Life & Times - Transcript

About Us \| Contact Us

Life & Times Transcript

4/05/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The city of Maywood calls itself a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, but are its police preying on them?

Colleen Flynn>> Officers were getting not only paid off, but were getting free trips paid for by the towing company to Las Vegas, getting free rooms, getting hookers.

Professor Al Hutchings>> I had to look at it just as an allegation, that there may not be any substance to it.

Val Zavala>> And then, a tale of corruption and deceit and it's not about politics. Our critics try to unravel "The Hoax".

Those stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> It's a small town with a big problem, Maywood, and allegations are surfacing that some of its police officers are, to put it bluntly, corrupt and preying on undocumented residents. The most recent problem, a Los Angeles Times investigation found that one third of Maywood's police officers had had troubled histories. Hena Cuevas has our story.

Hena Cuevas>> Professor Al Hutchings knows what it takes to be a police officer, but he says that what he witnessed inside the Maywood Police Department shocked him.

Professor Al Hutchings>> I mean, when you are confronted with egregious allegations of misconduct, bring it forward.

Hena Cuevas>> Now his whistle-blowing has triggered a criminal investigation into this tiny department of forty officers, an investigation that's even reached the federal level.

Professor Al Hutchings>> My regret is that I hadn't come there years earlier because maybe it would have helped more people.

Hena Cuevas>> Maywood, located just ten miles south of Los Angeles, is only one square mile, but its forty thousand residents make it one of the most densely populated cities in the county and virtually all of them, ninety-seven percent, are Hispanic. Moreover, an estimated half are undocumented residents. At the height of last year's immigration debate, Maywood declared itself a safe haven for illegal immigrants. It was a controversial move.

>> "Look at what you did to my town. I was raised here. It's pathetic!"

Hena Cuevas>> But now some residents say that Maywood is anything but safe. They claim undocumented residents are the target of police corruption, a scheme between dishonest cops and a towing company that reaps hundreds of thousands of dollars.

>> "Hi, good afternoon, sir. How are you today?"

Hena Cuevas>> It allegedly started here at checkpoints set up about five years ago. Police had been stopping people and anyone caught without a license had their car impounded for thirty days.

>> "Yeah, this is a checkpoint and I don't got no license and I got all my tools in my trunk."

Hena Cuevas>> And who can't get licenses? Illegal immigrants. Many owners couldn't afford the fines and often simply abandoned their vehicles. That was a problem for Councilman Felipe Aguirre, so in 2005, the Council did away with the traffic division and the checkpoints, saying they unfairly targeted recent immigrants.

Felipe Aguirre>> The problem was that the vehicles were kept for thirty days. That's what we thought was excessive and we were against that type of policy. That policy is no longer being enforced within the city of Maywood.

Hena Cuevas>> But more than a year after that move, complaints regarding the towing of vehicles continued. This caught the attention of the National Lawyers Guild, a civil rights group. They've been offering free legal clinics like this one to help residents file their complaints directly with the police. Attorney Colleen Flynn says they started hearing stories about a complex system of kickbacks and bribes within the police.

Colleen Flynn>> What we understand and what we're investigating is to the allegations of corruption whereby the towing company was paying off the police department and individual police officers to enforce this towing policy aggressively to get more cars for the towing company.

Hena Cuevas>> According to Flynn, since each car had to remain impounded for thirty days, people would have to pay more than a thousand dollars in fines to get them back.

Colleen Flynn>> They were looking for easy targets to pull over and tow cars. I was told by a Maywood police officer in a confidential conversation that, if officers weren't meeting a quota, weren't towing off cars, they would be disciplined.

Hena Cuevas>> Flynn says the unofficial quota was a hundred cars a month for a total of a hundred thousand dollars in fines.

Colleen Flynn>> Officers were getting not only paid off, but were getting free trips paid for by the towing company to Las Vegas, getting free rooms, getting hookers, and this was all being paid for by the Maywood towing company.

Hena Cuevas>> There were so many complaints that, on February 6, dozens of residents showed up for the Council meeting. One after another, they shared not only stories of impound abuses, but disturbing allegations of physical and sexual misconduct at the hands of the police. Aguirre says that the Council voted to look into the charges.

Felipe Aguirre>> We don't really know the validity of these, but we need to have an outside entity to come in and look at them fully and make sure that we cover all of our bases. We don't know if they are true or not, but there's a lot of them and we need to make sure that we listen to what the people are saying and not just sweep it under the rug.

Hena Cuevas>> But nobody from inside the police department corroborated the accusations. That is, until recently when officer Al Hutchings decided to come forward.

Professor Al Hutchings>> It has not been easy for me nor for my family for the threats against my family. It has not been easy since then. Every day you think were these people serious with their threats?

Hena Cuevas>> Hutchings was a professor of criminal justice and a former LAPD officer who joined the Maywood police last June.

Professor Al Hutchings>> To have a little more credibility, I thought that it would be prudent to go back into police work and at least re-acclimate myself to the culture and the environment and the profession.

Hena Cuevas>> But he says he wasn't prepared for the level of racism and discrimination inside Maywood's police department.

Professor Al Hutchings>> In a lot of ways, I was torn by the idealism I would see every night in my students' eyes and then I'd go to work and I would see complete despair in the eyes of the people there and just contempt in officers' eyes. Not all of the officers, but a lot of the officers' eyes.

Hena Cuevas>> After only a month on the job, he says he received three anonymous faxes at his university. All said the same thing. "I am coming to you anonymously because I fear retaliation from the Maywood Police administration." The faxes described various incidents of misconduct including high-level officers living rent-free in apartments paid for by the towing company. Hutchings shared it with his supervisors.

Professor Al Hutchings>> I had to look at it just as an allegation, that there may not be any substance to it. It may be someone just grinding an ax without any voracity to it.

Hena Cuevas>> He was asked to investigate, but later taken off the case. Legally he can't talk about the specifics of any internal investigation. But after seeing all those people show up at that Council meeting, Hutchings felt compelled to step forward.

Professor Al Hutchings>> I really felt as though they were carrying my water, that this was something that I brought forward because it was faxed to me anonymously and yet they were fighting a fight that I never had a chance to finish.

Hena Cuevas>> We wanted to know what the Maywood Police Department had to say about these serious allegations leveled against them, so we put in a request to talk to Interim Police Chief, Richard Lyons. He agreed to sit down and talk to us. Unfortunately, the day of the interview, we had a time conflict and had to reschedule and he agreed. Yet despite repeated attempts to reach him, both via email and over the phone, we never heard back from him.

Hena Cuevas>> The problems with Maywood's police department have attracted the attention of State Attorney Jerry Brown whose office has agreed to investigate. The FBI is also looking into the matter. Councilman Aguirre welcomes the scrutiny.

Felipe Aguirre>> I don't really know that there is corruption in the police department, but I do know that we have a lot of complaints. We need to have them fully investigated so that we can restore the confidence of the people in our police department.

Professor Al Hutchings>> There are some good cops. There really are. There are some fine officers. I hope that it will be easier for them now to do the right thing because if they can say, "Hey, you know that old professor? You know, he did it. Maybe we can do it."

Hena Cuevas>> A class action suit against the department will be presented at the end of the month. What remains to be seen is whether the allegations are proven to be true and how easy it will be to bring reform to this troubled department. I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> He's a teacher who makes an extraordinary claim. He says that he can turn around any troubled school no matter how bad the kids, no matter how bad the neighborhood, and he can set it straight within thirty days. How does he do it? By enforcing ten basic rules.

Paul White is a maverick. He doesn't have much faith in traditional public schools, so he got permission to start his own school in an office building in Canoga Park.

