 Okay, I want to thank the Bedford Playhouse so much for hosting this wonderful event and I think we want to give a round of applause to our directors of this wonderful film because you guys just knocked it out of the park. Thank you so much. And having been familiar with your Oscar nominated film Traffic Stop, your documentary, I know that you care passionately about this whole issue of law enforcement and race and how they interact. But I want us to start off because I want to give an idea that I want something for all of us to be thinking about right now because I think when we come to this issue, we probably come with some experience or emotional baggage or any kind of encounters that we might have had with law enforcement, no matter what background we come from, whether we are from the northeast, whether we are from Texas, whether we are African American or white or Latino, whether we are male or female, wealthy, not wealthy. And I'm just going to throw something out there because I want the audience to be thinking about this and then I'm going to ask Kate and David this question. My first encounter with police was when I was about five years old and my brother was seven at the time and he was pulling me in a little red wagon down our street that we had just moved to in southern Westchester and we were the first African Americans, of course back then we were black, first blacks in the neighborhood and within I'd say five minutes of us being on the street, it was a quiet street, the police came and the siren was on and the lights were on and the police officer stopped in front of us and said to my brother and I, where did you kid steal that wagon? And we'd never encountered, we'd never been in contact with a police officer before and my brother said this is ours, we live right over there, he says you don't live in this neighborhood and he took the wagon and put it in this trunk and I got into the car crying because I didn't know what to do and my brother was arguing with him until my mother happened to hear the sirens and people came out of their homes and I ran down the street and said what are you doing, we live here and so that was my first encounter with the police and of course that was many years ago but even as recently as two years ago, my daughter, I picked her up from Horace Mann School where my kids were attending at the time and we were driving through Bronxville up the sprain and we were stopped by an unmarked car and did not know that this was a police officer and the lights came on in the grill and then we pulled over to the side and he came to the passenger side as I noticed that he did in Sandra Bland's car and he knocked on the window and my daughter at the time was 14 and we were scared because we didn't know who this was, there was no, he was not uniform and he was in shirt sleeves and the car was not any kind of specially marked car so he kept knocking on the window and I said who are you, I put down the back window behind her and I said who are you and what do you want and he said put down the window, put down the window and I wasn't going to put it down because I said come around to my side, what do you want and who are you and he never identified himself and slowly walked around and then he saw the badge on my dashboard that I happened to be chairman of the county police board and he says oh my gosh, I didn't recognize you I've seen you on television news 12 and I said but why have you stopped me because at this point my daughter is crying and he said well I saw the shiny badge and I saw the car and I just want you to know who this was and this was the issue, maybe it's because I'm driving a 550 Mercedes, I don't know but it doesn't matter that doesn't matter, the issue was and I know that my kids two years before that were saying that I have this antiquated view about race and that it didn't matter and that their generation doesn't see color but I just bring this example because that's how I come to your story here and the reason why I started off with that is I went to ask were there certain ideas that you had in mind already an idea of this distrust between the police and race and was that an issue that you already knew was an existence or were you exploring it and hoping that you wouldn't find that I was just wondering what did you come to inform obviously with your traffic stop film that probably informed some of your opinion but I was just wondering what were your views when you started this research on this story of Saundra Blam Okay, I'll go first My earliest experience with the police were nothing like yours, right? I was a child of some privilege in New York City and the cops were just there to help me and that was it and it took me 30 years before I figured out that it wasn't like that for everybody But what really turned me around is when I used to be a lawyer before I was a filmmaker Well, you really got to be close Is that better? I'll really do it This really is hard to do though I'll switch it out I became a lawyer and I became a prosecutor in New York City and I got to watch the criminal justice system up close and I saw the incredible racial inequities that were going on day in, day out and after about three and a half years I left and said I got to change the criminal justice system I just can't work in it anymore and I became a writer and then a filmmaker So this has been, this is my beat This kind of injustice has been motivating me and making me angry and making me want to see change for most of my life and then we, Kate and I have made a lot of films but in the last three years we made this film called Traffic Stop which