AARON_BEKEMEYER ALISHA_OYLER BAHER_AZMY BARACK_OBAMA BARRY_FRIEDMAN BEN_GAZZARA BILL_CLINTON BURNEDIN_SUBS CHARLIE_ADAMS CHRISTY_LOPEZ DONALD_TRUMP DONALD_WILLIAMS ELIZABETH_HINTON ERIC_GARNER GEORGE_YANCY GRAPHICS_INSERTS IDENTIFIED_ARCHIVAL_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER IDENTIFIED_ARCHIVAL_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_2 IDENTIFIED_FEMALE_CREW_MEMBER IDENTIFIED_FEMALE_IN_CAR IDENTIFIED_FEMALE_IN_CAR_2 IDENTIFIED_FEMALE_NEWS_REPORTER IDENTIFIED_FEMALE_ON_STREET IDENTIFIED_FEMALE_PROTESTER IDENTIFIED_MALE IDENTIFIED_MALE_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_ACTIVIST IDENTIFIED_MALE_ACTIVIST_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_ACTIVIST_3 IDENTIFIED_MALE_ANNOUNCER IDENTIFIED_MALE_ARMY_GENERAL IDENTIFIED_MALE_BOOK_SELLER IDENTIFIED_MALE_CAMERAMAN IDENTIFIED_MALE_CHICAGO_ACTIVIST IDENTIFIED_MALE_CIVILIAN IDENTIFIED_MALE_INTERVIEWER IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_ARCHIVAL_FOOTAGE IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_CAR IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_HOUSE IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_RIOT_GEAR IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_RIOT_GEAR_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_RIOT_GEAR_3 IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_RIOT_GEAR_4 IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_RIOT_GEAR_5 IDENTIFIED_MALE_IN_STREET IDENTIFIED_MALE_KKK_KNIGHT IDENTIFIED_MALE_LOS_ANGELES_ACTIVIST IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_3 IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_4 IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_5 IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_6 IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_7 IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_8 IDENTIFIED_MALE_NEWS_REPORTER_9 IDENTIFIED_MALE_ON_STREET IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_AND_BLACK_MEN_PROJECT_SPEAKER IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_AND_BLACK_MEN_PROJECT_SPEAKER_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_CHIEF IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_10 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_3 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_4 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_5 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_6 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_7 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_8 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_OFFICER_9 IDENTIFIED_MALE_POLICE_TRAINING_INSTRUCTOR IDENTIFIED_MALE_PROTESTER IDENTIFIED_MALE_PROTESTER_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_REPORTER IDENTIFIED_MALE_RIOT_POLICE_OFFICER IDENTIFIED_MALE_SKY_KNIGHT_OFFICER IDENTIFIED_MALE_SKY_KNIGHT_OFFICER_2 IDENTIFIED_MALE_STRIKE_NEWS_ANNOUNCER IDENTIFIED_MALE_TEARGAS_INSTRUCTOR IDENTIFIED_MALE_VOICE_ON_RADIO IDENTIFIED_MAN IDENTIFIED_MEN_ON_RAILROAD IDENTIFIED_POLICE_OFFICER_CHOIR JOE_BIDEN JULIAN_GO KALFANI_TURE MICHAEL_CHERTOFF MICOL_SEIGEL NIKHIL_PAL_SINGH NILESH_V PAUL_BUTLER PRINCIPAL_PHOTOGRAPHY REDDITT_HUDSON RICHARD_NIXON ROGER_MUDD RONALD_REAGAN STOKELY_CARMICHAEL STUART_SCHRADER THOMAS_LANE UNIDENTIFIED_MALE_NYPD_CAPTAIN WESLEY_LOWERY YANCE_FORD HARRY_REASONER KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR HUEY_P_NEWTON YANCE FORD 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. YANCE FORD The movie usually starts now, but I want you to know this film offers an analysis of police history that I'd like you to consider. YANCE FORD This film requires curiosity or, at least, suspicion. YANCE FORD I'll leave that choice up to you. REDDITT HUDSON Police power is immediate power. It is right now. REDDITT HUDSON It is... REDDITT HUDSON Do what I told you to do right now. No waiting. No- Ain't no phone calls, none of that. Or else. I decide what happens next. BURNEDIN SUBS "There's only one thing you gotta have to be a good cop. You gotta have a heart." IDENTIFIED MALE IN ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE There's only one thing you gotta have to be a good cop. You gotta have a heart. But you gotta- You gotta be a- At times, you've gotta be a bitch. At times, you've gotta come on like a mean man. WALLA [REACTION, INDISTINCT] GRAPHICS INSERTS "The first publicly funded police force was created in Boston in 1838." IDENTIFIED MALE ARMY GENERAL At halt. Ten. Knee-high, hut. Waist-high, hut. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Over the next two decades, New York City, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Chicago founded their own departments." WESLEY LOWERY Like many institutions, there's a sense of "This is how we've always done it and so this is how it's supposed to work," with no one ever rewinding to the beginning of the tape to figure out, "Wait, what were we setting out to do when we started this?' NIKHIL PAL SINGH When you think of the word police, where does it come from? It comes from the word polis. The idea is that we are a self-governing people and that we believe in the principle of self-government. But the problem is is we never can figure out who polices the police. We never can figure out what gives the police authority over the people. HUEY_P_NEWTON The police in our community occupy uh, our area, our community, as a form of troop-occupied territory. BARRY FRIEDMAN There are a lot of people that feel that policing is out of control. But it's also the case that there's horrific crime and violence in some communities in this country and it also is out of control. BURNEDIN SUBS "There are 18,000 state and local police and public safety agencies in the U.S. that employ more than 1 million officers." GRAPHICS INSERTS Roughly the population of the state of Delaware. KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR The brutality of police indicates that we have not achieved full citizenship. And that is why the police are the spark for such outsized protest, because it is a direct affront to our belonging, to our ability to be here. IDENTIFIED MALE RIOT POLICE OFFICER You need to disperse immediately or you will be subject to arrest. Do it now. WESLEY LOWERY If we were starting a country tomorrow and part of what we had to invent was a system of law and order, of Criminal Justice, of- of police, there's almost no chance we would invent the system we currently have. And yet we continue to have it every single day. YANCE FORD Police power is enormous, omnipotent and hard to pin down. YANCE FORD It is the might of 1 million police wielded everywhere, all at once. YANCE FORD Yet police power is extraordinarily intimate. YANCE FORD The same massive institution can search your pockets, trace your cell phone, demand your identification, watch you with surveillance cameras or collect your DNA. YANCE FORD In the United States, police power is essentially unregulated. YANCE FORD In this kind of democracy, who is more powerful... YANCE FORD The people or the police? GRAPHICS INSERTS "Minneapolis, March 2022 4th Police Precinct" GRAPHICS INSERTS "Charlie Adams Police Inspector Minneapolis Polis Department, 4th Precinct" YANCE FORD What kind of crime is most prevalent in- in the north side? What do you deal with in this Precinct? CHARLIE ADAMS We deal with mur- violence. A lot of violence, murders. This is North High School, this is my high school. GRAPHICS INSERTS "The 4th precinct is on the north side of Minneapolis. George Floyd was murdered in the 3rd precinct, 6 miles south." CHARLIE ADAMS Yeah, we deal with a lot of violence. Uh, we just had one of our athletes from here, our quarterback was shot and killed a couple weeks ago. YANCE FORD What happened? CHARLIE ADAMS Well, they thought they would release school early so kids could go down there and protest Amir Locke's shooting. So uh, D Hill... CHARLIE ADAMS Left school with some of the other players and they�he was headed home or to a friend's house and he ended up uh, passing a guy off here on Golden Valley Road and we'll drive by the site. And uh, just passed this guy. And the guy turned around, and we don't know if they bumped each other or what, but D kept walking and the guy went in his backpack, pulled a gun out and shot him in the back of his head. Killed him right there. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR Bring 'em in, boys. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 2 Here we go. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 3 Let's go, guys. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR Take care of each other. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 2 Concentrate, focus. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR Front door's open, I'll get it. CHARLIE ADAMS Our Police Department, law enforcement is- is a paramilitary organization, right? IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR Police department, search warrant! WALLA [INDISTINCT] IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 2 Go, go, go, go. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR Search warrant! Get down, get down! Get down! With you, with you, with you. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 2 Get down on the ground. CHARLIE ADAMS And people don't realize why it became a paramilitary organization. It's because police came from the slave patrol. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR Up. Up, up, up. Up, hun. Get up. CHARLIE ADAMS All these enslaved folks are walking in town, if they don't have a- a- a note from massa, they end up getting beaten severely. And the masters are just fed up with these slave patrols, right? So they asked the Citadel, can you train these people? Give them some type of structure? Well, well, guess- guess what the structure is? Paramilitary. Massa - Master, date colloquialism. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE Where do you live, Foote? IDENTIFIED MALE CIVILIAN Um, 80th and uh-- IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE Put your hands down. Where? IDENTIFIED MALE CIVILIAN 80th and Lewell. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE Go there. CHARLIE ADAMS I think if our officers understood that, and had that conversation and was taught that, I think they'll know why when somebody or an African-American says, "Yeah, you're a product of- of slave patrols." But he would understand what they meant by that, right? You know, because some words like "patrolling," you know, we haven't changed that, right? We talked about getting a letter going into town from master, right? What do cops do when they see a group of Black males, standard? "Hey, let me see your ID." What's the difference? GRAPHICS INSERTS PROPERTY NIKHIL PAL SINGH When we think about the origins of policing in America, there's a temptation to find a single point. But in fact, policing is something that develops from multiple sites uh, over time. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Nikhil Pal Singh Professor, New York University Author, Race and America's Long War" NIKHIL PAL SINGH One point of origin would be the frontier where white settlers find themselves in a place where land claims are being contested with indigenous people and white settlers are trying to establish their own rights and ownership over land. GRAPHICS INSERTS "From 1830-1847, the US government deployed Army troops to forcibly remove Indigenous people from their land." NIKHIL PAL SINGH So the frontier militia we could see as one origin point for what we've come subsequently to know as policing. JULIAN GO In the South, you had a somewhat different system. Um, it was essentially a slave patrol system that was tied to militias. These were essentially groups of men who were tasked with going around plantations and making sure that the slaves uh, that were living in dwellings around the plantations weren't up to trouble and they were essentially policing these groups. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Julian Go Professor of Sociology, The University of Chicago Author, Patterns of Empire" GRAPHICS INSERTS "The first North American slave patrols were created in the Carolina colonies in 1704." NIKHIL PAL SINGH So the- the slave patrol grows up into an institution in relationship to slavery that we can also see as a kind of incipient police force. YANCE FORD You guys will let me know when it's clear? IDENTIFIED FEMALE CREW MEMBER Yeah, we're set. YANCE FORD Great. Action. IDENTIFIED MEN ON RAILROAD [SINGS] NIKHIL PAL SINGH In the 18th and 19th century, we see Municipal policing that's mostly aimed at regulating order among working people, so working class people. So that would be the third sort of site in which police develops as a- as a way of essentially managing the class order. IDENTIFIED MALE STRIKE NEWS ANNOUNCER Fire and auto accessory workers strike in Toledo. State Guardsmen had to resort to tear gas, lead and coal steel to curb the temper of the strikers, spurred by radical agitators. Tear gas and knockout gas in a stifling barrage. A veritable battle zone where two were killed and seven wounded before the ranks of the strikers broke and their ring leaders could be rounded up. Warfare in the streets. Civic strike at its worst. AARON BEKEMEYER Police - throughout the 1800s into the 1900s - one of their major roles was in breaking strikes when workers went on strike and protecting the property of- of employers. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Aaron Bekemeyer Lecturer in Modern History, Harvard University" NIKHIL PAL SINGH So we go back to what we've been talking about all along. We have these three dimensions of the American political project. The one that flows out of slavery and the capture and coercion of Black labor, one that grows out of the frontier and the expansion and land hunger and conquest of indigenous people, and one that grows out of the development of American capitalism and its- and its demand for labor. It always begins from these sets of relationships to property. It always begins from the idea that people without property... NIKHIL PAL SINGH Or people who are a property, in the case of enslaved people, are a threat to the social order built on property because they don't have a stake in that order. And in fact, they are the victims of that order. GRAPHICS INSERTS Anarchists Arrested, 1910 YANCE FORD It's likely that everyone in this scene is dead. YANCE FORD The dead, beating or being beaten. Violence that lives in the distant past. GRAPHICS INSERTS Police and Strikebreakers, 1933 YANCE FORD Does that violence stay in the past or move through time? YANCE FORD There is a dance here, movement across the line of violence and back again. And I wonder, what did these men feel In This Moment? YANCE FORD How do they feel after the fighting stops? Righteous? Powerful? YANCE FORD When you contain and control other people for a living, what does this power do to you? GRAPHICS INSERTS Beast of the City, 1932 IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE CHIEF We're gonna knock over every speakeasy, hook shot, wheel joint and gin mill from South Canal to North Haven. We're going to keep pulling in every monkey until they get so tired of it, they'll all want to line the tanks and leave town. Leave the country. Not the town, but the country. speakeasy, hook shot, wheel joint and gin mill - All terms for illegal alcohol distribution points during the Prohibition era. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE CHIEF Now. Never mind those open hands. Close them up in a fist and use them. WESLEY LOWERY Historically, Law and Order has meant subjugating small portions of the population to the benefit of the larger swaths of the population. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Wesley Lowery Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist and Author" WESLEY LOWERY When you look at the phrase "Law and Order," and Law and Order are two different things. WESLEY LOWERY Right? And so how much of our policing is about the enforcement of the law? And how much of it is about orderly society, and an orderly society as defined by whom? GEORGE YANCY Policing is inextricably linked to the racial history of this country. And in order to understand that underlying framework, you really have to go back to the very heart of the cultural Logics of Europe itself. GRAPHICS INSERTS "George Yancy Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy Emory University" IDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER It's not Ferguson. IDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER It's not whatever. IDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER This is Baltimore City! GEORGE YANCY So the philosopher David Hume, for an example, said that if you're Black or negro, you only mimic speech. IDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER 2 Why can't I walk to the store without being stopped? GEORGE YANCY So you're like, just like a parrot, an exotic bird. We- Black people don't come up with original ideas. The same as of course Thomas Jefferson held that we have no creativity at all. Immanuel Kant held that to be Black from head to toe is clear proof that whatever a Black person says is stupid. The German philosopher Hegel said that Black people don't possess what the German word is "Geist" or "spirit." We're just eternal children, primitive in the regions of Africa with the exception of course of Egypt. IDENTIFIED FEMALE PROTESTER That's right, that's right! Y'all caused it all to be this way! GEORGE YANCY So there's- there's a way in which the white imaginary has structured the Black body against itself so that in the end whiteness turns out to be that which is human as such, person as such and where Black people are always deviant, always troubled or dangerous or disorderly bodies. WALLA [INDISTINCT] YANCE FORD What does it mean to disturb the peace? YANCE FORD Talk too loud? Stand too close? Ask too many questions, refuse to do as you are told? YANCE FORD Maybe you've been called dangerous or deviant. Maybe you've been made uncomfortable by some disorderly body that got too close. YANCE FORD How did you respond? GRAPHICS INSERTS SOCIAL CONTROL WALLA [REACTION] BEN GAZZARA Can this be the man... Who, less than 24 hours ago.... BEN GAZZARA Risked his life for less money per hour... BEN GAZZARA Than this man earns? GRAPHICS INSERTS "THE POLICE FILM" GRAPHICS INSERTS "Narrated by BEN GAZZARA" BEN GAZZARA The idea of a police function and its responsibility to the group could be compared to what happened millions of years ago when the ancestors of these ants evolved their own version of a police function. So that now after millions of years of evolution, the ant has a social system in which certain ants stand guard and check out other ants try to get into their anthill home. If considered an enemy, these police or guard ants signal and other ants arrive and help destroy the intruder. JULIAN GO I think there's very good reason to believe that the very founding of these modern police departments that started in the 19th century were founded in response to people in American society who were seen as different and other. There's a good case to be made for example, that the first New York City Police Department in 1844 was a direct response to the influx of immigrants from Europe and particularly the Irish who were seen as less than, who are seen as inferior. In fact, we think of Irish populations today as white but in the mid 19th century, they weren't considered fully white. GRAPHICS INSERTS Buffalo, New York, 1897 GRAPHICS INSERTS "Julian Go Professor of Sociology, The University of Chicago Author, Patterns of Empire" PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "PHOTOGRAPHING A FEMALE CROOK" AARON BEKEMEYER In the United States, especially in the late 19th century when the United States was seeing a tremendous amount of immigration, there was a lot of disagreement about who belonged to what race, what the boundaries between different races were. So the act of being targeted by police was often one of the ways that people were marked as- as non-white. AARON BEKEMEYER So when police were policing Italian-Americans or Greek-Americans, Irish Americans and they were subject to the kinds of abusive or discriminatory policing that many non-white folks are subject to today, they were not necessarily seen as another ethnicity within whiteness, but as occupying a non-white racial status. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Aaron Bekemeyer Lecturer in Modern History, Harvard University" WESLEY LOWERY Policing is a pathway to power. WESLEY LOWERY And- And so what we've seen over the course of American History is different white ethnic groups as they've arrived in the United States initially being the targets of American policing and working to assimilate themselves not just into American whiteness, but into American policing itself. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Wesley Lowery Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist and Author" WESLEY LOWERY When you look at the police forces of many major American cities, you see that they are made up of many of the white ethnic identities that previously would have been the victims of harsh discriminatory aggressive policing tactics. MICOL SEIGEL Just before slavery and just after slavery, people who were white indentured servants or poor white people - indentured servants before slavery, poor white people after - were offered what historians call a racial bribe, which is, "Come away from your class peers, don't form solidarity networks with them. Instead we will bestow upon you this thing called whiteness and through very concrete laws and practices, that will confer a series of privileges on you and the police will be crucial to conferring those privileges.' GRAPHICS INSERTS "Micol Seigel Professor, Indiana University, Bloomington Author, Violence Work" NIKHIL PAL SINGH In the 1690s in Virginia, the governors of Virginia colony have the idea in their head, "Ah, the way we're going to make sure that slaves and servants don't get together and try to overthrow us is we're going to tell them that the servants get to keep their clothes on when they're whipped but the slaves can be stripped naked." What that tells you is a couple of things. It tells you that white privilege isn't that great if you can still be whipped but it also tells you that there's an effort to make a differentiation, to make sure that Black people are going to be exposed, literally, as being the most vulnerable to the force and violence of the state. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Nikhil Pal Singh Professor, New York University Author, Race and America's Long War" GEORGE YANCY To the extent to which one is not Black is the extent to which one is closer to white and in virtue of being closer to white, the level, the frequency, the danger of policing will be fundamentally different. CHARLIE ADAMS I tell the story how when I was a rookie cop, I was chasing a guy in a stolen car on foot and I tackled a guy, caught him. Next thing I know, I get a flashlight to my head, right? And I turned around, looked at the cop and said, "What the hell did you do that for?" And he's like, "Well, there's two Black kids down there. I just took the first one I could take." Right? You know, that was- and that- and he did that without no regret, right? IDENTIFIED MALE KKK KNIGHT We don't hate the Negro. God made him Black and he made us white. And you will find this laid out in the 11th chapter of Genesis in which he segregated the races and we, knowing that for 5,000 years the white man has been the Supreme race. We, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan intend to keep it the white race. KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR Because of segregation, because of the way that race marks African Americans, many immigrants who also suffered indignities and oppression, um, and exclusion could eventually turn into something else. You could change your last name, you can lose your accent. You could become white in this society in ways that could never happen for African-Americans because you can't change your skin color. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Professor, Northwestern University Author, Race for Profit" PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY VIRGINIA GRAPHICS INSERTS COUNTERINSURGENCY IDENTIFIED MALE TEARGAS INSTRUCTOR Police have tried to employ tear gas upwind of the mob, if possible. If the wind is blowing against you, use a gas gun to drop long range CN projectors behind the crowd so the wind will carry it through the mob. STUART SCHRADER At the outset of the 20th century, police in many cities across the United States were totally integrated with the political system in the city. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Stuart Schrader Professor, Johns Hopkins University Author, Badges Without Borders" STUART SCHRADER When police were part of the political machines, they were ineffective at crime control. In fact, they were part of criminal organizations. And so the generation of police reformers tried to change that. STUART SCHRADER Many of them had military experience overseas. STUART SCHRADER And they came back to the United States and they wanted to transform police in the same way that the military had transformed in colonial military operations in the Caribbean and the Philippines and other places. They wanted to make police into professionals the way that soldiers were becoming more and more professional. JULIAN GO In order to understand policing today, you really do have to go back to some of these early American interventions overseas. And when I think about this, I think of a guy named August Vollmer PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "Lieut. Charles Rhodes instructs his pupils." GRAPHICS INSERTS "August Vollmer First Chief of Police of Berkeley, CA 1905-1932" JULIAN GO Now, August Vollmer is a fascinating character. He's well known among police. He's considered the father of modern policing. August Vollmer served in the military and he particularly served in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. GRAPHICS INSERTS The Philippines, 1898 NIKHIL PAL SINGH The United States doesn't say the Philippines is our colony. But it holds the Philippines under occupation that lasts almost half a century and the establishment of that occupation is a brutal counterinsurgency war. JULIAN GO One of the things about this colonial war in the Philippines is that the American Military perfected a lot of techniques and tactics to deal with insurgents, to deal with rebels, to deal with, um, their- their "little brown brothers," as they called Filipinos. PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY DEATH HOUSE PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "Condemned to the chair - Executed 20 minutes after these pictures were taken" JULIAN GO August Vollmer was a crucial player in that campaign. He was handpicked to- to serve in one of these Elite Mobile counterinsurgency units where they use these mobile forces to go into the interior and essentially search and destroy Philippine insurgents. NIKHIL PAL SINGH Vollmer is one of these really great figures to look at because he is a policeman, he spends time in the Philippines thinking about designing policing institutions and then he becomes an academic. So he is one of the people who's kind of writing up how to think about what a police apparatus looks like. IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER Inspired perhaps by the 40 and eighth transports of War Days, the mounted division of the police department has acquired truck equipment. Within the cab, accommodations for ten officers, machine guns, tear gas bombs and other Riot equipment. NIKHIL PAL SINGH Vollmer does this kind of thing where he crosses these different domains that we've been talking about. He's oriented on thinking about the domestic um, order. He- he's gaining his experience in a counterinsurgency situation. So a situation that we might think of as being akin to war but really is about pacification. And he's trying to think about, um, how do you ensure that policing retains its legitimacy. GRAPHICS INSERTS Berkeley, 1970 IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 2 To avoid physical confrontation, police again used tear gas. This time driving the crowd back to the monument grounds. JULIAN GO The use of these counterinsurgency tools and tactics instills in police the idea that citizens are potential criminals, are like insurgents abroad. And therefore, are enemies of the state and therefore, you can mete out whatever violence upon them that is necessary. JULIAN GO When you talk about the characteristics of the police, it's almost exactly a colonial institution. This is a power of a government ruling over people who have no say in the way they're ruled. So for me, the implications are that...that police, as a colonial institution, is going to be primarily oriented towards serving the interests of the so-called colonizers, the settlers, um, who tend to be associated with wealth and whiteness. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Julian Go Professor of Sociology, The University of Chicago Author, Patterns of Empire" IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 3 There is a wealth of beauty in this land of ours. Every conceivable type of coloring can be found in American women. Miss America takes her appearance seriously and her beauty of mind and body is her great American heritage, her birthright by virtue of the fact that her forefathers came to this country to make a new world for their children and for their children's children. On this free soil, all the many peoples of the many countries met and married and brought forth their children as Americans. GRAPHICS INSERTS VIOLENCE WORK MICOL SEIGEL Police are fundamentally unlike any other part of government in that they most clearly crystallize the fundamental power of the state to claim a monopoly on legitimate violence. To say this violence is okay, this violence is not okay. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Micol Seigel Professor, Indiana University Bloomington Author, Violence Work" KALFANI TURE So what it means to look at policing then is to look at power and the way that police function in a society to maintain a particular status quo. And this is whether the police officers are conscious of it or not. So we're looking at power and we're looking at how do officers become participants in the inequities of power in this particular society. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Kalfani Ture Former Police Officer Assistant Professor, Mount Saint Mary's University" GRAPHICS INSERTS Boston, 1987 IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER Okay, get in. Get on the floor. Sit down. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER Sit down, be cool. Don't move. Anybody else in here? Be cool. IDENTIFIED MALE IN HOUSE We have nothing here. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER Don't move. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER Okay, you got any guns in the house? IDENTIFIED MALE IN HOUSE We got nothing in here. We've got nothing in here, man. Nothing. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER Got any drugs in the house? Got any money? Stand up. IDENTIFIED MALE IN HOUSE I got my money from my job. I got my money from my job. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER Let's see. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER Let me see. MICOL SEIGEL Violence work is not violent work. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 2 Hands on top of the car, the both of yous. Right now! Right fucking now! MICOL SEIGEL It is the work of state violence and it functions best when violence is withheld. When violence is a threat that is actually not inflicted, uh, but is understood as able to be inflicted at any moment. WALLA [INDISTINCT] IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 2 You understand me? All of you, go up to the front. Now. Get up there! Get up there. KALFANI TURE When I talk about uh, marginalized people as being sort of dystopic threats, I really should qualify this by saying that they're also considered a contagion and they will essentially affect others. So the goal then is to force them back in their place. Not just in their social place but also the physical geographies in which we have set aside for them. PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "KEEP OUT PUBLIC HOUSING PROJECT" CHRISTY LOPEZ The group that has really defined how carceral logic has developed have been Black people in the United States and that's in part because policing grew up within the context of enslaving Black people. CHRISTY LOPEZ Once slavery was outlawed, that was very scary to a lot of people and so first they came up with these Black Codes, which were literally laws only applied to Black people. And so it was very explicit that we are going to try to control you in a way that we are not going to try to control any other group. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Christy Lopez Professor, Georgetown Law Former Deputy Chief, USDOJ Civil Rights Division" GRAPHICS INSERTS "Black Codes barred Black Americans from having jobs other than farming, manual labor or domestic service." GRAPHICS INSERTS They barred Black Americans from buying firearms. GRAPHICS INSERTS "They allowed any white person to arrest any Black person if they believed they committed a crime." IDENTIFIED ARCHIVAL MALE POLICE OFFICER This March will not continue. Is that clear to you? CHRISTY LOPEZ It is quite clear that this carceral logic doesn't only impact Black people, doesn't only impact brown people. Everyone is wrapped up in it. But if we didn't have that history of fear, of "what will we do when we have Black people who are no longer enslaved, and if we can't control them that way, how will we make sure that they act right?" If we didn't have that particular history in this country, I think you might have seen a public safety system that uh, evolved very differently. PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "Nig, You have everything. What else you want?" YANCE FORD How did we get here? YANCE FORD The question breaks down as soon as you ask it. YANCE FORD Who is "we'? Where is "here'? WALLA [INDISTINCT] YANCE FORD You and me, we may share this country but are we close enough to be "we'? YANCE FORD Is your America and my America the same place? YANCE FORD Has it ever been? GRAPHICS INSERTS RESISTANCE BEN GAZZARA Is this police brutality? Or self-defense? What do you think? Unless you said you didn't know, you were prejudiced. Either for or against the police. And we better get all the facts, as many facts as it takes to arrive at a real understanding of the police; their function and their responsibility to all citizens. So, insects or mankind, the idea of a police force or function came out of necessity. Even the human body has its police force, when in the event of illness or injury white blood cells such as these protect us from harmful bacteria and other substances that threaten the body. BURNEDIN SUBS Is this police brutality? BURNEDIN SUBS Or self-defense? BURNEDIN SUBS What do you think? WALLA [INDISTINCT] GRAPHICS INSERTS The Police Movie, 1970 BEN GAZZARA When mankind grew more civilized, it became necessary to live by more elaborate rules, laws. Laws to protect the weak from the aggressive strong. In this arrangement, the power and strength of the group was given to individuals to use on behalf of the group. The same principle applies to today's modern police force. CHARLIE ADAMS This is North Minneapolis, this is Plymouth Avenue. Plymouth Avenue is known for back in the 60's after uh, you know, the upri-- We had an uprising in the 60's. I think late '67, '68. These were...used to be all stores, deli- delicatessens, uh, all kinds of things. You know, Black folks got upset. They burnt- burnt it down. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Charlie Adams Police Inspector Minneapolis Police Department, 4th Precinct" GRAPHICS INSERTS Plymouth Avenue, Minneapolis, 1967 CHARLIE ADAMS I can clearly remember. I was probably five at the time but I- I could remember the incident, cause I remember the day after, my uncle put us in the car and we drove down here and he went into the Jewish deli and- and he�he looted it, right? He took meats and all that stuff out and I still can remember my mom telling my uncle not to do that because that man used to let her, my mom, get stuff on credit. YANCE FORD What was going on in the community that was- that had people upset? CHARLIE ADAMS Well, there was- there was a police incident. CHARLIE ADAMS It was just not a stable environment for Black folks. Police harassment in North Minneapolis. CHARLIE ADAMS There was- there was an incident at a bar where one of the bar owners, you know, brutally beat up a Black man and- and, you know, law enforce-- and officers didn't do anything about it, which kind of triggered enough is enough, right? CHARLIE ADAMS We had all these different businesses on Plymouth Avenue and one night, they just set it on fire, you know? And it's like many scenes across America that year. PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "LOS ANGELES AFTERMATH TO DAYS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE" IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 4 Gutted shells of buildings, flames raging out of control and an atmosphere of apprehension still hover over the quieting Watts section of Los Angeles. IDENTIFIED ARCHIVAL MALE POLICE OFFICER 2 Drop that purse and get your hands up. WALLA Hands up! IDENTIFIED ARCHIVAL MALE POLICE OFFICER 2 Hands up. Get 'em up, get your hands up. Let's go. IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 5 Negro leaders blamed it on a variety of social ailments. Poverty and unemployment, poor schools and bad housing, all of which add up to discrimination. But most of all, said the Negro spokesman, police brutality. ELIZABETH HINTON While the conventional wisdom is that somehow the residents - Black residents, in particular - started these violent episodes against police and against, um, institutions in their community. And when we actually look at the history and when we look at the prevalence of this form of political protest, there were some 2,000 rebellions between 1964 and through 1972. We see that actually it was police that provoked these incidents. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Elizabeth Hinton Historian, Yale University Author, America on Fire" IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 6 Absolutely incredible scene. A gun battle in the middle of Broadway. A raid in the streets of Los Angeles. IDENTIFIED MALE ACTIVIST And I submit to you that we shall not see a Harlem or a Rochester or a New York. We can solve it, it is yet time. IDENTIFIED MALE ACTIVIST 2 I will tell you something, tonight is gonna be another whether you like it or not. No, no, wait, wait. Listen, listen. See, they-- We-- we, the Negro people down here have gotten completely fed up and you know what they gonna do tonight? They don't care. They not- they not- they not going to fight down here no more. You know where they're going? They after white people. STOKELY CARMICHAEL And nobody in this society ever sought to stop them when they burnt our church down. But when we retaliate, everybody is upset. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Stokely Carmichael Chairman, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee" KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR In many ways, we think of the rights of the 1960s as just a response to police brutality, but they are also a response to a prolonged period of white mob violence. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Professor, Northwestern University Author, Race for Profit" STOKELY CARMICHAEL Don't you worry about it, 'cause we're not gonna take it anymore. In Lowndes County, Alabama last month, they burned two churches to the ground. They were Black churches. A week later, a white church was burnt to the ground. STOKELY CARMICHAEL We know we will all worship inside or we will all worship outside. ELIZABETH HINTON Rebellion occurred in the industrial Midwest, in the Sun Belt, in the Rust Belt, the east coast and the southern states. Essentially, in any place where Black people lived in segregated unequal conditions, on top of being policed um more frequently, and policed in new ways during the era of the war on crime in the 1960s, led to a cocktail where rebellions erupted across the country in cities large and small. IDENTIFIED MALE Just getting tired of being pushed by you white people, that's all. IDENTIFIED MALE INTERVIEWER How pushed around? How badly, in what way? IDENTIFIED MALE You're stopping us on the street, kicking in the doors, taken down to the police station and kicking your teeth in. IDENTIFIED MALE INTERVIEWER Well, they're stopping people on the street now, but they wouldn't stop these people if they started nothing. IDENTIFIED MALE Oh yeah, right there's Black people now. Oh, they been doing it a long time before now. HUEY_P_NEWTON The police, they're not to uh- in our community not to promote uh, our welfare or for our security and safety, but they're there to contain us. Um, to, uh, brutalize and murder us because they have their orders to do so. The police in our community couldn't possibly be there, uh, to protect our property because we own no property. Uh, they couldn't possibly be there to see that we receive the due process of law for the simple reason that uh, the police themselves do not have the due process of law. And so it's very apparent that the police are only in our community, uh, not for our security but the security of the business owners and the community, and also to see that the status quo is kept intact. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Huey P. Newton Black Panther Party" IDENTIFIED MALE CHICAGO ACTIVIST Once you realize that you are paying taxes, taxes for the cops to whoop your ass. You are paying them. You're paying the man to whoop your ass. You're paying them to come in and beat your children. You're paying them to run you off the corners. GRAPHICS INSERTS Community Meeting, Chicago, 1969 IDENTIFIED MALE CHICAGO ACTIVIST And you're paying them to kill you. GRAPHICS INSERTS GLOBAL UPRISING STOKELY CARMICHAEL Don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed, we want Black power. We want Black power. We want Black power. We want Black power. WALLA Black power! Black power! Black power! IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 7 Stokely Carmichael, a 25-year-old revolutionary. It was here in Mississippi this Summer that Carmichael, with his cry for Black power, first became a national figure and to many, a frightening one. STOKELY CARMICHAEL Every courthouse in Mississippi ought to be burned down tomorrow to get rid of the dirt, yeah. Now from now on, when they ask you what you want, you know what to tell them! WALLA Black power! STOKELY CARMICHAEL What do you want? WALLA Black power! STOKELY CARMICHAEL What do you want? STUART SCHRADER Police understood Black radicalism in the 1960s as a global formation. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Stuart Schrader Professor, Johns Hopkins University Author, Bridges Without Borders" STUART SCHRADER Police understood the threat of Communism that seemed to go hand-in-hand with Black radicalism as a global problem, a problem that was not confined to "over there.' STUART SCHRADER Security officials in the United States looked at what was happening on the streets of American cities. STUART SCHRADER They saw all of these movements as tantamount to and similar to The Liberation movements that were happening across the globe. There was an enormous fear of radicalism, of communism. PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "FIGHTING HERE FOR OUR LIBERATION" NIKHIL PAL SINGH To the idea of the militarization of the police, we need to add a notion that might be an awkward phrase, but we need to think about how the military became policified. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Nikhil Pal Singh Professor, New York University Author, Race and America's Long War" IDENTIFIED MALE VOICE ON RADIO One thousand. Standby, standby. Mark, mark. NIKHIL PAL SINGH Really, police is the more important category. The military's job becomes about policing. It doesn't become about fighting wars for National Defense with other sovereign powers after World War 2. It becomes about projects of overseas counterinsurgency, pacification. The military aspects are kind of infiltrating the police and the policing kind of, um, rationale is entering into military action. GRAPHICS INSERTS Vietnam, 1967 KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR People keep coming to more and more radical conclusions and in the United States, those conclusions are fueled and fed by International movements, anti-colonial movements. GRAPHICS INSERTS Congo, 1960 KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR In those countries, people are adopting uh, radical political Frameworks. They are calling themselves socialists. They are challenging and demanding the right to govern on that basis. And those are ideas that make sense to radicals in this country where maybe you're not exactly a colonized population in the same sense. But your conditions look something like that. GRAPHICS INSERTS South Africa, 1960 GRAPHICS INSERTS Vietnam, 1972 GRAPHICS INSERTS "Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Professor, Northwestern University Author, Race for Profit" JANUARY 31, 1971 GRAPHICS INSERTS Los Angeles, 1971 KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR It might not be traditional colonialism, but it's something that looks remarkably similar. And so people begin to take up the same kind of ideas and rhetoric and also begin to question capitalism. IDENTIFIED MALE ACTIVIST 3 Our negroes need leaders. And where are they? They are not here and they're not coming now because-- Alright. That's right, they are selling us again and we're tired of being sold as slaves. IDENTIFIED MALE IN STREET Please don't kill me, please! Please don't kill me. IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 8 When it was all over, a young member of the demonstration had been shot to death. At least 30 were injured, 19 by gunshot wounds, 88 were arrested STUART SCHRADER Throughout the 1960s, many police officials believed that the civil rights movement and then the Black Power movement were dupes of the Soviet Union. They were being manipulated. There were agitators feeding ideas into the heads of African-American people across the country convincing them to rebel. GEORGE YANCY Samuel Cartwright was a- a doctor who would often be consulted by white plantation owners because the plantation owners would notice that Black people would run away from the plantations. Which you would think is natural, right? You want to be free hence you would flee a plantation. Well, the white plantation owners didn't understand this. If Black people are naturally inferior, if they were like chattel then why should they flee? They go to Samuel Cartwright, he thinks about it. He says, "I think I have an answer." He says Black people suffer from what he called "drapetomania" and "drapetomania" is the disease of running away from plantations. The Black body is being fixed according to the image of white people because Black people can't possibly want to be free because if they actually flee plantations because they d�desire freedom, then that puts a lie to the claim that Black people are naturally slaves. GRAPHICS INSERTS "George Yancy Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy Emory University" IDENTIFIED MALE LOS ANGELES ACTIVIST Wait a minute. All we want is jobs. We get jobs, we don't bother nobody. We don't get no jobs, we'll tear up Los Angeles, period. BURNEDIN SUBS We don't get no jobs, we'll tear up Los Angeles, period. IDENTIFIED MALE 2 What about- What you think, brother, about the police situation? Do you-- BURNEDIN SUBS Police? IDENTIFIED MALE LOS ANGELES ACTIVIST "Police? The police, we'll burn them up, too." BURNEDIN SUBS The police, we'll burn them up too. STUART SCHRADER Police didn't see these movements as organic, as justified, as based in real Injustice. STUART SCHRADER And that meant that these movements were treated as if they were an enemy plot. STUART SCHRADER For that reason, the tools they used to suppress those movements overseas, these were appropriate to use at home as well. LYNDON B. JOHNSON My fellow Americans. LYNDON B. JOHNSON We have endured a week such as no Nation should live through. GRAPHICS INSERTS EXPANSION LYNDON B. JOHNSON We need to know the answer, I think, to three basic questions about these riots. What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again? I'm tonight appointing a special advisory Commission on civil disorders. Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois has agreed to serve as chairman. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Lyndon Johnson U.S. President, 1967" IDENTIFIED MALE CAMERAMAN [INDISTINCT] PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RIOT REPORT" NIKHIL PAL SINGH The Kerner Commission report is a massive document. It's an important watershed in the history of American government. For the first time you have a really clear recognition of the way in which the policing of American society is deeply interwoven with the creation of a society that is divided along racial lines. And as the commission clearly states, separate and unequal. HARRY REASONER The report turned out to be a runaway bestseller. 740,000 copies were sold the first three weeks. More than a million are now in print. Bantam Books, which published the first edition, called it the fastest-selling paperback since "Valley of the Dolls," which it does not precisely resemble in style. GRAPHICS INSERTS "The Kerner Commission outlined several causes of the riots including widespread discrimination in employment, education, housing as well as racist police practices." IDENTIFIED MALE BOOK SELLER Riot books on the riot commission. On the riot commission. GRAPHICS INSERTS Brooklyn, 1968 HARRY REASONER Several young priests in Bushwick are active behind the scenes urging sales of the report as a first step by whites toward recognizing what the priests and the report see as the fundamental problem: white racism. HARRY REASONER What's going to be the answer to this report? What answer in the form of action in Washington? Here's Roger Mudd who covers Congress. Roger, what's the impact down there? ROGER MUDD As yet, nothing has come from the White House but silence. HARRY REASONER Why is that? There hasn't been a word. ROGER MUDD Well, I think this is perhaps calculated. The president wants time for the report to soak in and also he has some fairly precise political calculations he must make. ROGER MUDD A couple things ought to be remembered about the Congress. That the Congress is made up mainly of white middle-class, uh, uh, small town America. So already you've got in certain resistance to uh, to such a report as this pointing the finger at these men on the hill as the main cause of riots. MICOL SEIGEL The fact is that the Kerner Commission had something for everyone. For people more on the left, it had lots of analysis of the root causes of crime and for people on the right, it had lots of recommendations for shoring up policing and police techniques. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Micol Seigel Professor, Indiana University, Bloomington Author, Violence Work" GRAPHICS INSERTS "The Commission recommended massive job creation, affordable housing and increased police surveillance and personnel to suppress urban disorder." MICOL SEIGEL The suggestions on the right overwhelmed the analysis on the left. Johnson really ran with the recommendations, especially in the Kerner report for more police. IDENTIFIED MALE NEWS REPORTER 9 Crime is usually considered a big city problem. Now suburbia is feeling the impact of soaring crime rates. Lakewood, California uses helicopters the way most cities use prowl cars. Called Project Skyknight, the Lakewood experiment links the car on the ground with the policeman in the air. MICOL SEIGEL The federal government infusion of cash grossly expanded the number of people who were hired as uniformed and civilian police. GRAPHICS INSERTS "NEW WEAPONS AGAINST CRIME" IDENTIFIED MALE SKY KNIGHT OFFICER 136, this is Sky Knight. We're rolling from Compton and Downey. MICOL SEIGEL And it grew the technology and the material that they used for policing. GRAPHICS INSERTS "New laws passed in 1968 sped up the distribution of surplus military gear to police departments of all sizes." GRAPHICS INSERTS "This included tear gas, riot helmets, bulletproof vests and helicopters." IDENTIFIED MALE SKY KNIGHT OFFICER 2 This is Sky Knight, I have them now. I'm going to affect the stop. IDENTIFIED MALE SKY KNIGHT OFFICER 2 [INDISTINCT] KEEANGA_YAMAHTTA_TAYLOR Johnson's intervention is not just about the professionalization of the police, but it really inserts the federal government, um, in policing, local policing in an unprecedented way. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Professor, Northwestern University Author, Race for Profit" LYNDON B. JOHNSON The American people have had enough of rising crime and lawlessness in this country. GRAPHICS INSERTS "RAMSEY CLARK ATTORNEY GENERAL" LYNDON B. JOHNSON The people also recognize that the national government can and the national government should help the cities and the states in their war on crime. WESLEY LOWERY When people invoke war in general, what that does is to ask the public to authorize the government to do whatever is necessary, take any step as necessary. It's a way of framing the issue to ask people not to push for too much oversight too much accountability, to allow police the license to do anything, uh, and to trust that they will judge that appropriately because in theory they're fighting an existential threat against the community that they were charged with protecting. HOMER S. CUMMINGS The problem of crime has become increasingly serious. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Homer S. Cummings U.S. Attorney General, 1934" HOMER S. CUMMINGS It is freighted with graver menace to the nation than could possibly have been true only a few decades ago. J. EDGAR HOOVER Crime has a partner in forming the common denominator of a breakdown in moral behavior. GRAPHICS INSERTS "J. Edgar Hoover FBI Director, 1962" LYNDON B. JOHNSON We will continue to press for laws which would protect our citizens from violence and our work has just begun. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Lyndon Johnson U.S. President, 1967" RICHARD NIXON Time is running out for the merchants of crime and corruption in American society. The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in the United States of America. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Richard Nixon U.S. President, 1974" RONALD REAGAN Our ranks have increased from the original 55 men in 1925 to the present complement of almost 4,000 men and women. Again, I commend you for manning the thin blue line that holds back a jungle which threatens to reclaim this clearing we call civilization. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Ronald Reagan U.S. President, 1981" GEORGE H.W. BUSH Last February I asked for a 700 million dollar increase in the drug budget for the coming year. We have found an immediate need for another billion and a half dollars. With this added 2.2 billion, our 1990 drug budget totals almost eight billion dollars. GRAPHICS INSERTS "George H.W. Bush U.S. President, 1988" BILL CLINTON I came here to say that in my balanced budget proposal to the Congress we will have nearly 1.3 billion dollars to renew our community policing program. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Bill Clinton U.S. President, 1999" MICHAEL CHERTOFF The homeland security grant program funds state and local governments for planning, organization, equipping, training, and exercising against the possibility of terrorist attacks. GRAPHICS INSERTS "MICHAEL CHERTOFF Homeland Security Secretary" BARACK OBAMA That's why from the very beginning my administration has been dedicated to giving state and local law enforcement the resources they need to get the job done. So far 3.5 billion dollars of the Recovery Act has gone to support local law enforcement. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Barack Obama U.S. President, 2015" DONALD TRUMP I will fight to protect you. I am your president of law and order. Today I have strongly recommended to every Governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Donald Trump U.S. President, 2020" JOE BIDEN We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It's to fund the police. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Joseph Biden U.S. President, 2022" JOE BIDEN Fund them. Fund them. GRAPHICS INSERTS "In 2023, the U.S. government allocated at least $129.2 billion for law enforcement, policing and corrections." YANCE FORD Status quo. YANCE FORD The existing state of affairs, especially regarding social or political issues. YANCE FORD Police expansion has been the outcome of every domestic war and moment of social unrest in US history. YANCE FORD When the status quo is resisted, that resistance is put down with overwhelming force. YANCE FORD Armed backlash, an expansion of police to return us to the status quo. GRAPHICS INSERTS STATUS QUO CHARLIE ADAMS I'm looking at uh, so I want cameras at um...McDonald's and J- Is that J.J.'s Fish House? In between there, then I need one back up at Merlin's. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Charlie Adams Police Inspector Minneapolis Police Department, 4th Precinct" CHARLIE ADAMS Well, they're dealing drugs right now. So I'm- I'm looking right at it. Well, I don't know if they're throwing needles. Are they still on heroin there? Or are they selling weed? These are your dudes I'm looking at. CHARLIE ADAMS I wish I had them on every- every- every corner, you know? Because they've been very helpful with uh, you know, I wouldn't say deterring crime because most people don't realize they're up there. We're not trying to keep it a secret. There are some- some people on the council last year didn't like the whole Big Brother watching you theory, right? You know, but with all these cameras around in the city, it's been real helpful for us getting our- our bad guys and- and young ladies off the street. CHARLIE ADAMS This is always recorded, right? The beauty of this thing is we know what vehicle's involved. We got a black SUV, we've got four African-American males who have been up there for hours. I've watched them do a hand dab and we can go right up to them and- and- and snatch them, we have probable cause to do it, right? So nobody innocent gets caught up in this. Hand dab - A casual form of hand shake. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER So I'm going to read our mission, uh, say what I'm hoping we can do today and then we'll go around and check in. So uh, we're the Police and Black Men Project. Our mission is...we're a group of Minneapolis police officers and Black community members building relationships of trust to promote community safety. CHARLIE ADAMS My thing is the rise of carjackings, right? And the thing is our car- most of our carjackers, probably 99% are juveniles, right? You- it's rare you get an adult doing that but we do get 'em. Our youngest carjacker was nine, right? And we got one young lady, she's probably 16 now, but she's probably got over 20 carjackings under her belt, felony aside. So we were talking- they were talking about the revolving door of the- of the Juvenile Justice System, right? You know, we don't want to criminalize our kids, right? But we don't want to understand when they are criminals, so we continue to let them go out there and do worse things, right? IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER 2 Yep. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER 2 Mhm. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER 2 Mm-hm. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER 2 [stammers] So here's the problem, is that what's happening is a failure of the criminal legal system, Charlie. So keep in mind like- like from my vantage point, everything needs to be transformed. CHARLIE ADAMS When are these...these girls are going to end up getting killed, they're going to end up killing somebody, if they haven't already. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER 2 But what's insane to me is just that we can't figure out how to get these kids on a zoom call in front of a judge to get them assigned to some sort of intervention. That tells you what they think about our kids, because you want to know what's happening with white kids right now? They don't got- They're getting pre-trial interventions. Pre-trial interventions. They're- They're sending them to treatment, they're sending them to all kinds of- this- this fool that shot DeShawn, I'm sure at some point that dude got a pre-trial intervention. Like, the- the reality is like, that is what's- that is how our criminal legal system fails us. It means you can't even do your job. IDENTIFIED MAN They're sending them to treatment. CHARLIE ADAMS So, what do we do? It goes back to we got a bunch of kids, African-Americans locked up in the county home school and maybe that's not right. We shouldn't have them up there. But we're not even checking their behavior, right? IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER 2 Yeah. CHARLIE ADAMS I think they're locked up for their behavior, not because of who they are. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE AND BLACK MEN PROJECT SPEAKER 2 We can talk about what the intervention should be, right? Like, I'm cool with that conversation. The problem that we're having today is that the process to get an intervention is not being given to our kids. And our criminal legal system thinks that we just- just let them out with no intervention and see and sure that they've- that they don't reoffend and it's bullshit. They're setting our kids up to fail. They're setting you up to fail. They're setting all of us up to fail and the same shit doesn't happen in Edina. YANCE FORD Every arrest, every discretionary stop-and-frisk, every moment of police violence illustrates the paradox of police power. YANCE FORD It is a vast institution, extending across 18,000 police departments. YANCE FORD But it is most tangible through close individual encounters. BAHER AZMY Again on this theme of domination, Ray Kelly said stop-and-frisk is designed to "instill fear" in Black and brown kids that they should not go out with weapons. It's not a response to crime. It's a form of domination and control. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Baher Azmy Legal Director, Center for Constitutional Rights Professor of Law, Seton Hall University" YANCE FORD Day to day, the institution of policing doesn't have a single face, but the individuals that get caught in the machine of policing do. NILESH V By 2008 I was what's known as a truant, um, on my way to being pushed out of school, but I guess my life was just you know, skipping school, mostly. Home life was rough. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Nilesh V Former New York City Resident" NILESH V School life was rough and I would take it out by just like not being there, avoiding all responsibilities and everything and because of that, um, I sort of got known around Flushing. I think I was getting stopped and frisked a couple times a week. At least once a day somebody was getting stopped. There was like 30 or 40 of us in one little friend circle. "We can't go around Bowne Park today because cops are there." We just, uh, "Navinder already got stopped" or "Asha got stopped" or something. It can- it can seem like a friendly thing even sometimes or it can be incredibly aggressive. I think I'm more upset with the friendly ones. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 What's your name? IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET Hops. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 Huh? IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET Hops. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 And what's his name? IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET Eddie. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 Come on over here, man. IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET Where you going, Eddie? IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 If I see him again, he's gonna have a problem, you know. Okay? Eddie, you better come on, Eddie. IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET I know. Mhm. NILESH V It was routine at that point, you know? I knew them by their names, they knew me by my name. Uh, it happened to me once on a bench, a park bench while I was reading a book. That particular day I remember just thinking, you know, nothing- nothing of it. It was just there's nothing she could probably- possibly have on me. Seeing her, I was like, "Okay. Hi, Amanda, how you doing?" You know, "You having a good day?" She says, "Yeah, Nilesh, I'm having a good day. Uh, put your hands on the bench.' IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 Well, you want to go down to the station and we'll talk about it? IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET No. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 Alright then, you wanna tell me your name? IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET Eddie. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 Eddie what? IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET Smith. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 Oh, come on, come on, come on, man. Come on. Why don't you go sit in the car? I'm not even going to hold you. Go sit in the car, man. IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET For real, Eddie Sm-- IDENTIFIED MALE ON STREET And go down to the station? IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 3 Go sit in the car. NILESH V When you have that kind of relationship with cops, every single time, every minute feels like it was ten, you know? A five-minute stop feels like thirty. You become fucking submissive real fast too, you know? And I was a dick. [REACTION] Because, you know what? Fuck you and fuck the cops and I-- Again, I wasn't- I wasn't- I wasn't some fucking some- some- some violent fuck or something. I'm just some skinny ass Indian kid. NILESH V It just slowly goes from like this guilty, "oh my God, I'm- I'm being stopped by the police. I must be a terrible person," to... NILESH V Well, this is what I get. This is- for being me, you know? It and you sort of just like identify with that sort of feeling. That- that sort of profile that they put on you. And if you ask me what that profile was, I don't know but I felt like I was some terrible criminal. I felt like I was some hood rat fucking crack slinging piece of shit, you know? I did, I did, I did. It genuinely felt like that's the kind of person I was from the way they treated me and it was just like well, I guess... NILESH V I've never done any of those things. [REACTION] Um, I swear but... NILESH V This constant little push, just down. It's a little- just a little push. It's just constant and- and- and eventually, you either become too tired or you get a little too angry or a little too emotional and you end up fucking dead, you know? NIKHIL PAL SINGH One of the examples that I always find super interesting to think about is in New York City in the period during stop-and-frisk, which was almost kind of like a more mobile and flexible form of managing, not spatial separation into different parts of the city - although that's still exists - but managing how people move throughout the city. GRAPHICS INSERTS "The New York City Police Department made 4.4 million stops under the stop-and-frisk policy between 2004 and 2012." GRAPHICS INSERTS More than 80 percent of those stopped were Black and Latino. BAHER AZMY Weapons were uncovered 1.5 percent of the time the- the- the gun recovery rate: .1 %. This is how preposterously faulty this program was. NIKHIL PAL SINGH This in some ways was purely kind of algorithmic kind of racial project when you think about what it- what it-what it actually was, in which the police are going around watching where different kinds of bodies are in motion in the city and taking it upon themselves to literally seize those bodies in a moment. Stop-and-frisk, right? Making them suspects for being in the place that they are. And you almost could think of that as kind of like a mobile segregation project. You know, we're just going to move around and make sure- we're not going to say people can't be here, be there but some people are going to always be imagined as potentially out of place, out of where they should be. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Nikhil Pal Singh Professor, New York University Author, Race and America's Long War" UNIDENTIFIED MALE NYPD CAPTAIN Guess what? I don't tolerate the shit out there. He went in and two of his pals went in. All right, so we gotta keep that corner clear. Um, I think what they- they do is they- they come out, they hang out a few minutes. If they don't get moved, then they all start coming out. You gotta get them moving right from the start because if you get too big of a crowd there, you know, they're going to get out of control and they're gonna think that they own the block. We own the block, they don't own the block, alright? They might live there, but we own the block. All right? We own the streets here. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Secret Recording of NYPD Captain Entered as Evidence in Stop and Frisk Trial" BURNEDIN SUBS "Guess what? I don't tolerate the shit out there. He went in and two of his pals went in." BURNEDIN SUBS All right, so we gotta keep that corner clear. BURNEDIN SUBS "What they do, is they come out. They hang out for a few minutes." BURNEDIN SUBS If they don't get moved, then they all start coming out. BURNEDIN SUBS "You got to get them moving right from the start because if you get too big of a crowd there" BURNEDIN SUBS "they're going to get out of control and think they own the block." BURNEDIN SUBS We own the block, they don't own the block. BURNEDIN SUBS "They might live there, but we own the block. We own the streets here." IDENTIFIED FEMALE ON STREET [REACTION] IDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER In the end, it won't be a knife or a gun but when this woman throws her shoe that will lead to an arrest. IDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER Because Flynn thinks it was a rock or a brick. JULIAN GO To demand unqualified compliance, which is what the police - the man - goes against what I think the majority of Americans believe our society to be, which is a democratic society where you don't have to be subjected to essentially authoritarian commands. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Julian Go Professor of Sociology, The University of Chicago Author, Patterns of Empire" JULIAN GO This used to be referred to as ATM: Ask, Tell, Make. First I ask someone to do it, then I tell them to do it, and if they don't do it at that point, I physically make them do it. JULIAN GO You know, when- when we watch television shows and there's an authoritarian government or�or we read about an authoritarian government where citizens are expected to offer unqualified compliance and obedience to some other power, we laugh at that and say, "Oh, isn't that horrible? That's tyranny. Luckily, we Americans are free." PAUL BUTLER A chokehold is a maneuver that some police officers use to try to get you to do what they want you to do, but you cannot do it because you cannot breathe. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Paul Butler Professor, Georgetown Law Author, Chokehold" IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE TRAINING INSTRUCTOR Obviously in any violent confrontation on the street, it's difficult for the officer to remember where the blood vessels lie in the neck, where the nerves are. GRAPHICS INSERTS NBC NEWS WALLA [INDISTINCT] GRAPHICS INSERTS ON SCENE GRAPHICS INSERTS "POLICE OFFICER SLAMS STUDENT San Antonio, Texas" IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE TRAINING INSTRUCTOR On the other hand, it is our belief, particularly from the medical advisors' side and from your training instructors, that the more one practices and the more one becomes familiar with the underlying anatomy, the less chance there is for injury and disability. It's my belief after reviewing a number of cases that these uh, special holds, uh when applied properly carry very little risk, and that is the reason why we believe so... ERIC GARNER I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. MICOL SEIGEL People who are exercising the police power are doing a really specific thing. They are translating this essential core piece of state power, the ability to claim the monopoly on legitimate violence into practice. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Micol Seigel Professor, Indiana University, Bloomington Author, Violence Work" IDENTIFIED FEMALE IN CAR What? IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 4 Open the goddamn door. Get out the car, get out the car. IDENTIFIED FEMALE IN CAR Why did you open it? IDENTIFIED FEMALE IN CAR No, I- I don't know what's going-- IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 4 Get out the car, get out the car. IDENTIFIED FEMALE IN CAR Okay, stop the car. Stop! Stop! Okay, okay, okay, I'm getting out, I'm getting out. Stop! [REACTION] Stop! Stop! I'm getting out, stop! Stop. I'm trying to get out. What the fuck! Stop, I'm getting out! IDENTIFIED FEMALE IN CAR [REACTION] YANCE FORD Stop here. YANCE FORD Okay. Roll black. YANCE FORD If I stop this violence here, is it less obscene? YANCE FORD I've put it in the blind spot. YANCE FORD But how much can the blind spot hold? DONALD WILLIAMS He's not responsive right now, bro. ALISHA OYLER Does he have a pulse? DONALD WILLIAMS No, bro, look at him. He's not responsive right now, bro. ALISHA OYLER [INDISTINCT] ALISHA OYLER Check for a pulse. DONALD WILLIAMS Bro, are you serious? You're trying to sit here while he's dead, bro? ALISHA OYLER Let me see a pulse! DONALD WILLIAMS Is he breathing right now? Check his pulse. Check his pulse! Check his pulse, Tom. Tom, check his pulse. Tom, check his pulse, bro. Bro, check his pulse, bro. You bogus, bro. You bogus. Don't do drugs? Bro, what is that? What you think that is? You- So you call what he's doing okay? You call what he's doing okay? You call- you call what you doing okay? THOMAS LANE How long are we gonna have this conversation? Okay. THOMAS LANE Alright. ALISHA OYLER I'm telling you right now to check his pulse. THOMAS LANE Don't do drugs, guys. THOMAS LANE Get back. THOMAS LANE Are you really a firefighter's-- ALISHA OYLER Yes, I am from Minneapolis. DONALD WILLIAMS Bro, you- you- you call you- think that's okay? Check his pulse. Tom, check his pulse. Check-- the man ain't moved yet, bro. The man ain't moved yet, bro. THOMAS LANE Sidewalk, then. ALISHA OYLER Show me his pulse. ALISHA OYLER Check it right fucking now. THOMAS LANE Get back on the sidewalk. PAUL BUTLER It's hard to prosecute police officers for killing people of color because usually it's legal. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Paul Butler Professor, Georgetown Law Author, Chokehold." IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 5 Get your hands in the air! Do it now. Turn around! Turn around! IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 5 Get down! PAUL BUTLER The Supreme Court has given the police what I call super powers to racially profile, to arrest and to kill. BARRY FRIEDMAN In terms of police use of force, Graham v. Connor is the case. The Supreme Court held that the police can use force so long as your average police officer would think it was an appropriate situation in which to use force. That's the rule. And it is extraordinary how many police departments don't want any regulation of the use of force other than that. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Barry Friedman Director, NYU Policing Project Author, Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission" WESLEY LOWERY Now what has happened for decades is police unions have aggressively used the collective bargaining process to load up their contracts and in some cases, to load up state laws with provisions that are not just generous but that bend over backwards to help police officers avoid accountability. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Wesley Lowery Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist and Author" IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 6 I guess it was this house over here. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 7 Yeah. Are you muted or on? BURNEDIN SUBS Are you muted or on? IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 6 I'm muted but I can... Muted. BURNEDIN SUBS I'm muted but I can... BURNEDIN SUBS Fancy seeing you all here. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 7 Fancy seeing you all here. IDENTIFIED FEMALE NEWS REPORTER Questions are swirling tonight over why Sacramento Police Officers muted their body cameras. Stephon Clark SHOOTING IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 7 Are you muted? IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 6 I'm off, all the way off. BURNEDIN SUBS I'm off. All the way off. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 7 Okay. REDDITT HUDSON Police unions come to the table and tell government officials, who are largely beholden to them at this point, who kowtow and bow down to them, "This is what we need. We need, you know, 24 to 48 hours before this officer even has to make a statement about whatever he or she did. Up to and including gunning that person down. We need disciplinary records kept secret. We need records to be cleared, uh, after a certain period of time, as quick as six months. We need that whole- that whole record gone." And this is the kind of thing that allows, um, officers to escape accountability time and time again and don't even talk about qualified immunity. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Redditt Hudson Former Police Officer Co-Founder National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice" GRAPHICS INSERTS "Qualified immunity, created by the Supreme Court, shields police officers from civil liability, even when they break the law." WALLA [INDISTINCT] IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 8 Just stay back. KIM Stop! IDENTIFIED MALE IN CAR Ah, she shot me. IDENTIFIED FEMALE IN CAR 2 Please, please, stop. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 8 You did? KIM Yes! IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 8 Kay. KIM [INDISTINCT] KIM I shot him, oh my god! IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 8 Kim, sit down. WESLEY LOWERY The system of policing has largely been constructed outside of the view of the average American and the rules that govern American policing have been determined in many cases by the police themselves and their lobbies. And what that means is that the police have been able to codify, to double and triple down on their power, time and time and time again. BARRY FRIEDMAN In terms of law, we have very, very, very few national standards. Almost none. And we have very, very few, remarkably, state standards either. And very few municipal standards. So the standards by which the police operate are largely set by the police, police department policies and their professional associations. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Barry Friedman Director, NYU Policing Project Author, Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission" CHRISTY LOPEZ We're talking about ensuring that what police do is lawful and when they- when they behave in a way that's not lawful, they're held accountable to that. But the biggest problem with policing today is that most of the harm that they�that policing causes�is perfectly legal. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Christy Lopez Professor, Georgetown Law Former Deputy Chief, USDOJ Civil Rights Division" CHRISTY LOPEZ [REACTION] YANCE FORD Um... CHRISTY LOPEZ It's scary, right? [REACTION] That's what I mean when I say it's on us, right? Because we're the ones who make it legal. I'm not trying to- I'm not trying to absolve the res- the police from responsibility. But the fact is that most of the harm that they cause is perfectly legal. YANCE FORD So I'm interested in the, um... YANCE FORD I'm interested in the "we'-ness of it all. You've both made similar points about the laws that we let the police enforce and the things that we let the police do and I'm sitting here and I'm like, "I don't let the police do- I don't want the police to do that. I didn't know that was legal." Um, am I part of this "we'? So if you could try to contextualize who it is that actually enables the legislators to walk away from their responsibility, um, to tell the police in a more robust way what to do and how to do it, that would be great. CHRISTY LOPEZ [REACTION] CHRISTY LOPEZ Mhm. CHRISTY LOPEZ Mm. REDDITT HUDSON Anybody in any position of authority who moves to hold police accountable faces a challenge, from the police department and the other defenders of the status quo in whatever environment that you're in and usually that's the same suspect wherever you are. Corporate America, moneyed interests. Just look at the historic role of police in America. They put down the labor unions in the north at their- in their formative stage. They owned slave patrols in the South in their formative stage, always protecting the interest of those who would exploit the masses, uh, to their profit. GRAPHICS INSERTS "Redditt Hudson Former Police Officer Co-Founder National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice" MICOL SEIGEL When you think about politicians and police, you are thinking about individual people - actual people - as opposed to systems and those people are often acting in the interest of a system that they don't explicitly support, that they might even critique. MICOL SEIGEL But the weight of their work goes toward reinforcing, buttressing that system. And it is a system that privileges a class elite, a racial elite, people who are free of social stigma. And yet there are many people involved in shoring it up who find themselves on the wrong sides of all of those divides. CHARLIE ADAMS You know, policing is hard now. It's real hard. You know, every day I'm just kind of like, you know, I'm kind of just tired, you know. CHARLIE ADAMS Last year a 12-year-old was shot. Right here, where you-- Right, you see where he was shot fighting with another kid from up the street. I've never- when I pulled up here, [REACTION] I've never had somebody tell me who did it so quickly. You know, because they're still people I grew up with who live down there, you know? YANCE FORD What happened to that 12-year-old? CHARLIE ADAMS He died. BARRY FRIEDMAN We have many really vulnerable communities in this country. And so you go to those communities and you ask people, "Do you want to abolish the police?" And many people will say "No, we'd like...we'd like more police." On the other hand, you go to those communities and you talk to people about how they are policed and they're angry. And again, that's our failing. There are ways to help those communities other than through aggressive carceral policing. It's just that we don't do it. CHARLIE ADAMS I was always a proponent of "more Black cops, we would have less problems. Get us a Black Chief, we'll have less problems." I believed that for 30 something years, right? CHARLIE ADAMS I don't think that's the case. CHARLIE ADAMS Well, I've lost a lot for just standing up for Black cops on this department. It just makes me wonder sometimes, what if I was just one of those guys who just kept my mouth shut and did my job every day? Where would I be, right? YANCE FORD Charlie Adams has been a police officer since 1986 and has no plans to retire. YANCE FORD He wants to finish his mission as an inspector with the 4th precinct. IDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER CHOIR [sings] Oh! My eyes have seen the glory of the co-- IDENTIFIED MALE ANNOUNCER We began as thirteen states along the Atlantic Seaboard. We carried Freedom with us. NIKHIL PAL SINGH If the polis and the polity are the self-governing democratic subjects, the police are the shadow force that says, "We exist to assert authority when you can no longer govern yourselves." NIKHIL PAL SINGH "We exist to control and regulate violence in the society by arrogating all of that violence to ourselves." REDDITT HUDSON Consistently, the response of law enforcement to Black demands for respect for our lives and our homes and our families and our kids, it's always, "Yeah, fuck that. Try this. Try this force and see how you like that." MAR. 3 1991 NIKHIL PAL SINGH When you think about the police systemically and you think about how the police have grown up in the United States into this massive force, when you think about not just the police but the network of prisons, the numbers of people who get arrested, the numbers of people who have felony convictions, all that flows from that - all the people who are related to people who are punished, policed and in prison - you're looking at the majority of people in this country, now. Not the minority, the majority of people in this country. We are an over-policed society and that over-policing means that the relationship of the police to the people has become entirely skewed. NIKHIL PAL SINGH Instead of growing the numbers of people who can be seen as part of this self-governing Democratic world of people trying to figure out how to get along and resolve their conflicts through politics, through protest, instead becomes increasingly shrunken to a core that can be allowed to go about their business and to an increasingly large group who are under some kind of police supervision. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 9 [INDISTINCT] Exit 161. IDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER 10 Okay, I see it. JULIAN GO One of the first things fascist regimes and totalitarian regimes do is empower police. IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 4 Oh! JULIAN GO One route is that we actually enhance the police power, this fourth branch of government. We enhance the powers of the police and that spells doom for democracy. NIKHIL PAL SINGH You know, I like to say sometimes that, think of the most powerful person you can think of in the United States, be it Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, if you think they're still in charge of everything secretly, right? None of those people can pull out a gun and shoot you in the chest. Every single sworn police officer in the United States of America has the right, has the power to pull out a gun and shoot you. WALLA [INDISTINCT] IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 5 He is bleeding! He's bleeding out of his ears! He's bleeding out of his ear! Get him outta here! WALLA [INDISTINCT] IDENTIFIED MALE IN RIOT GEAR 5 What the fuck are you walking up on? NIKHIL PAL SINGH This question of losing our democracy is not going to have anything to do with some kind of right-wing demagogue like Donald Trump. It's going to have to do with this deep long history in which we fail to address the systemic problem of growing police at the expense of growing and developing our Democratic reflexes and the supports that we need to operate as a self-governing people. WESLEY LOWERY Here we are. WESLEY LOWERY A decade after Trayvon Martin, almost a decade after Michael Brown...And the American people have to make a decision. WESLEY LOWERY If we're going to engage these issues and have a real conversation about upending these systems - which is what many people have said they want to do - then folks are going to have to really engage on these questions because these systems are tough. They're hard. They're complicated. They're powerful. WESLEY LOWERY Frederick Douglass said, you know, "Power concedes nothing without a demand," and the power that is American policing hasn't conceded anything. WESLEY LOWERY If anything it's doubled and tripled down on that power. WALLA [INDISTINCT] Move! Move! Move! YANCE FORD Power concedes nothing without a demand. YANCE FORD It never did and it never will. YANCE FORD Frederick Douglass. MAIN TITLE POWER