Paul White>> So we get the kids who would be considered Los Angeles's worst of the worst.

Val Zavala>> He doesn't mince words. The students here, he says, were rejects. So how does he turn them around? With ten rules which he's put in a book called "White's Rules". They don't have much to do with educational strategies or class size or teacher training. It's all about personal integrity and behavior.

Paul White>> You have to show up. You have to show up every day. You have to show up on time, which seems pretty common until you talk to an employer. You have to be honest. You have to work hard.

Val Zavala>> Be respectful.

Paul White>> Be respectful. You have to get along with each other which, again, are pretty common rules. But in a society where we don't show up, we don't tell the truth, we don't get along with each other, when lying is a problem not just with poor urban kids, but highly-educated corporate executives. These become huge things. So what we do is create a learning environment, a context that's founded on moral values and, when you lock in that environment, you couldn't keep them from learning if you wanted to.

Val Zavala>> The school is called the West Valley Leadership Academy. Most of us would call it a continuation school.

Paul White>> Schools like this are set up for kids who have exhausted every other possibility. They've been thrown out of every other place. They come here looking for a new chance and we provide it for them.

Val Zavala>> Other rules include living clean and sober, living with courage, caring about others and learning from everything.

Paul White>> I went to get a sandwich after school and ran into a heroine addict who'd been doing IV drugs for thirty years. I offered him twenty dollars if he'd come and tell his story to our kids. He not only did, but he was a handyman at the school for a while and, with the kids' encouragement, we got him in a clean and sober house.

Val Zavala>> The two-story school is without frills. No football or track fields, no auditorium, just a combined rec room and eating area and some classrooms.

Paul White>> "Who was the fellow, the attorney, who went out and fired him? What was his last name? You remember?"

Student>> "Gonzalez?"

Paul White>> "Gonzalez, yeah."

Val Zavala>> Everywhere you look, there are inspiring quotes and Paul is full of them too.

Paul White>> John Kennedy had a quote during his presidency when he said, "We have guided missiles and misguided men." What we've done is develop a society where our children know how to stay alive, but they don't have a clue what they're living for and this is what we give them.

We have a young lady who came to us who almost killed herself on her meth habit. You hear that it's very difficult to beat. A year clean and sober, straight "A's", a job, college class, will graduate early.

Val Zavala>> So this is a special room for the young women in the program?

Paul White>> This is where a lot of activities for girls are planned. When they have problems in schools, girls suffer the most. They're usually the ones with the babies. They're usually the minority in a school where the boys are not supervised and are often lewd and take advantage of them.

We really focus on our girls. We've had great success with taking our teen pregnancy rate almost to zero, getting them to stay away from abusive relationships or get out of ones they're in. Statistically, the two best kinds of birth control most effective are a job and success in school and our girls have both.

So we kind of tell this kind of tongue-in-check, "No Tinkerbell", that we want our girls to know that their future doesn't have to rely on a fantasy of a girl that has to fit a certain stereotype and never really say anything, that we want our girls to be full women and to be leaders and that, when they grow up, we don't want them to look for a boss or a dad. We want them to find a partner. This board here helps us keep track of what they're doing.

Val Zavala>> All students must have a part-time job. They must be taking at least one college or vocational course at the local community college and they must be part of a charitable cause. Some of the girls here cut their hair and donated it to cancer patients. But some people would say, "Yeah, right. These are tough kids. Love and discipline and all that stuff sounds great, but these kids are nasty and mean and carry guns. Good luck."

Paul White>> Well, let's see how it works. In eight years, the number of fights we've had in school? None. Number of racial incidents? None. Amount of vandalism we've had? Zero.

Val Zavala>> But you've had to kick some kids out too because they just would not even succeed in this environment.

Paul White>> If you look real quickly at the problems in education, our attendance average is a hundred percent. No parent participation? One hundred percent come once a month to parent programs. Drugs and alcohol? Ours all voluntarily drug test and test clean.

