By Tim Collie
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — These aren’t the DVDs the tourism council mails out.
Deerfield Fights is an hour-long collection of brawls among girls and boys in the parks and on the street corners of Deerfield Beach.
Lauderdale Exposed includes pornographic video of teenage girls at house parties, and club and street scenes shot throughout Fort Lauderdale.
And Pompano Exposed shows the lives of drug dealers in the northeast Broward County city.
Known as “‘hood” films, the DVDs are available for $5 to $20 at local flea markets, swap shops and urban music stores.
Young viewers and the filmmakers call them an example of neighborhood pride, part of an urban scene in which local area codes — the 561, the 954, the 305 — are shorthand for the street cultures of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
But law enforcement sees something more ominous — locally produced, underground recordings that flaunt drug use, define criminal territory, threaten police and mark another front in the war on gangs.
“They have huge images of The 561. They depict Florida as the pistol state because it’s shaped like a gun,” said Detective Troy Raines, a gang expert at the Boynton Beach Police Department. “These videos get all over the country via the Internet, and they’re just open invitations for gangs to come to Palm Beach County.”
Those who make the films consider them entertainment, a potential ticket to wealth and fame in Hollywood or New York City.
“I think these films are going to be the next big thing because they’re shocking,” said Ean Smith, who filmed Pompano Exposed. “That’s what people want.”
At least a dozen ‘hood films have been produced in Broward and Palm Beach counties in the past couple of years. They’re among hundreds nationwide. There are no formal sales figures because most of the DVDs are produced and distributed by the local filmmakers, who see their work copied and pirated across the country.
Local vendors and some filmmakers guess thousands of copies have been sold in the past year in South Florida.
“These are some of my biggest sellers,” said a vendor at the 45th Street Flea Market in West Palm Beach who identified himself only as Big D.
“Some of it is pretty raw, but that’s what people are looking for,” Big D said. “They want ‘hood films that are local, that look real, that show it the way it is.
“They’re also good to play at parties.”
The pride in the 561, the 954 and the 305 extends to music, clothing and drug paraphernalia sold at many of the same mom-and-pop venues. Excerpts of the films have been posted by the filmmakers and others on YouTube, the video-sharing Web site.
There are a dozen or so ‘hood filmmakers in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Police in Palm Beach County have targeted the work of Raymond “Raylo” Hartley — producer of a series of DVDs called Gangstas ‘N’ Thugs — because they say it glorifies local gangs and drug dealers. Police show his films to civic groups and social workers when they talk about gang activity.
Disputes between police and Hartley go back about two years.
Officers say his videos show crimes -- assaults, gang fights, children handling weapons. They say his film crews arrive at gang fights when police and ambulance crews pull up, indicating he knows about gang fights in advance. And they dislike his practice of posting fliers that ask tipsters to call with information about parties and possible street fights.
“One look at the films and you can see people waving guns, some brutal fights, what appears to be drug use,” said Detective Brian Hermanson, a gang expert at the Lake Worth Police Department.
Tension between the filmmaker and the police escalated in recent months. Hartley was arrested this summer for trespassing while filming at West Palm Beach’s CityPlace. He said he was fired earlier this year from his job as a lab technician after police intimidated his employers. And, he said, his house was damaged by gang investigators searching for a video they never found.
Earlier this month, a few members of Hartley’s film crew were identified by West Palm Beach police as part of the Ace Clicks, a predominantly African-American gang in West Palm Beach.
Six weeks ago, Hartley posted a video on YouTube in which he challenged police to make a case against him. He had an assault weapon slung over his shoulder and waved a fistful of cash.
“I can’t call what I see on a lot of these tapes entertainment,” said Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Wallace, commander of the countywide Violent Crimes Task Force. “I think it’s dangerous, and it could be recruiting kids into gangs.
“I like the guy, I really do, but he has to realize what he’s doing isn’t helping things in Palm Beach County.”
Hartley says he’s not a gang member, just a filmmaker, an entertainer. His films are a mix of locals performing for the camera, slices of street life and improvised music videos.
“Man, this is all about money, that’s all it’s about,” said Hartley. “I’m about the money. I’m trying to make my movies and get them seen.
“I have a history here in music and film,” he said. “We’re very well-known on the street. We’re grass-rooted here, and that’s why people trust us to show what’s going on. If I went and told people to start fights for my camera, now that would get me in a lot of trouble on the streets of this community. Nobody’s going to tolerate that. This is just about entertainment.”
Hartley won’t say how much he’s made from selling his films. He said he has two more Gangstas ‘N’ Thugs films ready to release, and he’s working on a fictional gangster film set in West Palm Beach that he hopes will be distributed to film festivals.
Unlike Hartley, Smith said he doesn’t script the activities in his movies.
“The stuff you see in mine is real — this isn’t posing,” said Smith, showing shoe boxes full of videotapes he shot in Broward County. “People know me as Cameraman on the street, and they trust me. But you have to be real careful. I’ve had people pull guns, doing drugs, talking about all sorts of things. You don’t want to get people in trouble, but you want to show people what’s going on out there.”
Smith said he’s disturbed by the drug use and the displays of sex and wealth he says he’s witnessed by teens as young as 14. At one point earlier this year he was filming at a strip club when gang members started throwing hundred dollar bills on the stage. But he thinks it’s important that people see what is going on in their communities.
“It was crazy, just utterly crazy,” said Smith. “I have one 17-year-old kid in these films, in Pompano, driving a $100,000 car. Now where do you suppose he got that? He drove it to the prom, even.”
Smith is a U.S. Army veteran who is married, a father of two. He lives in Lake Worth and freelances on film crews.
“Is it exploitation? Sure,” he said. “I’m taking advantage of the poverty and violence out there just like anybody else.”
Copyright 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel