
under the legislation that passed.

1143
01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:27,280
Five grams of crack,
500 grams of powder cocaine...

1144
01:04:27,989 --> 01:04:29,240
the same sentence.

1145
01:04:31,075 --> 01:04:32,827
Many people thought,

1146
01:04:33,369 --> 01:04:36,414
"Well, that must be because

1147
01:04:36,497 --> 01:04:43,004
Congress thought that crack was 100 times
more dangerous than powder cocaine."

1148
01:04:43,087 --> 01:04:43,921
No.

1149
01:04:44,005 --> 01:04:47,550
This was a feature of the haste
with which we wrote this.

1150
01:04:47,633 --> 01:04:52,889
So fast we're not even thinking straight
about what we're trying to accomplish.

1151
01:04:52,972 --> 01:04:54,223
It was a screw-up.

1152
01:04:54,307 --> 01:04:57,560
It was screw-up on top of screw-up
on top of screw-up.

1153
01:04:58,144 --> 01:05:00,271
That happened in 1986.

1154
01:05:00,354 --> 01:05:03,190
And that law targeted "traffickers".

1155
01:05:03,274 --> 01:05:07,486
That's... 1988, they extended that law

1156
01:05:07,570 --> 01:05:11,324
to include anybody
who possessed crack-cocaine.

1157
01:05:11,991 --> 01:05:14,577
The decision in the 1988 legislation

1158
01:05:14,660 --> 01:05:17,622
to associate a mandatory minimum penalty

1159
01:05:17,705 --> 01:05:20,958
with the possession
of a small amount of crack-cocaine

1160
01:05:21,042 --> 01:05:24,003
was part of a larger shift and a decision

1161
01:05:24,086 --> 01:05:26,672
on the part of officials
in the Reagan administration

1162
01:05:26,756 --> 01:05:29,008
to criminalize drug abusers,

1163
01:05:29,091 --> 01:05:33,095
and specifically to criminalize
people who abused crack.

1164
01:05:34,221 --> 01:05:38,059
[sighs] The thinking
at the time was that...

1165
01:05:39,310 --> 01:05:42,939
crack... was being used...

1166
01:05:44,315 --> 01:05:48,069
more openly in the Black community,

1167
01:05:48,152 --> 01:05:51,530
and cocaine was a secret drug

1168
01:05:51,614 --> 01:05:55,493
that middle class people used
that didn't hurt anybody.

1169
01:05:55,576 --> 01:05:58,496
They weren't mugging, they weren't
killing, they weren't robbing.

1170
01:05:59,163 --> 01:06:05,670
The whole idea, if you could concentrate
on where the most damage to society was...

1171
01:06:06,420 --> 01:06:09,632
And it was overkill.
Clearly, it was overkill.

1172
01:06:09,715 --> 01:06:11,926
There was no justification.

1173
01:06:12,510 --> 01:06:15,179
And I guess the best answer to it...

1174
01:06:16,389 --> 01:06:19,642
is an oft-time phrase that you've heard,

1175
01:06:19,725 --> 01:06:22,186
"Seemed like a good idea at the time."

1176
01:06:26,357 --> 01:06:30,569
I, George Herbert Walker Bush,
do solemnly swear...

1177
01:06:30,653 --> 01:06:32,655
"I will faithfully execute the office...."

1178
01:06:32,738 --> 01:06:35,032
[Michael Isikoff] In 1989,

1179
01:06:35,116 --> 01:06:37,952
the polls show that drugs were

1180
01:06:38,035 --> 01:06:42,123
the number-one issue
that the public was concerned about.

1181
01:06:42,748 --> 01:06:45,960
So, George H.W. Bush had come into office

1182
01:06:46,043 --> 01:06:52,967
vowing to crack down on the drug epidemic
that was confronting the country.

1183
01:06:53,050 --> 01:06:54,885
[Bush] My friends, we have work to do.

1184
01:06:55,636 --> 01:07:00,599
There are those who cannot free themselves
of enslavement to whatever addiction,

1185
01:07:00,683 --> 01:07:05,312
drugs, welfare,
the demoralization that rules the slums.

1186
01:07:05,396 --> 01:07:09,525
[Isikoff] Remember, George H.W. Bush
was Reagan's vice president.

1187
01:07:09,608 --> 01:07:13,863
He actually had been
in charge of anti-drug operations

1188
01:07:13,946 --> 01:07:17,867
for the White House in the early years
of the Reagan Administration.

