If you watch just one thing on Netflix this weekend, do it Force, a new documentary that traces the history of policing in the United States.
Police brutality came to the forefront of Americans’ minds in the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man whom police officers strangled to death by kneeling on his neck and back for 9 minutes. and 29 seconds. . Floyd’s murder, which serves as the documentary’s climax, clearly inspired filmmaker Yance Ford to pursue the project.
But in the weeks leading up to the film’s release on Netflix today, student protesters on college campuses across the country have been arrested en masse. From Columbia University Did you call the police to arrest more than 100 peaceful student protesters last month, officers videos fucking teenagers through the air and criticizing university economics professors to the ground spread like wildfire on social networks. It’s undeniable that Floyd’s murder still looms large in the American consciousness, but the overwhelming and immediate police response to student protests in support of Palestine is just another reason that seems more vital than ever to understanding how, exactly, police officers Americans achieved this level of power over civilians.
ForceIt is director Yance Ford’s follow-up to his 2017 Oscar-nominated documentary.strong island. Before the film begins, Ford, in a dream-like voice-over, asks his audience to be “curious or at least suspicious” about what they are about to see: an acknowledgment of the highly political, controversial and partisan nature . on the issue of police surveillance. But it’s hard to imagine that anyone who actually watches the film could find any holes in Ford’s meticulously researched, carefully crafted, airtight argument: Police power in America was born of racism and classism, and has spiraled completely out of control.
Through interviews with prestigious college professors, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, a black Minneapolis police inspector, victims of police harassment, and more, Force guides viewers through the murky origins of American policing. The story they tell draws a clear line between the capture of runaway slaves, the displacement of indigenous peoples, and the containing of labor strikes (all of which occurred before the first publicly funded police force was created in Boston in 1838) to modernity. daytime surveillance.
From there, Ford delves into the history of military colonialism abroad, including a crash course on August Vollmer, a police chief who brought to the United States “counterinsurgency” techniques he learned as a military officer in the Philippines. The Police, the film argues, began treating the American public the same way the American military treats its perceived foreign enemies. Can’t stop thinking about the recent image of hordes of NYPD officers marching, military style, towards the Columbia University campus.
Canit really finds its footing in the last third of the film, when the history lesson finally catches up with the state of modern policing. Ford has no shortage of gruesome images of modern police brutality to prove his point. It all culminates in the infamous footage of George Floyd’s murder, which Ford censors in such a way that Floyd is not seen while he dies on screen. But civilians are seen and heard begging the officers to stop, take his pulse, and get him help.
As a history lesson, Force It is a clear and complete chronology of how policing in this country emerged. But more urgently, the film functions as a warning: a terrible plea for American citizens to realize that, with every increase in the police budget and every new officer on the street, we are one step closer to living under an authoritarian regime. The greatest threat to democracy, to freedom, maintains an interviewee, is not Donald Trump, nor Joe Biden, nor Hillary Clinton, nor any other politician. It’s the police.