got nominated for an Academy Award and was about also driving wall black and it just blew my mind that it was a story of a 26-year-old African-American school teacher who had never been arrested Also in Texas, was it also in Texas? Also in Texas, in Austin, supposedly the blue dot right in the red state Yeah, well, you know She's driving along and basically the cop stops her and she refuses to put her feet back in the car immediately and I mean I say immediately with three seconds later he hauls her out of the car and body slams her and it's all caught on dash cam and she's traumatized and I'm looking at this going, you know, this is just horrible and I'll just give it quite just a little bit more which is when we toured with both Traffic Stop and Sandra Bland we played the films in places like St. Louis where it's an all-black audience and the audience response is that everyone has a story like that and we play in places like northern Maine where it's a white audience tend to be a little older than middle age and their response is I can't believe that still goes on in America and the point is there are two Americas and racism is unfortunately alive and well and making these films has given me a chance to see America much more up close because you've traveled so much and it's really a pleasure to bring it to Bedford but so that's what I bring to this screening right now this brings you up to date Sandy's story happened in the midst of many other very publicized cases of men who had been brought down by the police like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner and other names you all know I'm sure and so this wasn't, you know, sort of what happened to her didn't shock me in the context of what was going on in 2015 and it still goes on but back then there seemed to be a lot of publicity around those cases but what I learned perhaps more than I expected going into this story is that, you know, women's stories had been swept under the rug not told as much and that very summer there were other women who had been, you know, brutalized by the cops for minor infractions on the side of the road who would have died or even hung in their jail cells eerily similar they just didn't make the headlines so Sandy, for me, thanks in part to her videos where we could all get to know her a little bit as a person with immense charisma and humor and insight and passion and courage she could speak for the dozens and hundreds of people that's very interesting because I was going to ask you have a subject, an individual who is very vocal but not just vocal but you have her video, you have her tapes I was wondering to what extent did you become close to what was your relationship with the family like are you still in touch with them because I'm sure you end up living almost living their lives during the amount of time that you have to spend with them I guess as we saw from Chicago to back and forth to Texas and obviously visiting to her grave at the cemetery to what extent do you feel that you grow close to your subjects I mean like with the plans but also similarly to the sheriff for example because I was surprised at the end that the sheriff actually admitted that there was wrongdoing on their part that there was blame and fault there but of course they didn't change the fact that that no one was charged or at least in the end that all charges were dropped I mean it did take a while to establish trust I think they decided early on when they met us that they looked at our work we sort of put our hearts on the table and said we're with them no matter how long this takes and meanwhile stories were coming out this is just the back story of why if I can speak for them since they're not here but I've heard them a lot that the story was being written for them in the press and it wasn't necessarily accurate and so they jumped in and said you know we better tell a story and we trust you'll tell you'll help us a voice we weren't going to come in and narrate and lay a heavy hand because we attended confidential meetings like the attorney meetings where they were saying here's what our strategy is going to be they must have trusted what you were going to do with that information well you know we came to the family two weeks after Sandy died and the family I mean as you all remember when this story broke it was international news it was a firestorm of press surrounding the family and they had just lost a daughter a sister under highly suspicious circumstances so not only were they grieving they were grappling for answers and they weren't getting information and hounded by reporters and HBO called us up and said this is your kind of story guys do you want to see if they'll talk to you and I remember thinking yeah but a couple of white people from the East Coast under these circumstances you've got to be kidding me and amazingly they called us back and I remember the turning point when we started to build their trust was Canon Lambert the attorney the wonderful Canon Lambert you know I've become really good friends and I have to say I'm proud to say that we're very close to the family still to this day we really embrace each other and consider it like family but Canon looked at me and said look we don't know what's going to happen if it turns out that we can't prove that she was murdered by someone's hand you know what do you think the chances for your movie are and I said we're in we're in all the way she shouldn't have been there in the first place and no one had behaved correctly Sandy would still be here and in fact she was arrested based upon a lie I guess as far as what he was saying that he felt threatened and if that truly was a lie then he never would have had reason to have her in the jail I was actually going to ask you was it hard to get access to all of the videotape because it seems some of it I guess was exculpatory from the standpoint of the jail at all during when I think he said like a hundred and some hours of videotape the nice thing about working we worked under a non-disclosure agreement and essentially as far as the public was concerned there was no film being made we never allowed ourselves to be seen in public with the family because we didn't want to hurt the chances of them finding out the truth that was the goal we were just there to document what do you mean them finding out the truth it was a certain chance of the public knowing that well we hurt the chance of the family finding out the truth if the public sensed that the family was engaged in making a film it could have been used theoretically to tarnish their reputation somewhere they were interested in publicity rather than in the truth so we had to not exist so as a result the good side of that was we got access to everything that they had including they subpoenaed the tapes from the jail because I was wondering do you perceive as documentary filmmakers do you see your role as being like journalists trying to find new information or to show and reveal that that's already been found by other journalists what do you feel what is your role in that we want to find stuff that nobody else has found for sure we want to tell a story that's unique but the truth has got to be the one pole star and that was the one answer I had to Canon when he said what will happen if you find out we can't prove that Sandy was murdered but I said on the flip side whatever else happens we can't just tell a story that you want to have out there we have to find out what really happened and that was what brought us to the sheriff and brought us to the district attorney because one of the things I'm really proud of in this film is that we got both sides of this story you may not like what they have to say you may not like them as people but that's who they are and did they know that you were also speaking and working so closely with the family interviewing them as well or did they think that you were just speaking to law enforcement did they have any sense of... no we had told them that we were that we had been filming we couldn't really approach them until after the case was settled that was largely because a film could have really messed up the case it wouldn't have helped either side it would have prolonged I don't know there would be a mistrial maybe we didn't know if there was going to be a trial it could still be going on so we had to sort of lay low and I think part of the reason they chose to be on camera is because they felt vilified by the media and by the public and despite the fact that they were releasing information about Sandra Bland that really undermined her character but don't forget the people breaking into the jail right? they're crazy for them too I agree that there are just many holes in many directions on this but nevertheless they're being called just if you can just bare with me and put yourself in their shoes they're called murderers now let's just say they aren't let's just say they didn't go in we will never know that's a big charge for a mass public to make and so we're like look just tell us what you think we're going to put in the film you guys get hopefully you learn more by hearing and seeing who they are than not and then the film also allows for people to have more in-depth educated discussion about multiple points of view and that's what Sandy was about we took our cue a lot from Sandra Bland's own tapes where she said we have to hear each other there's so much we would have I would have loved to have included what ended up on the cutting room floor ended up on the cutting room floor that you said gosh I wish we had had time we had the extra time to actually put that in but HBO said we have to cut what was something that you felt that you wish you had been able to keep in the film or was there anything well I mean it's Sandy's tapes I think I wish there were more of her she does have the opening and the closing lines she does guide us all the way through with her wisdom but Sandy speaks videos on just dealing with the police and educating young kids she was passionate about helping kids learn how to cope with police so incredibly ironic and actually informative I know that I've been an organization that my kids and I grew up in Jack and Jill which is an African-American organization has been around since the 1930s we regularly teach the kids starting at around 7 or 8 how to deal with law enforcement if you stop by a place and these are all well to do suburban kids and what to do with security people rules we told our kids when they were growing up no hoodies, no sunglasses, no baggy pants chapecois whatever it doesn't matter where you are it's just that color for many people is the cultural shorthand for what's dangerous and what's safe but I was wondering for yourselves did you ever did you ever feel questioned by the family or by African-Americans that you had to interview are you as a white person going to understand our story was there any sort of suspicion or worry or concern that you encountered from any of your subjects not during the filming so much it was after the film was made I got taken to school a couple of times by Miss Geneva who was Sandy's mom because I got up the main thing is you got to admit when you mess up and you got to be willing to learn and