1189
01:07:17,950 --> 01:07:23,164
So, he had every reason to want to show

1190
01:07:23,247 --> 01:07:25,458
he was gonna be tougher than anybody.

1191
01:07:25,541 --> 01:07:28,127
[Bush] There are few clear areas

1192
01:07:28,711 --> 01:07:32,882
in which we as a society
must rise up united

1193
01:07:33,382 --> 01:07:35,134
and express our intolerance.

1194
01:07:35,634 --> 01:07:37,970
And the most obvious now is drugs.

1195
01:07:38,637 --> 01:07:40,181
And there is much to be done...

1196
01:07:40,723 --> 01:07:41,766
and to be said.

1197
01:07:42,266 --> 01:07:46,896
But take my word for it,
this scourge will stop!

1198
01:07:49,607 --> 01:07:52,526
[Levine] The political attention
on the drug issue

1199
01:07:52,610 --> 01:07:54,528
and the crack issue was escalating.

1200
01:07:55,654 --> 01:07:59,742
Drugs become almost the antithesis
of the American way of life.

1201
01:07:59,825 --> 01:08:02,620
Drugs is the enemy that we must destroy.

1202
01:08:02,703 --> 01:08:04,705
[eerie music playing]

1203
01:08:07,166 --> 01:08:08,918
[Scott] I was working with DEA.

1204
01:08:09,001 --> 01:08:12,671
And I was asked to purchase drugs
in front of the White House one day.

1205
01:08:13,589 --> 01:08:18,177
So... I called one of the drug dealers
I'd been dealing with.

1206
01:08:18,260 --> 01:08:19,887
I said, "Come to the White House."

1207
01:08:19,970 --> 01:08:21,514
He said, "Where the fuck is that?"

1208
01:08:23,307 --> 01:08:25,309
I had to actually tell him
how to get there.

1209
01:08:25,392 --> 01:08:28,020
When he came down there,
we sat on the little park bench.

1210
01:08:28,104 --> 01:08:30,022
He gave me the drugs,
I gave him the money.

1211
01:08:30,106 --> 01:08:33,150
You can see the people in the background
going into the White House.

1212
01:08:34,985 --> 01:08:39,782
All of us agree that the gravest domestic
threat facing our nation today is drugs.

1213
01:08:40,366 --> 01:08:43,702
[Isikoff] This was
President George H.W. Bush's

1214
01:08:43,786 --> 01:08:47,540
first national TV address.

1215
01:08:47,623 --> 01:08:49,834
I remember watching it, and, uh...

1216
01:08:50,709 --> 01:08:54,088
the President had this...

1217
01:08:55,339 --> 01:08:58,134
gimmick that nobody expected.

1218
01:08:58,217 --> 01:08:59,135
This...

1219
01:09:00,219 --> 01:09:02,471
This is crack-cocaine.

1220
01:09:02,930 --> 01:09:06,725
Seized a few days ago
by drug enforcement agents

1221
01:09:06,809 --> 01:09:10,354
in a park just across the street
from the White House.

1222
01:09:11,147 --> 01:09:15,651
Lo and behold, George Bush holds up
the drugs I just bought, on TV.

1223
01:09:16,402 --> 01:09:17,778
I almost fell out of my chair.

1224
01:09:17,862 --> 01:09:20,906
It was crazy. I could not believe that.
I couldn't believe it.

1225
01:09:21,657 --> 01:09:22,908
Because it was a setup.

1226
01:09:24,785 --> 01:09:27,204
It's as innocent-looking as candy.

1227
01:09:27,288 --> 01:09:29,999
But it's turning our cities
into battle zones.

1228
01:09:30,624 --> 01:09:33,377
It was a case of political theater.

1229
01:09:33,460 --> 01:09:39,717
The White House manipulating
a real... young kid...

1230
01:09:40,718 --> 01:09:46,223
for political purposes in order
to score and make a political point.

1231
01:09:46,307 --> 01:09:48,350
Here, the rules have changed.

1232
01:09:48,893 --> 01:09:52,021
If you sell drugs, you will be caught.

1233
01:09:52,104 --> 01:09:55,107
And when you're caught,
you will be prosecuted.

1234
01:09:55,191 --> 01:09:58,736
And once you're convicted,
you will do time.

