Lack of Justice

Lack of Justice

When looking at the life a cop, it is very interesting to see just how much work goes into making a single arrest whether it is for something as minimal as trespassing or serious like murder. The amount of work put into a case can end up being for nothing as the criminal may end up walking out of the precinct, a free man the next day. When looking at the film, The French Connection, and the nonfiction book, “Blue Blood”, they seem to share these same types of events. Despite the amount of effort the police into their cases, the criminals ended up getting off way to easily most of the time. The author of Blue Blood, Ed Conlon, also found the film important as he seemed to really relate to the lives of the two detectives, Sonny Grosso and Eddie Egan.

In the film, the plot revolved around a major drug smuggling case. The entire film consisted of two detectives who continuously monitored the activities of the alleged suspects for what seemed like months. Despite the lack of evidence and the admonishment from their superiors, the two detectives continued on as they felt that something was really going on. Their efforts were finally rewarded when they ended up finding the drugs and confronting all the suspects after transfer of money and drugs had occurred. One would think that this would have been a great success. However, one of the main suspects somehow fled the scene and was never seen again and all the other suspects only served a few years in jail if they served any at all. All this effort and a fellow civil serviceman was killed for what seemed like a few misdemeanors. The end didn’t seem to justify the means and it really wasn’t the detectives’ fault.

In the book, Blue Blood, Ed Conlon was part of a Street Narcotics Enforcement unit that had to continuously watch problem spots for any drug deals that may go on. There were many occurrences where the people they arrested were let out very soon due mostly to a “lack of evidence” One specific event occurred when the unit arrested a maitre d’ due to the pattern of conversation they heard and the recovery of cash and identical heroin product they got from the buyers. But due to the fact that they didn’t actually see