that's how I think ultimately we became close is because we would just not get my back up so we did it Q&A and I said man I went down to meet with the family in Texas and Canon I said you know Canon Lambert he can be a scary guy you know and afterwards the family said look you're talking about like a big black man this is like a white guy calling him scary like no you're sending code you may not even mean it but watch your language think more carefully choose your words and I went got it she raised five daughters I'm sure because she felt so real and for at least for me and I don't know how the audience is about to open questions and comments from the audience but for me she was a character obviously a real person but had the characteristics of someone who was a survivor but also someone who said I don't want to focus on what happened but what's going to happen now that she was going to say and as she said to those young people when she was sitting there with the Congressional Black Caucus it's your job to make sure that she didn't die in vain I don't know if that was something that you intended but it certainly came through in the movie oh great great yeah and I just want to say that regarding your question about how we were questioning yes some people certainly wondered who are we to tell this story and I really had to think very hard about that you know and I guess I just came around feeling like we were given this opportunity and I'd rather spend my life and skills and energy trying to open up people's minds and tell stories that I think are incredibly important than not that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be other films on Sandra Bland absolutely and so also David has a history of being very you know critical and upfront about the justice system and so he had that kind of insight I'm not sure we would have gotten to some of the law enforcement side just even hearing them with all their justifications and what they have to say if you hadn't had that legal background so we make a certain pair you know I have a history of just telling the stories of all kinds of marginalized groups and so during the sort of release of this film and touring with it what's slowly dawned on me I guess I'm a slow learner is that to me just personally this feels less and less like a black story it is our nation's story this is all of us who participate in a system whether we're aware of it or not that's incredibly you know unjust that you know treats that has incredible sort of like embedded disparity in the way that we perceive the world you know and when I drive if I see a cop in the rear view mirror I'm afraid of getting a ticket it's never occurred to me to be afraid for my life never occurred to me it's crazy so as we take this out I kind of feel like you know what this Sandy was all about like we need to work together as a whole and if I start I don't know I feel like if this is almost marginalized as a black story then then we won't you know harness the energy as much as we could of you know people from all different groups you know I think that's an excellent point because that was something she said that we could all be racist you know whether we are black or white it doesn't but no one owns the license for that and I think that what you've done here and I want the audience to be able to have the chance now to ask some questions but I do want to say that I think that you really have managed to not just choose a figure that many people could identify not necessarily identify with but who was accessible because of the way and the friendly manner in which she talked about the simplest of things and was so consistent with it and I've heard people say things like well she shouldn't have mouthed off to the police officer and you know there's always some explanations for why and I always tell my kids I have this new rule that when you start driving you know we're going to put the registration and the insurance above on the visor so there won't be any reaching for anything we don't want a thing like that but I think that what you've the detail that you have made sure because those sisters were absolutely amazingly articulate about the specific concerns that they had and reasons why they felt that their sister could not have committed suicide the questions that they asked there was great trust clearly that they had in you that they would reveal their most inner feelings when they would go back to the grave and I think that was done wonderfully thank you so let's open up for questions I guess I've got to let my wife ask the questions since she's driving me home tonight well thank you so much for such a beautiful film and as a black woman I really appreciate the sensitivity with which you portrayed both Sandra but also her family her mother her sisters all of that really felt true to me so two questions one is that obviously this incident occurred in 2015 and then there was an election in 2016 and I wonder if you picked up any sort of early indicators of where the country was going in terms of that election as you were doing this work because everybody seemed so very caught off guard and so surprised at the outcome of the election and yet you were at the cold face so my first question is did you pick up any kind of early tremors of what was to come with the 2016 election the second one is if the Justice Department had been run by a different president and a different Attorney General do you believe that this case differently would the federal government have intervened in any way if a different regime had been in place in the Justice Department in 2016 Wow, okay I mean the