FREE ESSAY ON COMMUNITY POLICING

COMMUNITY POLICING

American Me is a harsh look at the reality of prison and gang life, especially within the
Chicano community. Based on a true story, American Me traces the life of a Latino crime
lord, Santana, from his youth growing up in the barrio of East Los Angeles, through his
rise to power behind the walls of Folso Prison. Set against a backdrop of hopelessness
and prejudice the movie brutally attempts to portray the continuing cycle of violence
inherent within a crime-based life-style. In the end Santana is unable to escape that
cycle, dying violently at the hands of his former gang members, while at the same time
such violence is given rebirth within the barrio.
Santana, played by Edward James Olmos is in prison and looking back at his life, his
parent's life, and discovering what his life has become. In the first scene of act one,
the viewer is taken back in time to the 1940's to a scene where Santana's parents were
beaten and raped by sailors in the streets of Los Angeles, simply because they were zoot
suiters. In the mid-to-late 1950's, where the young Santana and his buddies J.D. and
Mundo are introduced. The three young boys make a pact to stay together and be a part of
the long tradition gang of their barrio called La Primera.
First, the three boys are sentenced to time in juvenile hall for breaking and entering
into a store to escape being chased down by another barrio gang. In juvenile hall they
begin feeling superior to other mates when Santana kills a cellmate who rapes him in the
middle of the night. Everyone in the prison is proud of Santana and his group. Because of
the respect that he has earned, Santana and his group begin to feel that they run the
show around juvenile hall. Transferred from juvenile hall into Folsom Federal Prison.
As Folsom Federal Prison is being shown on the screen, Santana's voice is narrating the
movie and he states that drugs is the new way to prove who runs the show. La Primera
discovered a way to show who had the power among the prisoners: providing drugs for other
inmates.
Power has consumed Santana, J.D. and Mundo's every moment and the trio expands into an
entire prison gang branch of La Primera. The tension is thickened with the formation of a
second Mexican mafia in the prison called Nuestra Familia. This gang formed from those
Mexicanos rejected by La Primera who joined together to try and take away some of La
Primera's power in the drug trafficking. Immediately, defenses went up and La Primera
took action by killing off the leader of Nuestra Familia and killing one of their own men
who didnit have enough courage to kill Nuestra Familiais leader when asked. When a black
prisoner took more than his share of the cocaine being passed along from cell to cell, La
Familia showed their power by burning him alive. They wanted everyone in the prison to
know that they had the control and that nobody would go without punishment for
interfering with their business.
Santana is released from prison after eighteen years. After such a long period of not
having been in society he must once again learn how to live. Santana returns to his
barrio to discover that some things never change; the gang continues to grow and exercise
power outside of prison. In dealing with the crisis of being in a somewhat unfamiliar
world, Santana's personality begins to change. Seeing the repetitive cycle of the tattoo
between the thumb and index finger that was imprinted on each new generation, seeing the
drugs that the children were doing, seeing that their barrio would always continue with a
power struggle began to wear on Santana.
Santana met Julie. Julie was beautiful, smart and wanted her family to be different from
the rest of the barrio. When she met Santana and saw how he was so innocent in many ways,
she fell in love with him. Santana had new hopes and desires when he met her. He saw that
life could offer more than dealing drugs and killing to show power. His new view on life
conflicted with his gang world still around him.
Inside, Santana fell for Julie but the first time he made love to her, it was too rough
and resulted in a rifted relationship with her. Outside, his barrio was in a power
struggle with other gangs. The Italians controlled the drug trafficking of East Los
Angeles and La Primera wanted control. To show that La Primera was serious, the head
Italian's son, who was in Folsom Federal Prison, was raped and stabbed with a knife by
the prison branch of La Primera. Meanwhile, the Black Guerrillas wanted control of La
Primera's drug dealing area and killed some of their clientele to show they were serious.
In revenge, La Primera hired a group of white men to kill the Black Guerrillas. What La
Primera didn't know was that they hired the Arian Nation, a group of white supremacists.
The white supremacists killed the Black Guerrillas for racial reasons, not for drug
reasons and many innocent bystanders died in the attack. 
The police found Santana with Julie, standing by Little Puppet's wedding jacket
(containing drugs). Santana was immediately taken back to prison without a chance to even
prove that he was innocent, without a chance to ever change his life outside of prison.
He wrote to Julie from prison. He read her letters and saw that she was trying to improve
her life with an education. Julie wasn't going to let the barrio hold her back and
Santana felt the same about his own life. He knew that he had to get out of the barrio.
The final scene of the movie was the obligatory act. La Primera had noticed his weakening
desire for power. When they came by his cell one day and asked if he was coming out, he
answered yes, knowing his fate. They stabbed him to death immediately. No one could be in
La Primera if they showed signs of weakening. Santana knew that there was more to life
that the one he had led. To show his real power meant standing up for what he knew was
right. He stood up to end the continuous cycle of killings and drug dealing.. It took
dying to prove his point. It took dying to prove Santana's real power.