Val Zavala>> And parents must attend meetings. Jose Gutierrez says his son was in an overcrowded high school, drifting into drugs. He never knew what was wrong until his son got into trouble.

Son>> I got in trouble mainly because I didn't do my work. There were also times where I would just ditch school, you know. I would go and then I would just leave. If I wasn't going to be paying attention, then what was my point in being there? It'd be like a total waste of time.

Jose Gutierrez>> A friend of ours told us about this school and we came and he got involved. You know, ever since then, it was just a total U-turn for my son and he even graduated a year earlier than he would have if he would have stayed in high school.

Val Zavala>> When Paul first opened the school in 2000, the rules were more relaxed. Then five years ago, something terrible happened that made him toughen up enforcement. A student, Michael, was shot by gang members who mistook him for someone else. He was shot pointblank in front of the school. He stumbled upstairs to find Paul.

Paul White>> He said, "I've been shot" and sat in a chair right there and you could tell he was kind of starting to fade. I said, "Come here, Michael. Why don't you lay down here?" I got a paper towel and we wiped the blood off of him a little bit and then he passed shortly after that.

Val Zavala>> So he literally died.

Paul White>> Oh, yeah. Right in my arms. Yeah, right in my arms.

Paul White>> "It seems like everyone's afraid and doesn't know what to do. We're not, we do, we're the E-Team."

Val Zavala>> Paul White and his ten rules have caught the attention of a Hollywood director who would like to produce a reality makeover show featuring Paul and his team. Here's a clip from the demo reel.

Paul White>> "You're done here and then there's nothing left but the same prison cells your brothers are sitting in."

Val Zavala>> Paul and his team of counselors, a probation officer, a science teacher, art teacher and physical ed teacher would love to take on the challenge.

Paul White>> My premise, Val, is that I can take any school and make it like this in thirty days with these rules and that Los Angeles, in doing this, could be gang-free in less than three years. It's not a matter of imposing a force from the outside in. We've seen in the last ten years in Los Angeles how ineffective that's been.

You have to look at the kids and, whether we see them as the brotherhood of man or whether we see them as all of God's children, however we explain it, we have to care for them and love them and discipline them and help them as if they were our own. When you do that, miracles happen.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is actually a double feature, but it will only be shown together. "Grindhouse" is the banner title for both productions. One film is helmed by Robert Rodriguez; the other one is directed by Quentin Tarantino and they're both throwbacks to the hyper-violent and sexualized films of the seventies.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com and Christian Science Monitor film critic, Peter Rainer. Peter, what did you think of the double-billed "Grindhouse"?

Peter Rainer>> Well, it's a whole lot of grunge. It's over three hours altogether, including some mock trailers that are also thrown in. The Robert Rodriguez film, which is the first half, is one of the grossest zombie movies ever made. It draws very heavily on the George Romero "Night of the Living Dead" pictures. He's not quite as fresh as he used to be (laughter).

Larry Mantle>> But it does have Rose McGowan with a machine gun leg?

Peter Rainer>> (Laughter) It does, with a machine gun leg which is a truly great innovation and it is alone, I think, worth seeing it for. You know, I thought it was enjoyable, but it kind of went on a bit and ultimately what's the point? To make an homage to a Grade Z movie is what? A Grade Y movie?

The Tarantino, the second half, is more interesting in some ways because, for a long time, it's kind of like a sort of "Grindhouse" version of "The View". All of these young women are like sitting around gabbing and jabbering and talking about stuff. Nothing particularly horrific going on. Then Kurt Russell enters the picture playing a demonic stunt man who tries to kill everybody and he's kind of fun. There is a lot of good stunt work which is not CGI stunt work, which is a blessing.

Larry Mantle>> Right. Henry, what did you think of "Grindhouse"?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, I actually thought the best part of the whole three-hour-plus experience was a fake trailer by Rob Zombie called "Werewolf Women of the SS" which stars Sybil Danning who's in the trailer and which is a great choice. Zombie really hung out.

