American Crime Story

[Extracts of the Fuhrman Tapes that the court listens to]

Detective Mark Fuhrman:
I had 66 allegations of brutality. Like, two of my buddies were shot and ambushed. I was first unit on the scene. Four suspects ran into an apartment in the projects. We kicked the door down, I grabbed a girl that lived there, grabbed her by the hair, and stuck a gun to her head, and used her as a barricade. I walked up, and I said “I’ve got this girl. I’ll blow her fucking brains out if you come out with a gun.” I held her, then I threw the bitch down the stairs.

Laura McKinny:
Can we use that in the story?

Detective Mark Fuhrman:
[chuckles] It hasn’t been seven years. Statute of limitations. I have 300-something pages of internal affairs investigation, just on that one incident. We basically tortured those guys. We broke their bones until their faces were mush. There was blood all the way to the ceiling and finger marks, like they were trying to crawl out. It was unbelievable – there was blood everywhere. How do you intellectualise when you punch the hell out of a nigger? He either deserves it, or he doesn’t. Falsifying a report? Whatever. That’s putting a criminal in jail. That’s being a policeman. Does that police station have the smell of niggers? They’ve been beaten and killed in there for 30 years. Immediately after we beat those guys, we found a garden hose in the back. We had blood all over us. With a dark-blue uniform, you don’t see it. But we had to wash our hands. It looked like red paint. We cleaned our badges, we cleaned our faces, then we went out to direct traffic.