script

"Mortal Danger":

The Anatomy of an Incident

Tape	Video	Audio
I. Opening
1.	Flatbush Avenue at night [Time: ]	Titles
2.	Flatbush Avenue at night [Time: ]	VO (Narrator): Between three o'clock and four o'clock on the morning of Saturday, August 9, 1997, a disturbance broke out at the Club Rendezvous on Flatbush Avenue in central Brooklyn, New York. The events that followed so shocked New York City that they received world-wide attention and became a major news story for over two years, from the time they occurred in August 1997 until the sentencing in December 1999 of former Officer Justin Volpe of the New York Police Department to 30 years in federal prison for sexual assault. These events still raise questions in the minds of many. It is to those questions that we now turn.
3.	About sunrise, 70^th precinct station house. Start tight; pull away to long-range. [Time: ]	Man's scream.
3a.	Sinclair clip [Time: ]	". . . and that is the moment that precedes every act of violence that we do . . . ."
4.	Daylight. NY street scenes [Time: ]	For five days after the Saturday event, the NY media were silent. Then on Wednesday, August 13, an arrest was made.
II. Re-enactmnet
5.	NY newspaper headlines	To be selected
6.	News footage	To be selected
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15.	News footage	"The Neighbor" segment
III. Transition to Commentary
16.	"It is horrific" montage	_______
17.	Transition - Ducey at the AVID console, "neighbor segment" in background	MD: One characteristic of horror is to shut down our information processing abilities. So, we haven't really looked at the record yet. We still need to do so.
IV. "In the Record"
18.	News coverage montage (w/o sound) [split screen w MD?]	If we were in a hospital emergency room, when that gurney comes flying through the door with blood everywhere and limbs pointing in the wrong direction, we would be overwhelmed, and our ability to process information would shut down. But this is not the case for the emergency room physician. She has years of training designed to make her capable of handling just this situation, and so when that gurney comes flying through the door, her ability to process information does not decrease, it increases, and she is able to diagnose and act in a way that helps improve the situation. And we should note finally that a key component of her training is medical science. Science is the foundation of her ability to process overwhelming information. So, we are going back to the events of August 9, 1997 and look at them again. This time will bring with us some tools of social science. The answers are in the record.
19.	Federal Court document: Memorandum and Order, p. 1	The record in this case is in the federal court documents of the Eastern District of New York. The sentencing order in particular is very detailed, because the court needed to show how its sentence conforms to the guidelines established by law.
V. Deconstruction
20.	MANALIVE program into in SF jail	The piece of science we will use is a program for the rehabilitation of violent offenders currently in use in the San Francisco county sheriff's jail
21.	Sinclair interview clip	The chief designer of the program is Hamish Sinclair, who developed its elements through 20 years of working with domestic abuse.
VI. "Mortal Danger"
22.	M&O TEXT - p. 53	The psychologist requested by defense counsel concluded that "the principal catalyst for Volpe's criminal behavior was his fear, anxiety, physical pain and momentary disorientation [and] sense of powerlessness out on the street."
23.	Ducey on the street (Flatbush Avenue)	The events of this night begin when Officer Volpe is knocked to the ground by an unknown assailant. At that moment he goes through an experience that the San Francisco program identifies as the moment of "mortal danger" based on a perceived loss of authority and control.
24.	Sinclair interview	". . . and that is the moment that precedes every act of violence that we do . . . ."
25.	Early morning. Ducey on sidewalk, Flatbush Ave.	This was the moment of truth for this situation. This is the single fulcrum on which the whole incident rests. All that comes after is simply the playing out of an automatic program. This is where Justin Volpe experienced his moment of mortal danger and made his decision to violate.
VII. A Decision
26.	Sinclair interview	"We have to demystify the notion that violence is somehow spontaneous, that it is just something that happens. . . This choice is learned. It is part of a belief system. . ."
27.	M&O TEXT, p. 54	(Narrator) Once the choice is made, violence does follow blindly. But the law consistently recognizes the freedom in the making of the choice, and so, for this kind of violence, it holds the perpetrator fully responsible. In the sentencing Memorandum and Order, Judge Eugene Nickerson noted Justin Volpe's claim that he felt he was threatened, and discounts it. "The Court has carefully considered Dr. Berrill's report as well as the exhaustive evidence adduced at trial, but finds no basis to conclude that Volpe acted under the sort of "extreme pressure" that warrants a departure for aberrant behavior."
VIII. Antagonism
28.	VOICE article	The cops started doing a racial thing. They called us niggers.
29.	TIME article	One of them said to me, "You niggers have to learn to respect police officers."
30.	MANALIVE program footage, in jail	"Question, When you call her names, does that make it easier to perform your violence?. . ."
IX. Collusion
31.	Court text: Volpe comment on "teaching a lesson" and borrowing gloves from ___.	Court text. When Justin Volpe catches up with Abner Louima in the 70^th precinct station house, his decision to violate is still culturally shared. He still has the safety of that support.
32.	Sinclair interview	So, we have to tell them, "I am not going to go into collusion with you…"
33.	Court text	When Volpe shows the stick around to his colleagues he loses the support of their collusion. But, up until that point, he had it. It was a shared belief system.
34.	Village Voice text	When he escorts Patrick Antoine to the bathroom he is aware of this.
X. A Belief system
35.	MANALIVE footage	"What is the male role belief system?The "sense of mortal danger" is a shift in information processing under perceived threat of death."
36.	Printed text of Louima testimony on comments in police car	VO reading the text. "No one lays a hand on me and gets away with it.
37.	M&O, p. 9	At the hospital, Volpe was overheard telling fellow officers that "I broke a man down." . . . . .he told Sergeant Kenneth Wernick what he had done to Louima, saying, "I took a man down tonight."
38.	Ralph Welsh interview	The form of violence will follow the belief system. There is nothing random in the choice of objects or the choice of means . . . .
39.	M&O, p. 7	Officer Volpe is following a cultural script. He is not flailing away like a madman. He does not appear to be out of control. He addresses Louima calmly, like some kind of instructor. Yet he is not actually under rational control. He is still in an altered state of consciousness, operating under the dictates of a primitive survival program. His activity is blind, but it is a blindness he has freely chosen.
40.		All the rest is self-defense, end-game.
XI. Using Science
41.	Title page of Scrivner article, and p. 2.	Recent research indicates that police psychologists have identified police officers who are "sensitive to challenge and provocation" as one of the five main causes of police brutality. The San Francisco program indicates that as a culture, our knowledge of the causes and remedies of this situation is growing. We need to continue to make use of the tools that science gives us.
42.	MANALIVE footage	"I know I am a violent man, and so I must rebuild my community . . ."