Driven to contain threats to social order, American policing has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, it can be described by one word: power.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 Police power is immediate power.
00:04 It's right now.
00:05 Do what I told you to do, right now.
00:08 Or else, I decide what happens next.
00:13 Policing is inextricably linked to the racial history of this country.
00:23 Police associated with colonizers, wealth and whiteness.
00:28 So police targeted people marked as non-white.
00:31 Slaves, indigenous and working class people.
00:35 Police have been able to double down on their power time and time again.
00:40 There are a lot of people that feel that policing is out of control.
00:44 But it's also the case that there's horrific crime and it also is out of control.
00:49 Policing is hard now. It's real hard.
00:57 We deal with a lot of murders.
00:59 In the United States, police power is essentially unregulated.
01:03 Anybody who moves to hold police accountable faces a challenge.
01:08 The biggest problem with policing today is that most of the harm that policing causes
01:13 is perfectly legal.
01:17 Get up hun, get up!
01:18 How did we get here?
01:34 The question breaks down as soon as you ask it.
01:38 We may share this country but is your America and my America the same place?
01:47 Has it ever been?
01:48 Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand."
01:53 And the power that is American policing hasn't conceded anything.
01:58 In this kind of democracy, who is more powerful?
02:02 The people or the police?
02:07 Police.
02:08 [Police siren]
02:11 [Police siren]
02:13 [Police siren]
02:16 [Gunshot]
02:17 [Gunshot]
02:18 [Gunshot]
02:19 [Silence]