Summaries

Synopsis

U.S. Army veteran Alicia West (Naomie Harris) is black & returns to her hometown of New Orleans where she joins the city's police department and is partnered with the easygoing Kevin Jennings (Reid Scott). Their beat includes the deprived slum neighborhood (Kingston Manor) where West grew up, and during one patrol she meets an old friend, Milo "Mouse" Jackson (Tyrese Gibson) (Alicia was friends with Mouse's cousin Missy (Nafessa Williams), who is now part of the KIngston crew), who now works at a convenience store clerk. However, he acts as if he doesn't know her, as the community is deeply distrustful of the police.The police is deeply racist and doesn't even respond to calls from the colored sections of the town.

In order for Jennings to get home to date-night with his wife, West takes his place in a double shift with another patrolman, Deacon "Deek" Brown (James Moses Black). During their shift he gets a call on his personal phone and drives to a derelict power station, ostensibly to meet an informant; when they arrive, he orders West to wait in the car while he heads in alone. Soon afterward, West hears gunfire coming from the building and rushes in to help, wearing a bulletproof vest fitted with a body camera, only to stumble upon Brown and two drug squad detectives, Terry Malone (Frank Grillo) and Smitty (Beau Knapp), executing three unarmed drug dealers in cold blood. Malone attempts to explain away the incriminating situation, but Smitty panics upon seeing West's body-cam and shoots her. She is protected by her vest but stumbles backward onto a weak section of flooring and falls several stories.

Despite being badly injured in the fall, West manages to escape the power station, with Malone, Smitty and Brown in pursuit. She flags down a passing squad car and asks for help from the two patrolmen inside, but quickly realizes that they are also part of Malone's network of corrupt cops, forcing her to flee again. She eventually finds sanctuary in the store where Mouse works, though he is at first reluctant to help her and considers turning her over to her pursuers. Mouse had already pressed the distress button upon hearing noise inside the store, and the Malone crew was already responding to dispatch's call.

Unsure who in the police department she can trust, West calls the off-duty Jennings and asks him to give her a lift to a police station so that she can upload her body-cam footage to the police mainframe and thereby get incontrovertible evidence against Malone and his cohorts on the record. Malone's crew reaches before Jennings, but Alicia hides, so they arrest Mouse instead. They leave when they find nothing, and Mouse's record shows no outstanding warrants. Alicia tells Mouse that she has evidence of police killing 3 black boys and she is determined to expose them. Jennings arrives shortly thereafter.However, during the drive Jennings inadvertently lets slip that he already knew Malone was crooked, and West, fearing that he is about to lead her into a trap, forces him to stop the car and makes off on foot. Jennings says that Malone was silencing his sellers as the Mayor was on a cleanup drive and 6 cops were already busted in the last month.

Meanwhile, Malone frames West for the shootings at the power station. One of the three dead drug dealers was Darius's (Mike Colter) nephew, Zero. Malone tells Darius that Alicia was responsible for Zero's death. Darius therefore sends his gang out to kill West in revenge. Hunted by both the police and the gang, West is again forced to seek shelter from Mouse, this time at his apartment. He takes her in, but she is seen by one of his neighbors and soon Darius's gang arrives to kill her. She manages to escape, but Mouse is captured.

Unwilling to leave Mouse to his fate, West surrenders to Darius, explaining that she has proof of her innocence in the form of her body-cam footage. One of Darius's henchmen manages to hack the body-cam and confirms her story. Before Darius can act on this revelation, however, the police raid the apartment block. In the confusion of the raid Smitty kills Brown (in revenge for an earlier spat over who was to blame for the fiasco at the power station) and is then killed himself by West, while Malone kills Darius and begins searching the block for West. Knowing that she cannot escape, West instead gives her police jacket and body-cam to Mouse, who with this disguise is able to slip through the police cordon (he was wearing West's police vest and a police jacket) and then steal Malone's car and race to the police station, where he uploads the body-cam footage to the mainframe.

Back at the apartment block, Malone manages to corner West, leading to a hand-to-hand struggle which eventually takes them out onto the courtyard in front of a crowd of local residents. West manages to get hold of Malone's gun, but police snipers on the balconies above force her to put down the weapon. However, at that moment the precinct captain, having seen the vital body-cam footage, radios the SWAT team and orders them to stand down. In desperation, Malone grabs the gun and tries to shoot West, but he is shot and incapacitated by Jennings, West's repentant partner.

The wounded Malone is arrested and charged for the murders of the three drug dealers, while West's name is cleared, earning her the respect both of her fellow police officers and of her old neighborhood. Sometime later, she visits her mother's grave with Milo. Milo tells her he owes her his life and kisses her on the forehead in thanks, and the two leave together.