Detroit 9000

Police procedural movie set in Detroit during the early 1970s. At a fundraiser for a black Congressman held at a downtown Detroit hotel, a group of heavily armed masked men bursts on the scene demanding the fund-raised fund. The fund consisting of gold, jewels and cash is estimated to be around 400,000 dollars. The donors mostly are rich black supporters of Congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton who intends to run for state governorship. After the armed robbery, the criminals disappear in a white getaway van. The police arrives at the scene but no one has any description of the suspects. Some speculate that white men committed the crime in order to sabotage the election efforts of a black candidate but others suggest it was black-on-black crime. The Detroit Police Department is careful not to place blame on any racial or ethnic group in order to avoid controversy and criticism. The Department assigns two cops to the case. One cop is Lieutenant Danny Bassett who's white and the other cop is Sergeant Jesse Williams who's black. The two cops work well together and start getting some leads but their potential witnesses are killed before they can talk to the investigators. Eventually, the trail leads to a high-price black call girl, Roby Harris, and her pimp-lover Ferdy Sloan. Also, the police finds the mutilated body of a man in a trunk. The victim, a Native-American called Indian Tom, is a fence for stolen goods operating between Detroit and Canada. Clues start piling up and they lead the detectives and the police forces to a derelict church, which is surrounded by abandoned buildings, including an old railroad station. There, the final shootout between the robbers and the cops takes place. —nufs68