SOUND OF THE POLICE
The community organizer Rod Adams speaking at Minneapolis City Hall, in a scene from the documentary “Sound of the Police.” Credit…Firelight Footage/ABC/Hulu
Sound of the Police is a new documentary by Stanley Nelson that puts the violence and killings by police of Black people in its historical context while taking us up to the present time, starting off and ending up with the police killing of Amir Locke as he slept on his couch in 2022. Nelson tells it like it is using footage, analysis, and testimony to make a strong case at the rational level. Of course, that is not enough, so he also has parents of the victims make an emotional appeal to us to spare their children. As fellow human beings, can’t we relate to what they have gone through? Can’t we resolve to make sure that it doesn’t keep happening again and again.
Nelson has made many notable documentaries and won several awards. His Freedom Riders (2010) brought alive one of the greatest chapters of American history when freedom fighters nonviolently took on the American South at its most ugly and brutal, setting an example of luminous courage in the face of evil. But now 60 years later, there is no story to tell of bravery and heroism leading to less white denial of the truth about Black people’s daily lives and experience and eventually to political change. Instead, we see repetitive killings of unarmed Black people, mostly young and male, with almost no attempts to reform the system and to deter police violence. Black parents and children fear the police, view them as an occupying force, and wonder if they will be next on the mounting list of victims.
The documentary tells us where we have been and how we got here. There were the slave patrols that were like a police force in the South and every Black person without a pass could be taken in and manhandled with impunity. How different is that from today when every Black person is seen as a threat and as suspect by police? Guilty until proven innocent. In 1919, there were white riots in which large numbers of Black people were killed and their property destroyed while police looked on and nobody was arrested. In the 20th century there were numerous lynchings in the South, often with the active cooperation of police. In the North, police have made sure that Black people do not go outside of their ghettos. The increasing numbers of Black middle-class people, though, makes this more difficult to enforce.
This history gives us all the evidence we need to know that racism is systemic, very deeply rooted in the American past and in the psyches of white people. There is also a brief allusion to the fact that police culture is a fundamental problem. After all, even Black police enforce the racist norms once they become part of that culture, although a few do resist and try to reform it from the inside.
However, the documentary doesn’t tell us why systemic racism exists, only going so far as to make connections between the prejudices of white individuals and the ways in which the police treat Black people. Explaining how the larger system works and is maintained and the role of the police within it would take another documentary. It would involve a more intellectual and analytical approach, taking us into the intersection of race and class issues. As a result it would lack the emotional appeal of this very compelling portrait of where we are and where we have been.
The filmmakers have spared no effort in bringing together the very best commentators on the nature of the history of policing, how it is carried out today, and the positive and glowing images of policing that the media have long presented to us. They explain how the police unions have successfully resisted all efforts at reform while leaving out the role of politicians who stir up racial fears as a means of gaining votes.
These experts also note how white people feel comfortable with police and believe that police are on their side, whereas Black people feel the opposite. One of the most revealing moments is when James Forman Jr. who is very light-skinned tells us that when he is with white friends everyone is casual and relaxed around police, but among Black friends, they are tense whenever police are around.
How do we get out of this terrible situation that is intolerable for Black people? The knowledge put forward here is not new. Emotional pleas to activate the humanity of white people have been made so many times since the days of the nonviolent struggles for freedom. We are all in this mess together and if the powerful and those in whom they instill fear of Black people could access their higher selves, it would be better for them as well as everyone else. The filmmakers should be commended for continuing to try to get through to them even after so much water has passed under the bridge. Those of us who have seen through the game but are still infected with the racism with which we were brought up, can always benefit too from being reminded of just how things actually stand.
But as we look for answers, it might be worth going back to Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” an anthem of the early 1960s, the time of the freedom riders.
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
And how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