first one is no I was just as clueless as everybody else and sat on my hands and thought we were going to sail into Hillary land and that was that I mean I should have known there were definitely warning signs but they were more like I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and there's a 50 year old white woman named Janet Jackson who's a state agent in my building and she said who you're voting for and I said Obama I said how about you she said Trump and I said you're joking right she said no I'm voting for Donald Trump why because we need a strong man in the White House and Hillary she might get her period and set up an atomic bomb and I said but she's post-menopausal she goes that doesn't matter anyway the point being so no I just sailed into her like everybody else sorry for the big question you know the Justice Department I did get involved to a certain degree but the Justice Department did not had they really wanted to be more aggressive about it I think there would have been an investigation into why ultimately Brian and Sinead was never charged with anything Brian and Sinead is the police officer who pulls Sandy over and when you said she shouldn't have moused off which is true she shouldn't have that's not even remotely an excuse for how I'm going to light you up as if I was going to remotely an excuse and actually if you watch as you can see there's one section of the film where you say 5 minutes and 44 seconds later if you watch the first really 10 minutes of that encounter Sandy does everything absolutely by the book but he keeps coming back at her and egging her on and eventually she snaps and so you have to understand that she really did play by the playboy for quite a long time and everyone had a big breaking point and yeah I wished that's why the closing cards of the film are so dark because it is astonishing to me that when a case is this clear cut and also someone who is taken into custody of authority and comes out dead three days later and there isn't a thorough examination of every single bit of protocol that allowed that to happen something is seriously wrong and I wish something had been done in greater detail but unfortunately that's not the story that we encountered other questions hi excuse me I have a little bit of a cold so I might sound a little stuffy but a few years ago I think in 2012 there was a documentary on the Central Park 5 and now recently Ava Duvenay has made when they see us and now everyone is up in arms about a case that's 30 years old and I'm not sure if it took a real life movie to finally portray it where people understand what happened I know this film has been out for I think a month now or so actually about a year we premiered at Tribeca and again came out and there was a lot of talk about it for a while there were a lot of interviews things necessarily big happened do you think it's going to take someone to make a feature film about her life or is it going to be a bigger deal than it is I think that might be a good idea and I certainly have thought of doing such a thing I mean it's interesting how many people here were aware of the recent news coverage because of the release of her cell phone video I mean that that will only help keep her story remembered unfortunately it just really wasn't enough to there wasn't enough new information to reopen the case despite what CNN and other people said thank you yeah I hear what you're saying it is amazing the Central Park 5 case that happened 30 years ago that's incredible Donald Trump played a role in that too it's interesting I had actually forgotten taking out the full page ads and was asking for the death penalty for these 5 boys who were all like 15, 16 years old and then in the end they were innocent but it just shows how people's lives are destroyed he still maintains that they're guilty he still does Donald will never admit his faults thank you for the film it was great I'm wondering about the plastic bag I don't know how tall Sandra was I was trying to figure out how she would have gotten up there to tie that so perfectly over that and he said well she was probably sitting well was there a chair in there or was there how much discussion or investigation on that loop or how that would have been done or any investigation discussion with whomever took her down they said took her down yet I think there was a mention that she might have been because of the way so to me I didn't understand were you allowed to go into that cell and examine that area well not the news because we were allowed to spend quite a bit of time there and first of all I got to tell you there are innumerable details about this which will send you you know the refrigerator 3 o'clock in the morning going why didn't Kate and I as we were making the film kept thinking we got it for example in the picture of the news there's another bag in the trash bag already well how could there be another bag in the trash thing already all these things and I would call Cannon Lambert up and Kate Cannon have you thought of this you know thinking I'm going to solve the case I'll tell you to save you trouble there are answers to those very questions you asked but bottom line is there are unfortunately answers that don't help solve the case the reality Sandra was found in a kneeling position with her head in a news yes people actually can and do commit suicide that way astoundingly I didn't know but then the woman who they brought in it was not not mentioned in the film but the woman Dr. Carter who was brought in not only is she an African-American woman and felt very passionate that what happened to Sandy was