Ten years after serving time at Rikers Island for assault, Joe King Oliver, an ex-NYPD investigator working as a private detective, receives a note from a woman who admits she was paid to frame him, compelling him to find out who on the police force wanted him out. He also agrees to help a radical black journalist accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic in drugs and prostitutes in the city's poorest neighborhoods. The two cases intertwine, exposing a pattern of corruption and brutality wielded against black men, women, and children whose lives the law detroyed.