Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas

The movie I watched today was American Gangster, which is a true story based on Frank Lucas played by Denzel Washington.   Frank Lucas was an organized crime boss that focused primarily on selling heroin in Harlem, New York.   He is mostly known for cutting out the middleman and getting his product directly from the source.   He would have huge shipments smuggled into the country by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.   Because he got his product directly from the source he was able to sell a more pure drug at half the price of the usual market price in Harlem.
The part of the movie I thought related most to this class was the amount of police corruption.   There was a special detectives unit in NYC that was composed of many “meat-eaters” because they would go out and actually look for ways to make money off of the drug trade.   In the movie it showed them confiscating drugs and then cutting them down only to sell them back to the drug dealers they took them from.   There were also many “grass-eaters” who took bribes throughout the movie but never searched for opportunities to make money.   At the beginning of the movie one of the leading detectives from New Jersey, Richie Roberts, finds a car full of one million dollars and turns it in.   Richie and his partner are afraid because they think the other officers will no longer trust them because everyone else is corrupt.   Richie Roberts is played by Russell Crowe and is one of the main reasons Frank Lucas is eventually caught.
When Frank Lucas is finally caught Richie Roberts convinces him to cooperate with the prosecutors to get a reduced sentence.   With the help of Lucas the prosecutors were able to get 100 other drug related convictions, many of which being corrupt police officers.   At the end of the movie it said more than 75% of officers with special drug related jobs were found to be corrupt.   Frank Lucas was released in 1991 for his help convicting many corrupt NYC police officers and is now 81 years old.