The Organization

The Organization is a 1971 DeLuxe Color American crime thriller film starring Sidney Poitier and directed by Don Medford. It was the last of the trilogy featuring the police detective Virgil Tibbs that had begun with In the Heat of the Night (1967), followed by They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970). In The Organization, Tibbs is called in to hunt down a gang of urban revolutionaries, suspected of a series of crimes. The screenplay was penned by James R. Webb, and the film co-stars Barbara McNair, Gerald S. O'Laughlin, Sheree North and Raul Julia. Plot After a break-in at the San Francisco headquarters of a company, the police are called in. One of the executives has been murdered, and the security guard has been bludgeoned. It is not a simple robbery, as the executive was killed by shots from two different guns, nothing was stolen, and there are several other unexplained facts. Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) is contacted by the group which committed the break-in and stole four million dollars' worth of heroin. They are urban revolutionaries who explain that the company is a front for drug-dealing. They had hoped the break-in would lead the police to investigate the company itself and want to use the heroin to get to the leaders of the organization. Tibbs arrests the security guard to question him, but the guard is murdered while sitting in the police car. Tibbs agrees to help the group if they co-operate with him. One member of the group is hunted down and beaten by the drug pushers and another is murdered. Tibbs himself comes under suspicion from his superiors when the narcotics division tie him to the stolen drugs, whereupon he is removed from the case and suspended.