horrible but she used to be the chief medical examiner for Harris County which is where this was took place so she used to run that office so if anybody knows what shortcomings to look for she did and she couldn't find anything more damning than what she found I mean my take just people ask all the time you know what do you think quote really happened I mean first of all we'll never know what really really happened because there was no camera in that cell and the cameras that go show who can enter and exit that jail cell are motion activated they don't just film continuously so if nothing's happening they turn off then some motion can they turn back on I mean they get genius to put a piece of paper up in front of it and they're not time stamped I'm sure right they're not time so since you don't know my feeling is Sandra was lynched you know here's a woman who wasn't doing anything gets pulled out of her car at Taser Point beaten up without a doubt she was beaten up by the side of the road hauled into jail had a bogus felony charge slapped on her put in jail for $5,000 in jail and was left in solitary confinement for three days against all aspects of jail protocol and never checked because they said it was all blank and the person just kept signing it. They lied they submitted forged documents to show about how she was checked on and so you know the best thing you could possibly say is that she was driven to emotional despair by being beaten up falsely charged with the prospect of going to jail for quite a long time for beating up a police officer in Texas and left to think about it for three days in solitary confinement that's the best you could possibly, that's the best spin you can put on this. The worst spin is that someone came in there and or at least another very dark spin is that someone came in there and strangled her and made it look like a hanging either way there's no way around the culpability that attaches so the fact there's no DNA on the news there are explanations for that ultimately this is a case of someone being killed if you will by a white criminal justice system and I submit it began because she was a black woman talking back to authority well did they have an explanation for why there was no DNA if it had been around her neck? so this is a mystery and it still be devil's canon you know and remember that just if there's no DNA it really could be that it was wiped and because it doesn't make sense it's sweaty hot jail trust me there's no air conditioning this is Texas in July and then again if you sort of go down the rabbit hole what could have happened maybe guards rushed in took her down and then said uh oh we're getting trouble and so they wiped it that doesn't mean they killed her it's incumbent upon canon the attorneys who are defending Sandra Bland's family to prove murder and this is the issue and so because he couldn't prove murder he had to kind of go with the suicide we heard that right and so he was he was a bit trapped other questions yes she drove her car from Chicago was her license plate from Illinois it was an Illinois plate that to me speaks to what happened smart ass northern person yeah and I'll take that I totally think you're on the fact also that if you look at what happened is officer insinia noticed her car drive by he turns around and then starts following her and I would submit that if she had had Texas plates he might not have done it I'm glad you said that because one of the things we early on started framing the filming as I mean visually as you could see Chicago is almost like a character in the film there's a lot of Chicago and a lot of Texas and so it's a north south dichotomy too I also think gender part of this she was too confident and spoke you know was not going to be passive and say oh I'm sorry officer and I think that I'm sure in class she's really educated she knew her rights she said well I don't have to put up my cigarette because he didn't even want the bystander I think wasn't he telling the bystander you need to go I mean I think that he was taping what was going on and one of the things we were really excited about for the minute we met Canon and Sharon and Chante and Geneva was to do a documentary film to put a realistic and deeply respectable face on black America I hate to say it but the images of black Americans in documentary films tend to be really of you know ghetto dwelling uneducated people which is which is bullshit and misrepresentative and so we were really excited that Canon and Chante and Geneva were just such amazing people all those family members were good spokespeople well they're a facet of society that has yet that just isn't is underrepresented there was questions in the back yes it's tempting to see something like it's tempting as a northerner to see this as you know shining a light on what goes on in south but it risks hiding what we have to face ourselves I'm currently working with a team on the case of a young black man who was sleeping in his own home when an ex-girlfriend broke into his home and attacked him and there were witnesses and she was punished and has since then in spite of being punished has gone on to accuse him of the crime over and over and over this happened in 2013 hiding behind feminism so what do you do when the racist hides behind feminism you know I need to know the details of that case I the devil is always in the details I hate to be I sound like a lawyer about it but we all are guilty is charged right to the bystander as to what they might have seen before they started taking the we know who the bystander was we actually did track down the bystander and I