right. the results and the responses were definitely drawn along racial lines back then and we see it again now after the death of trayvon martin after the death of mike brun. we saw people divided along racial lineses when it came to the acquittal of george zimmerman and this happens over and over again. people look at the world through very different lenses and those lenses are colored by race. in many ways o.j. simpson and the entire nineties were filled with race that was an issue that hadn t been sufficiently wrestled with by the american people. it didn t just give us o.j. simpson and mark fuhrman and the rodney king incident and the l.a. riots. how does it show the tensions between the african-american community and the police? it s the same story, right? a black person bears witness to police violence, police terrorism and state violence and everyone says oh, you re exaggerating. oh, it didn t happen. in the nineties there were times
when 98% to 99% of complaints to the police in the l.a.p.d. were found unworthy of further investigation and then you get the rodney king videotape and suddenly america says this might be real and something s happening and despite seeing the police beat rodney king over and over again, they still said not guilty and we saw walter scott get shot in the back running away, and black witness doesn t simply doesn t matter because black life doesn t matter in america as much as it should and the nineties told us that and this documentary does a fabulous job of capturing that and we re living over and over again. it seems awfully cynical to think we haven t come that far? you really believe that? when you look at the mass incarceration, and when you look at the number of police who are acquitted for the deaths of black citizens or underaged
experience of this issue. there is no way to watch that scene as if it s just historical, you have to watch it in the moment that is ferguson, that is texas, that is ohio. how much was that weighing on your minds as you were making it? heavily. heavily on our minds. there were days when we shot the detroit riots, when we shut down, i think, lower canyon boulevard in los angeles and shot those riots after the rodney king incident, and we would go home and those images that we were shooting were on the tv. those cultural images weighed heavily on a lot of our minds as we were watching the movie. the depiction of members being accosted outside their place of business might have drummed up memories of the young woman in mckinney, texas at the so-called pool incident. or the vehicles in response to l.a. riots looking eerily similar to riots last summer.
detroit riots, when we shut down i think lower canyon boulevard in loss ang less and shot those riots after the rodney king incident and we would go home and those images that we were shooting were on the tv, so it was eerie. it was eerie. it was really nerve-racking and kind of scary and sort of confusing and, but it just laid in the responsibility that we had to do with this film, you know? how were people in compton responding, if you re there and they were filming, you re reproducing these painful riots of previous decades even as fresh riots are occurring around the country. what kind of response were you all getting? well, the city had nothing but love for us, you know, they knew what we were trying to do, making this film, and they definitely wanted to see it right. of course you have your nwa fans, heckling you, you know, making sure you get it right.
i think that the county grand juries have failed across the board here. especially the garner case. so the feds are doing what they re supposed to do which is an in-depth investigation to determine are there grounds for civil rights violations? are there grounds for criminal civil rights indictments and try to determine whether the federal level of government which doesn t need that relationship with the local police as badly and can they take a clearer eye to put on this problem and say should these cops be prosecuted? now in the garner case i think it s clear they should be. the other cases i would have to take a look at the facts more closely. michaela and john, it s so important. you remember with the rodney king incident when the local folks refused to find the cops guilty the feds came in and did a federal prosecution and did find some of the officers liable