1235
01:09:59,320 --> 01:10:01,864
The White House acknowledged today
that a dramatic moment

1236
01:10:01,947 --> 01:10:04,867
in President Bush's speech
declaring war on drugs

1237
01:10:04,950 --> 01:10:07,912
resulted from a setup
by American drug agents.

1238
01:10:07,995 --> 01:10:11,207
He went there and sold drugs
in front of the White House, didn't he?

1239
01:10:11,290 --> 01:10:12,666
That was the bottom line.

1240
01:10:12,750 --> 01:10:15,419
That's what the man did
and he was arrested for it.

1241
01:10:15,502 --> 01:10:17,755
I hope he's arrested for it. I don't know.

1242
01:10:18,255 --> 01:10:20,007
I can't feel sorry for this fella.

1243
01:10:20,424 --> 01:10:26,472
So, this teenager with no priors,
no record of violence, um,

1244
01:10:26,555 --> 01:10:32,311
ended up spending nearly
a decade of his life in federal prison.

1245
01:10:36,148 --> 01:10:38,525
[bagpipes playing]

1246
01:10:43,572 --> 01:10:47,076
[reporter] More evidence that
the cities are losing the war on drugs

1247
01:10:47,159 --> 01:10:50,537
came as New York's police
buried one of their own today.

1248
01:10:50,621 --> 01:10:54,959
Twenty-two-year-old Edward Byrne
was shot to death early Friday morning.

1249
01:10:56,293 --> 01:10:58,629
[Pegues] The Eddie Byrne story
was a big, big deal.

1250
01:10:59,421 --> 01:11:02,633
You're talking about a rookie cop
getting murdered by drug dealers.

1251
01:11:02,716 --> 01:11:05,886
Just sitting in the car. And he didn't...
He didn't do anything.

1252
01:11:09,807 --> 01:11:14,728
If our son Eddie, sitting in a police car,
representing and protecting us...

1253
01:11:18,440 --> 01:11:19,400
can be wasted...

1254
01:11:21,610 --> 01:11:22,736
by scum...

1255
01:11:24,989 --> 01:11:26,573
then none of us are safe.

1256
01:11:28,033 --> 01:11:30,577
[Styles] What happened to Len Bias
just brought attention.

1257
01:11:30,661 --> 01:11:33,414
There wasn't no real action
from the police.

1258
01:11:34,123 --> 01:11:37,501
But after Edward Byrne
got killed in Queens,

1259
01:11:37,584 --> 01:11:42,172
they were, like, "You killed one
of our police officers because of this?

1260
01:11:42,256 --> 01:11:44,842
Now y'all gonna feel it.
The whole nation is gonna feel it."

1261
01:11:45,384 --> 01:11:46,552
This is a promise.

1262
01:11:47,219 --> 01:11:51,015
The killing must and will stop.

1263
01:11:51,098 --> 01:11:53,684
♪ Woop-woop
That's the sound of the police ♪

1264
01:11:53,767 --> 01:11:56,061
♪ Woop-woop
That's the sound of the beast ♪

1265
01:11:56,145 --> 01:11:58,230
♪ Woop-woop
That's the sound of the police ♪

1266
01:11:58,314 --> 01:12:01,191
♪ Woop-woop
That's the sound of the beast ♪

1267
01:12:02,359 --> 01:12:04,486
All right! I ain't got nothing, man!

1268
01:12:04,570 --> 01:12:08,532
One murder changed
the police departments around America.

1269
01:12:10,284 --> 01:12:12,286
[Styles] Police went crazy.

1270
01:12:12,369 --> 01:12:13,829
They went crazy.

1271
01:12:13,912 --> 01:12:16,373
♪ You can't stand where I stand
You can't walk where I walk ♪

1272
01:12:16,457 --> 01:12:18,792
♪ Watch out! We run New York ♪

1273
01:12:18,876 --> 01:12:21,337
♪ Policeman come
We bust him out the park ♪

1274
01:12:21,420 --> 01:12:23,255
♪ I know this for a fact
You don't like... ♪

1275
01:12:23,756 --> 01:12:27,634
They developed this new task force
that they called TNT.

1276
01:12:28,093 --> 01:12:30,220
[reporter] The Manhattan South
Tactical Narcotics Team

1277
01:12:30,304 --> 01:12:33,432
arrested several drug customers
after buying crack in the park.

