Profiled

PROFILED knits the stories of mothers of black and Latin youth murdered by the NYPD into a powerful indictment of racial profiling and police brutality, and places them within a historical context of the roots of racism in the U.S. Some of the victims—Eric Garner, Michael Brown—are now familiar the world over. Others, like Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray, are remembered mostly by family and friends in their New York neighborhoods. We experience the grief families suffer in the face of such tragedies, the struggles women confront raising children in segregated neighborhoods that present few options for the young, and their anger and frustration at a justice system that often seems pitted against them. The women organize vigils and rallies to keep the memory of their loved ones alive and seek indictments of the officers responsible for the deaths. As their demands for justice are ignored, they transition from grieving parents to activists who join the growing grassroots movement against police brutality and racial profiling that since the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, is now spreading across the country.  Moving interviews with victims’ family members are juxtaposed with sharply etched analyses by evolutionary biologist, Joseph L. Graves, Jr. (The Race Myth) and civil rights lawyer, Chauniqua D. Young, (Center for Constitutional Rights, Stop and Frisk lawsuit). Ranging from the routine harassment of minority students in an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood to the killings and protests in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri, PROFILED bears witness to the racist violence that remains an everyday reality for Black and Latin people in this country and gives us a window on one of the burning issues of our time.