Larry Mantle>> This band is a real film.

Henry Sheehan>> Yes, yes. You know, the Rodriguez film has a few nods to like the films of Lucio Fulci, an Italian zombie filmmaker and things like that, but mostly it's just a Rodriguez film. I mean, it's the kind of film he would make anyway. You know, very bloody, a lot of peek-a-boo nudity of Rose McGowan at times. There are very clever things about frames missing and they're exactly the type of frames that projectionists would steal. But I would have to go with the Tarantino movie in the last twenty minutes. The stunt work is what really makes the movie.

Larry Mantle>> In the early 1970s, a man by the name of Clifford Irving claimed to have the manuscript of a memoir written by Howard Hughes. It was later revealed to be a complete fabrication. Now we have the film, "The Hoax" which tells the story. Richard Gere stars as Clifford Irving. The movie is directed by Lasse Hallström.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "The Hoax", Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, this might be the best movie ever directed by Lasse Hallström and it's one of the best performances ever given by Richard Gere who plays Clifford Irving in the movie as he goes about trying to pull off this tremendous publishing hoax.

He's a very unapologetic guy. I mean, this is a guy even in the movie when he's telling people like his assistant, Alfred Molina, or his wife who's played by Marcia Gay Harden, why he's doing it. Well, he's doing it for the money. That's why. I mean, he's not pulling off an artistic fraud or anything like that. It's just brilliant.

I mean, Gere plays the character with all his charm and all his amorality and, you know, doesn't give any gimmes to audience. I mean, you're either going to go along with this incredibly charming con man or not. The performances from top to bottom are wonderful. Even though you know all about what the fraud was, it's still terrific to watch it come off. I really liked this movie a lot.

Larry Mantle>> Peter?

Peter Rainer>> I'm not as big a fan. I think Gere is a lot of fun. He's always at his best when he's playing characters with a double edge like in "Internal Affairs" and some other films that he's been in.

But to me, the movie was too much of an attempt to kind of create a zeitgeist film to show that this is not only about this con artist, but also somehow a product of the corrupt 1970s with Nixon and Watergate. You know, they draw in connections between Hughes and Nixon and Watergate and all of this stuff and sort of try to turn it into something more than just a movie about a big scam that almost got pulled off.

To me, that plus the fancifulness of the film direction, the way the director works in hallucinations and re-enactments and stuff, to me, if you're going to tell a movie about a true story, you should it as truthfully as possible. But if you start to, you know, gussy it up, then why are you doing this? Because the real value of this story, it seems to me, is that it was true, is that it happened.

Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, a film that satirizes the television industry and the creative process behind it. "The TV Set" stars David Duchovny and is directed by Jake Kasden.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "The TV Set", Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, this is a very minor work directed by Jake Kasden who has had a lot of experience in television lately, and it looks kind of like a television show and it's full of self-justifications. It's about a writer played by David Duchovny who's trying to get his dream project onto television.

A network executive played by Sigourney Weaver is trying to tinker with it to make it more like all the other television. loan Gruffudd plays a BBC executive who's come over to the United States to give the network a lot of class. It's about how all this great writer stuff is subverted. Now, okay, there's a lot of special pleading there. Judd Apatow, the television writer and producer, co-wrote the screenplay with Kasden who worked with him on "Freaks and Geeks".

But I don't care. It was very cute. It was very funny. Sigourney Weaver, you know, this is meat on her table to play this kind of crazed, self-important character. It's very enjoyable. Don't go in with too many expectations, but it's cute.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Please join us again next week at this same time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> KPCC public radio broadcasts a longer version of FilmWeek on Fridays at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


Home \| Features \| Arts \| Health/Science \| OC Edition \| L&T Blog \| Archives \| About Us \| Contact Us \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use © 2007 COMMUNITY TELEVISION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA