Plot Synopsis

Featuring exclusive interviews with the people who lived at the center of the story, FREEWAY: CRACK IN THE SYSTEM chronicles the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of Freeway Rick Ross, the man considered responsible for ushering crack cocaine into Los Angeles and ultimately across the United States in the '80s and '90s. Through the story of his early days selling drugs and his introduction to a new supplier, Nicaraguan drug trafficker Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes, Rick and his friends are soon transformed from low-level street hustlers to major dealers. Nicaraguan drugs were soon flooding South Central Los Angeles, but Rick was unaware at the time that he had become the central player in the so-called CIA-Contra-Cocaine Controversy, because FBI and police busts were starting to link the Contras and drugs as part of the U.S. Congress' ban on the support of the Contras. American investigative reporter Gary Webb broke the story of the CIA's complicity in the drug war in a series of articles in the "San Jose Mercury News." This film features exclusive interviews with major players from Webb's stories, including Webb's source Coral Baca, and wife Susan Webb; former Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff Roberto Juarez; drug trafficker Julio Zavala and many more. FREEWAY: CRACK IN THE SYSTEM was released in select theaters in the United States on October 17, 2014, and 4-1/2 months later, Al Jazeera America broadcast the television premiere of this film as a two-part special, showing the first hour on Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 10pm ET. Part 1 encores the following week on Sunday, March 8, immediately before Part 2 debuts at 10pm ET.