1278
01:12:33,515 --> 01:12:36,018
[Pegues] They took
every cop they could find

1279
01:12:36,101 --> 01:12:40,064
and threw them into this unit,
and all day they was doing buy-and-busts.

1280
01:12:40,147 --> 01:12:41,899
We the police. You under arrest.

1281
01:12:44,360 --> 01:12:47,112
The majority of crack users were white,

1282
01:12:47,196 --> 01:12:50,574
but a lot of the people involved
in the economy were people of color.

1283
01:12:50,657 --> 01:12:53,369
And the police specifically targeted

1284
01:12:53,452 --> 01:12:56,872
the populations of color that were
involved in this underground economy.

1285
01:12:57,414 --> 01:12:59,958
[reporter] A massive police crackdown
on crack.

1286
01:13:00,542 --> 01:13:02,294
[Styles] They would make these big sweeps.

1287
01:13:02,378 --> 01:13:05,005
[reporter] The largest drug sweep ever
in a single neighborhood.

1288
01:13:05,089 --> 01:13:07,800
[Styles] And when that swoop comes
and they snatch you,

1289
01:13:07,883 --> 01:13:11,428
if they take ten cracks off of one person,
and you have none,

1290
01:13:11,512 --> 01:13:14,264
they will split it
and give him five and you five.

1291
01:13:14,348 --> 01:13:16,225
-Police!
-[door smashing]

1292
01:13:16,850 --> 01:13:19,103
[Styles] They was coming
at the hood with a vengeance.

1293
01:13:19,186 --> 01:13:21,271
-Okay, okay!
-Put your face on the ground!

1294
01:13:22,481 --> 01:13:24,274
[officer] Crawl! Get down on your hands!

1295
01:13:24,733 --> 01:13:26,652
And from there on, it changed.

1296
01:13:26,735 --> 01:13:29,488
They putting on the cuffs,
your ass was getting locked up.

1297
01:13:29,571 --> 01:13:32,157
♪ Woop-woop
That's the sound of the beast ♪

1298
01:13:32,741 --> 01:13:35,702
[Butts] These kids would be stopped
on the street, frisked.

1299
01:13:35,786 --> 01:13:37,871
They could be thrown into a police car.

1300
01:13:37,955 --> 01:13:40,499
Kept locked up in the system
three, four days

1301
01:13:40,582 --> 01:13:42,960
before anybody knew where you were.

1302
01:13:43,419 --> 01:13:45,921
They said, "You're dealing drugs,
you're going to jail."

1303
01:13:46,004 --> 01:13:48,298
Fifteen, 20, 30 years. Doesn't matter.

1304
01:13:48,382 --> 01:13:50,175
Especially if you're Black.

1305
01:13:51,260 --> 01:13:55,431
[Rodriguez] With the police... they don't
know what the hell they're doing.

1306
01:13:55,514 --> 01:13:58,183
Because they can't differentiate
the good from the bad.

1307
01:13:58,809 --> 01:14:00,894
You guys all look alike.
You all act alike.

1308
01:14:02,062 --> 01:14:03,564
So you all get treated the same.

1309
01:14:06,900 --> 01:14:11,155
I was arrested for being in possession
of a controlled substance.

1310
01:14:11,822 --> 01:14:13,407
And that substance was crack.

1311
01:14:16,660 --> 01:14:21,206
You know, I remember my leg
being pulled on about 3:00 in the morning,

1312
01:14:21,290 --> 01:14:25,836
and woken up to get dressed
to be shipped off to prison.

1313
01:14:26,837 --> 01:14:29,590
Me and about 70 other women,

1314
01:14:29,673 --> 01:14:33,260
put into a large room,
stripped out of our clothing.

1315
01:14:33,343 --> 01:14:36,305
Every part of our body looked at.

1316
01:14:36,388 --> 01:14:40,309
And then chained together
in this long chain and put on a bus.

1317
01:14:41,018 --> 01:14:42,311
Early in the morning.

1318
01:14:44,730 --> 01:14:47,858
And driven off to this place
that I've never been before.

1319
01:14:47,941 --> 01:14:49,443
I don't know where I'm going.

1320
01:14:51,570 --> 01:14:55,199
And as I'm taking this trip,
I'm thinking about my ancestors.

1321
01:14:56,033 --> 01:14:58,744
And I think of,
"What progress have we actually made?"