think he just happened to be there and what you saw is what he saw and we thought about interviewing him but frankly he's not really a character in the story I mean his best role is that he caught that he was brave enough to catch it to bring him in as a character seemed a bit irrelevant but no I don't think there's much more to that yeah thanks I just want to ask a quick question do you ever find yourself because I saw it was obvious that your absence from the film when I think of like let's say like a Michael Moore documentary he is always a character in the film I mean do you ever in any of your work do you put put yourselves in there and or is that intentionally not done for me it just depends it just has to feel really natural I have done it before when I was actually in two films but it was in a scene where something really happened that just would help the audience feel more comfortable to understand that there was an interchange between the filmmaker behind the camera and here it really my gosh we had enough to handle without us being in it I mean because it's a really complex story told from multiple points of view yes thank you outstanding film I'm interested in a digital social media aspect of this I'm concerned that she was additionally targeted for her videos I'm concerned that the police may have googled her and then treated her even more badly because of these videos and you end your movie with can you hear me with the words silence I think silence as a new slave which I thought was very on point thank you that's an excellent question because so much of what she was obviously was posting was all about police and law enforcement and its treatment of minorities and so I had even thought about the fact that they could have googled her and would have found all of that and said well because obviously she was there for two to three days before she died and theoretically they might have known her as well because she was a student at Prairie View and politically active how long was she gone back to Chicago before she came back several years wouldn't it have been I think three years but it's true they may have known that they had a test the outspoken person though from what we see in the videos of her in jail the jail house monitor cameras she didn't seem all that right I mean she seems very I mean almost cowering clearly fearful yeah I think she felt that she was in physical pain right and she was probably scared that you know they they got her they had her beat she was facing a felony charge and it was going to be the word of Brian and Senia against her in court that's a very frightening thing to contemplate as a lone black woman in tech in the heart of Texas when your family is thousands of miles away right how are we on absolutely first I want to say thank you for this very thought provoking work that you've done my question has to do with the marijuana and I think as the lady over here said that there had to be a point at which they either Googled her or looked up her records and came up with her past looking at what she had accomplished her abilities her knowledge because they then come up with whether or not she had attempted suicide blah blah blah and I think this is where they probably also picked up on her use of marijuana because all of a sudden that became an issue because if at the point when they stopped her she had marijuana in her system or she had been smoking that would have been another charge you know she would have been charged driving under the influence yes she would have been she would have been charged with the possession of marijuana or under the influence or driving under the influence none of this came up until later on and I'm just wondering whether or not any of that was uncovered because it seems to me they made a big deal about the marijuana but nothing ever came out until later on and I think that was because they then dealt into her history and saw that she had had a previous issue with marijuana you know it could be we've asked questions like that to the prosecutor to the sheriff and you know that's the kind of thing they're probably going to take with them to their grave if it's true they're not going to say oh yeah let me give you the answer to that with one person we really wanted to speak to we never got to speak to it's the one thing there isn't much from Sandy's because I deeply regret leaving on the cutting room floor but the one that got away in this film is there's a guy named Michael Serges who spoke to Sandy regularly in her jail cell and he was the last person to speak to her alive was he someone from Chicago or no he's from Texas and we found out where he was working and we went every day and left our car and we really got to talk to you he just de-dipped on us we couldn't reach him so I always wanted to know what she had to say in those last days and I'm really sorry he worked in the jail he was a member of the police department oh yeah yeah yeah not that I'm aware of I don't think you do but the marijuana sort of the character assassination built around that was extremely effective I mean I remember when that came out and people were like well she smoked like what wait wait wait a minute wait a minute let's just look at the arrest like what does this so it's an extraordinary lesson in how public perception can be shaped by the smallest things and ironically as you see first hand during the autopsy findings that when the family meets there wasn't a copious amount of marijuana in our system at all well tell me this they talked about death threats I mean both sides I'm just curious from your own the kinds of films that you do that are controversial do you ever get threats or requests or suggestions about if you come back here and try to do this film again or continue to talk about these issues do you ever find yourself the targets of those kinds of threats not yet there's one film we made called the Newberg Sting about from Newberg New York there were four gentlemen from Newberg who the FBI set up as a quote unquote terrorist ring they didn't even know each other and they sent an undercover informant to basically offer them $250,000 if they would just go along with this plot to plant a bomb and they went along with the plot and the FBI had lied to Congress and lied to the public about this and if you were making it everybody said oh man you're never going to be able to fly internationally again and we flew internationally just fine and never got any extra pat downs and it's been okay I have to say the first amendment from our point of view is still alive and well how are we on time somebody help me out here I think we could have one question back there see way back there that'll be our last question and we will then close down and thank our wonderful directors it's good my first question did you did you try to talk to Brian and then the second question is we often hear about what we tell our sons if they encounter police but through your work since this is your beat you know are there any lessons that you've learned from the parents and the families that have to deal with the police because we were struck by the fact that there was so much strength throughout their grief and so you know is there a common thread among the families who then have to deal with and handle law enforcement after the fact great question part right away Brian we did try to reach Brian and Sonia and he wouldn't speak to anybody he's he basically hid from the public eye because when that video came out everyone just hated on him and correctly so we did you'll hear him talking a little bit about what he thought happened during that stop but I was I didn't want to have access to the console and was worried about the bag my life was in danger and that we got we eventually obtained as I sit here I don't remember exactly how we got it a tape recording of testimony that he had given to the police and so we had his it is his voice explaining his side of the story but we never got it directly from him lessons that we have gleaned from this you know you're talking about from other families other families I guess probably from like traffic stop that you did as well as this one I mean don't give law enforcement any excuse you're not trying to litigate the civil rights history of America out of red light out of traffic stop you're not going to win I think the lesson I learned is you're never going to win in those encounters if you push back you're always going to come out on the losing end no matter how morally and legally badly the officer behaves you got to fight it later if you try to fight it then in there you're going to end up in trouble in terms of the families themselves they've come together and formed coalitions and Sandy's sisters Sharon and Chantay are involved in many groups and they go to Washington and they go en masse and it's one way to I think I can't be in their shoes at all and I'm not trying to say that I know what it feels like but from what I've observed that if they can band together and form groups that have some political cloud their stories are there they're so passionate and so articulate it's not just this family it's so many they can affect change and at least that helps them at the very least we feel like something good can come out of a tragedy I was going to say you've given us hope in this film at the end we see a family that says okay we're going to insist that there are there are videos in all of the cells and I think that also that one thing that you've given us hope about is the fact that we have to be able to speak about relationship between law enforcement and communities because I think there is a lot of distrust on both sides right and you know sometimes I don't know I'm curious what everybody here would think but to me Sandy is a bit of a Rosa Parks that somebody has to say I won't sit in the back of the bus and she as a result made herself vulnerable but it's because she's just her character is that she is an activist and she's woke and she wants to affect change and so she's going to speak out but she took the fall I want to thank one sort of call to action thing that everybody can do which is this thing here you know one of the things that turned Sandy's case around was that bystander video that's the only video where you see her face down it's the only video where you see her really being manhandled everything else the police are well trained to take people out of the view of the camera the camera thank you for taping this thank you and so you know that's a lesson and that's something everybody can do if you see something that's going on wrong be that guy who took that video who probably changed national perception about how this case was going to be received excellent point well I want to thank our guests I feel like we're inside the director's studio here and I feel like James lived in here thank you very much Kate and David you have marvelous talent and are very courageous and I want to thank our audience thank you for coming on this beautiful day and I want to thank my friends and I want to thank Saul Mill for supporting us and thank you so much Nicole and this wonderful Bedford Playhouse for supporting wonderful films like this and on behalf of the Playhouse thanks everybody