1322
01:15:03,665 --> 01:15:05,417
[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,

1323
01:15:05,501 --> 01:15:09,463
the President
of the United States of America,

1324
01:15:09,546 --> 01:15:11,840
William Jefferson Clinton.

1325
01:15:12,758 --> 01:15:15,719
[Sterling] Bush played an important role
in laying the groundwork,

1326
01:15:15,802 --> 01:15:18,514
but Clinton, then,
has to be even tougher...

1327
01:15:19,348 --> 01:15:20,557
because that's the thing.

1328
01:15:20,641 --> 01:15:22,142
People have got to be tougher.

1329
01:15:27,105 --> 01:15:31,193
We will have the means by which we can
say punishment will be more certain.

1330
01:15:32,778 --> 01:15:37,533
We will put 100,000 police officers
on the street, a 20% increase.

1331
01:15:37,616 --> 01:15:38,659
Go! Move! Move! Move!

1332
01:15:38,784 --> 01:15:41,119
[eerie music playing]

1333
01:15:42,162 --> 01:15:42,996
Get down!

1334
01:15:43,080 --> 01:15:46,083
The war on drugs
helped turn the police into soldiers.

1335
01:15:51,755 --> 01:15:54,091
All right. Hold it.
Hold it. Freeze! Freeze!

1336
01:15:54,174 --> 01:15:56,426
[Hinton] Tens of millions
of dollars from Congress

1337
01:15:56,510 --> 01:16:00,806
goes to helicopters
and to militarizing police forces.

1338
01:16:10,816 --> 01:16:15,612
There is restructuring of policing
from ordinary beat cops

1339
01:16:15,696 --> 01:16:18,907
to creating these elite, funded units

1340
01:16:18,991 --> 01:16:21,952
that are given special resources
and special powers.

1341
01:16:23,787 --> 01:16:26,498
[Hinton] We begin to see
a new level of investment

1342
01:16:26,582 --> 01:16:29,918
into targeting
low-income communities of color...

1343
01:16:30,711 --> 01:16:32,462
with policing and surveillance,

1344
01:16:32,546 --> 01:16:36,842
while making sentences
more Draconian and more punitive.

1345
01:16:36,925 --> 01:16:38,302
[explosion]

1346
01:16:38,385 --> 01:16:40,554
[man] My wife and kids are in there, man.

1347
01:16:41,179 --> 01:16:42,764
Oh, my God!

1348
01:16:44,099 --> 01:16:47,311
The federal anti-drug budget
is up to $12 billion.

1349
01:16:47,394 --> 01:16:50,272
So, it's six times what it was
when Reagan started,

1350
01:16:50,355 --> 01:16:51,648
and it keeps climbing.

1351
01:16:51,732 --> 01:16:53,650
[Bill Clinton] When I sign
this crime bill,

1352
01:16:54,151 --> 01:16:57,863
we together are taking a big step

1353
01:16:57,946 --> 01:17:00,782
toward bringing
the laws of our land back into line

1354
01:17:00,866 --> 01:17:02,826
with the values of our people.

1355
01:17:09,791 --> 01:17:13,211
[Hinton] The 1994 crime bill supports
new police officers on the streets

1356
01:17:13,295 --> 01:17:16,340
of not just big cities
like New York and Chicago,

1357
01:17:16,423 --> 01:17:20,886
but smaller cities like your Indiana
and Flint and Stockton, California.

1358
01:17:24,389 --> 01:17:29,603
There's tens of millions of dollars
going into expanding the prison system.

1359
01:17:29,686 --> 01:17:32,272
And that is when
we really begin to see the explosion

1360
01:17:32,356 --> 01:17:34,775
of prison populations in the US.

1361
01:17:37,027 --> 01:17:40,238
[Hart] Incarceration rates
take off under Clinton.

1362
01:17:40,864 --> 01:17:41,990
But then...

1363
01:17:42,908 --> 01:17:47,496
about the same time, '94,
people start to become concerned

1364
01:17:47,579 --> 01:17:51,583
that the people who were
being arrested for crack

1365
01:17:51,667 --> 01:17:53,585
were almost exclusively Black.

1366
01:17:55,671 --> 01:17:57,881
[Murch] Two-thirds
of crack users were white.

1367
01:17:58,548 --> 01:18:02,552
But between the passage
of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1988

1368
01:18:02,636 --> 01:18:05,764
and 1994,
the passage of Clinton's crime bill,

1369
01:18:06,431 --> 01:18:10,185
not a single white person was convicted

1370
01:18:10,268 --> 01:18:13,522
of a federal crack offense in Los Angeles.

1371
01:18:36,211 --> 01:18:40,382
[Murch] There is just massive outrage
in the African-American community

1372
01:18:40,465 --> 01:18:42,008
about mass incarceration,

1373
01:18:42,092 --> 01:18:45,303
and also about the damage
inflicted by the crack economy itself.

1374
01:18:51,226 --> 01:18:54,730
Much of the anger
became focused on the CIA...

1375
01:18:56,022 --> 01:18:59,067
and its role in helping
to create the crack crisis.

1376
01:18:59,526 --> 01:19:01,570
It doesn't make any difference.

1377
01:19:01,653 --> 01:19:04,656
Whether they delivered the kilo themselves

1378
01:19:04,740 --> 01:19:07,117
or turned their heads
while somebody else did it,

1379
01:19:07,200 --> 01:19:08,869
they're just as guilty.

1380
01:19:10,579 --> 01:19:14,958
I am going to make somebody pay
for what they have done

1381
01:19:15,041 --> 01:19:17,836
to my community and to my people.

1382
01:19:17,919 --> 01:19:18,920
[crowd applauds]

1383
01:19:22,466 --> 01:19:24,593
I think the CIA is involved.

1384
01:19:24,676 --> 01:19:27,345
The CIA's been involved
in every ugly thing that's happened

1385
01:19:27,429 --> 01:19:29,139
over the last 20 or 30 years.

1386
01:19:29,222 --> 01:19:30,849
We are your wake-up call!

1387
01:19:30,932 --> 01:19:33,393
[Kornbluh] The crack epidemic
affected the poverty levels,

1388
01:19:33,477 --> 01:19:35,479
the safety levels of communities.

1389
01:19:35,562 --> 01:19:38,148
People's health was affected.

1390
01:19:38,231 --> 01:19:41,401
People's lives were ended or changed.

1391
01:19:41,485 --> 01:19:42,944
People lost their freedom.

1392
01:19:43,487 --> 01:19:45,363
[woman] I'm not bringing drugs
into the country.

1393
01:19:45,447 --> 01:19:47,407
See, there are people in major positions

1394
01:19:47,491 --> 01:19:48,950
-that are doing this.
-Has to be.

1395
01:19:49,493 --> 01:19:51,620
[Kornbluh] So, it is
certainly understandable

1396
01:19:51,703 --> 01:19:55,415
why a community that was
so disproportionately affected

1397
01:19:55,499 --> 01:19:57,918
would rise up in disgust and horror

1398
01:19:58,001 --> 01:20:03,465
at any implication that the US government
was even a little bit involved

1399
01:20:03,548 --> 01:20:06,426
in drugs coming into their community.

1400
01:20:06,510 --> 01:20:08,929
[dramatic music playing]

1401
01:20:10,096 --> 01:20:15,393
Los Angeles was the epicenter for crack
in the 1980s and 1990s.

1402
01:20:15,477 --> 01:20:18,814
Much of the anger in Los Angeles
spills over into the rest of the country,

1403
01:20:18,897 --> 01:20:22,108
and LA becomes the center,
the epicenter of organizing.

1404
01:20:24,528 --> 01:20:30,200
And this organizing ultimately forces
the head of the CIA, John Deutch,

1405
01:20:30,283 --> 01:20:35,247
to come to Los Angeles
and to speak at a high school in Watts.

1406
01:20:37,290 --> 01:20:40,043
The director of the CIA
was in Los Angeles today,

1407
01:20:40,126 --> 01:20:43,338
trying to put down reports
that the CIA, in the past,

1408
01:20:43,421 --> 01:20:47,259
connived to spread crack-cocaine
in America's inner cities.

1409
01:20:50,512 --> 01:20:54,724
[Murch] It's this moment, essentially,
of the community confronting the CIA.

1410
01:20:55,642 --> 01:21:00,689
In Baldwin Village where I live,
there are no jobs for the children.

1411
01:21:00,772 --> 01:21:03,817
And our kids are commodities.

1412
01:21:03,900 --> 01:21:06,403
They're being cycled through the prisons.

1413
01:21:06,486 --> 01:21:07,779
They come back to the street

1414
01:21:07,863 --> 01:21:11,283
and they're marked and scarred
for the rest of their life.

1415
01:21:12,075 --> 01:21:14,828
We are tired and we're hurt,
and we're angry.

1416
01:21:15,453 --> 01:21:18,123
Give us explanations.

1417
01:21:18,206 --> 01:21:22,210
You, the President, and everybody else
should be highly upset...

1418
01:21:23,086 --> 01:21:26,089
and say, "How did this cancer get here?

1419
01:21:26,756 --> 01:21:27,799
How did it happen?"

1420
01:21:28,466 --> 01:21:29,926
[Deutch] Now, we all know

1421
01:21:30,010 --> 01:21:33,054
that the US government 
and the CIA supported

1422
01:21:33,138 --> 01:21:35,181
the Contras and their efforts to overthrow

1423
01:21:35,265 --> 01:21:39,269
the Sandinista government in Nicaragua
in the middle-'80s.

1424
01:21:40,020 --> 01:21:45,775
Now, it is alleged the CIA also helped
the Contras raise money for arms

1425
01:21:45,859 --> 01:21:49,821
by introducing
crack-cocaine into California.

1426
01:21:49,905 --> 01:21:51,865
It is an appalling charge.

1427
01:21:52,407 --> 01:21:54,784
It is a charge that cannot go unanswered.

1428
01:21:55,619 --> 01:22:00,248
I've asked the CIA Inspector General
to undertake a full investigation.

1429
01:22:00,332 --> 01:22:03,793
I think it's pretty evident
that the sentiment in this room

1430
01:22:03,877 --> 01:22:07,005
is that of pain, anger,
and especially that of mistrust.

1431
01:22:07,631 --> 01:22:10,008
How can we feel comfortable
with an investigation

1432
01:22:10,091 --> 01:22:13,219
that's going to be conducted by someone
on the government payroll

1433
01:22:13,303 --> 01:22:15,388
to investigate the CIA in its wrongdoing?

1434
01:22:15,472 --> 01:22:16,556
[crowd applauds]

1435
01:22:16,640 --> 01:22:18,016
This is some bullshit, buddy.

1436
01:22:18,600 --> 01:22:20,268
[crowd applauds]

1437
01:22:21,645 --> 01:22:23,813
[cheering]

1438
01:22:23,897 --> 01:22:25,273
[woman] Wait just a minute.

1439
01:22:30,487 --> 01:22:35,408
[Kornbluh] The CIA's Inspector General
did do a rather large report.

1440
01:22:35,492 --> 01:22:38,870
And, in fact, it did contain
a series of new revelations

1441
01:22:38,954 --> 01:22:41,790
about the extent to which
the CIA either looked the other way,

1442
01:22:41,873 --> 01:22:46,086
knew about,
or collaborated with drug smugglers

1443
01:22:46,169 --> 01:22:48,713
in their quest to overthrow
the Sandinista government.

1444
01:22:49,965 --> 01:22:54,260
The Reagan administration cared less
about cocaine coming into this country

1445
01:22:54,344 --> 01:22:58,014
than they did about waging
an illegal paramilitary war

1446
01:22:58,640 --> 01:23:01,768
against a little country
in Central America

1447
01:23:01,851 --> 01:23:04,562
that basically represented no threat

1448
01:23:04,646 --> 01:23:07,107
to the security
of the United States of America.

1449
01:23:12,404 --> 01:23:15,407
Drugs, of course, do represent a threat.

1450
01:23:21,830 --> 01:23:25,583
If you got a war on drugs...
is it not a war on the people

1451
01:23:25,667 --> 01:23:27,127
that are supplying the drugs?

1452
01:23:27,210 --> 01:23:30,380
Or is it only a war
on the victims of the drug war?

1453
01:23:30,463 --> 01:23:31,923
That was the hypocrisy.

1454
01:23:32,007 --> 01:23:36,261
And... sadly... we never addressed it.

1455
01:23:37,303 --> 01:23:40,223
People died. Communities are ravaged.

1456
01:23:40,306 --> 01:23:43,393
Nothing ever was done.

1457
01:23:43,977 --> 01:23:47,272
We left the communities of color
to be devastated.

1458
01:24:00,368 --> 01:24:03,496
[Burton] I was sentenced to prison
six different times.

1459
01:24:05,665 --> 01:24:09,252
You would have thought
someone would have said...

1460
01:24:11,379 --> 01:24:13,923
that you don't have a criminal problem...

1461
01:24:16,051 --> 01:24:18,428
you have an alcohol or a drug problem.

1462
01:24:19,512 --> 01:24:20,889
And there's help for that.

1463
01:24:23,224 --> 01:24:25,101
But I was never offered any help.

1464
01:24:27,103 --> 01:24:28,938
And I read the papers today...

1465
01:24:31,274 --> 01:24:33,818
and I look
at the approach to opioid use...

1466
01:24:34,903 --> 01:24:36,821
and you hear about a health approach.

1467
01:24:38,490 --> 01:24:40,116
Not a criminal approach.

1468
01:24:41,910 --> 01:24:43,828
I'm 21 years sober now.

1469
01:24:46,164 --> 01:24:48,583
Wasn't I worth an investment in treatment?

1470
01:24:58,968 --> 01:25:00,053
[softly] I'm sorry.

1471
01:25:00,929 --> 01:25:02,055
[sniffles]

1472
01:25:04,808 --> 01:25:07,060
[sighs] For the past...

1473
01:25:10,063 --> 01:25:11,773
20-some years...

1474
01:25:13,149 --> 01:25:15,193
I've been living with PTSD.

1475
01:25:16,861 --> 01:25:18,905
It really started once I got shot.

1476
01:25:20,323 --> 01:25:24,536
And every now and again, you know,
I might have a bipolar episode.

1477
01:25:24,619 --> 01:25:26,329
Mood swings here and there.

1478
01:25:26,412 --> 01:25:28,373
I have anxiety, you know.

1479
01:25:28,456 --> 01:25:31,042
So, I mean, these are things
that I have to deal with

1480
01:25:31,126 --> 01:25:32,877
because of the choices that I made.

1481
01:25:34,712 --> 01:25:35,547
Yep.

1482
01:25:40,426 --> 01:25:42,303
[Styles] I was shot in 1988.

1483
01:25:43,138 --> 01:25:44,097
Five times.

1484
01:25:45,265 --> 01:25:46,975
I went away for three years.

1485
01:25:47,058 --> 01:25:51,229
I got locked up
for gun possession and drug possession.

1486
01:25:52,730 --> 01:25:54,149
I really lost myself.

1487
01:25:56,359 --> 01:25:58,236
I have plenty of regrets...

1488
01:25:59,320 --> 01:26:02,615
for the role I played in the crack era.

1489
01:26:03,158 --> 01:26:04,200
Um...

1490
01:26:04,993 --> 01:26:06,619
I lost a lot of friends.

1491
01:26:07,412 --> 01:26:09,289
A lot of friends. Almost all of them.

1492
01:26:09,831 --> 01:26:11,207
I lost my job.

1493
01:26:12,292 --> 01:26:13,626
I lost my home.

1494
01:26:14,752 --> 01:26:19,132
It made me lose everything.
Everything. And...

1495
01:26:20,550 --> 01:26:23,970
I got to the point
where I didn't care no more.

1496
01:26:24,053 --> 01:26:28,016
Especially after I asked my sister
to take my girls.

1497
01:26:32,061 --> 01:26:34,606
It changed me
from the person that I was...

1498
01:26:36,024 --> 01:26:37,692
to where I'm at now.

1499
01:26:41,946 --> 01:26:43,489
Oh, my God.

1500
01:26:48,786 --> 01:26:50,538
I have to think about my cousins.

1501
01:26:51,873 --> 01:26:52,957
My friends...

1502
01:26:54,584 --> 01:26:57,337
who were put in the system

1503
01:26:58,421 --> 01:26:59,589
before 18...

1504
01:27:00,882 --> 01:27:03,343
because of this thing we're calling crack.

1505
01:27:03,426 --> 01:27:05,428
[sad instrumental music playing]

1506
01:27:11,476 --> 01:27:13,311
[Hart] There's a proverb.

1507
01:27:13,394 --> 01:27:18,274
I went back to my old neighborhood
and I yelled, "Where are my friends?"

1508
01:27:18,942 --> 01:27:21,527
And an echo came back and said,

1509
01:27:21,611 --> 01:27:23,071
"Where are my friends?"

1510
01:27:44,008 --> 01:27:46,010
[ethereal music playing]