A candid discussion took place among high-profile writers, activists and policing officials at an invite-only screening of ‘Peace Officer,’ hosted by the Philadelphia Daily News.
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A documentary about police militarization that opens today in several U.S cities, including in Philadelphia at the Landmark Ritz in the Bourse Building in Old City, fits equally into the horror genre as it does into the category of informative and educational.
By design, ‘Peace Officer’ is not intended to terrify audiences, but rather engage them in hot topics like transparency and efficiency of police shooting investigations; the militarization of police departments and the disparities in treatment cops and citizens receive from government.
But one horrid aspect of the nearly two-hour film is rooted in irony: the creator of Utah’s first SWAT team, Mr. William Lawrence, an elected sheriff in the 1970s, lost his son-in-law to the hands of his bulky, dangerous creation.
The cause of death given to Mr. Lawrence, now 70 years of age, was suicide via a gun blast to the chest. But Mr. Lawrence is skilled at re-creating crime scenes, so after he did his meticulous analysis of the area where more than 100 bullets was aimed at Mr. Brian Wood, he learned that a lie was told, and that the deadly shot which killed his son-in-law came from the gun of an officer.
Mr. Lawrence also performed these detailed investigations on behalf of families who lost loved ones to police violence and in every case, he was able to uncover evidence – like shell casings – that went overlooked by police that he labeled either incompetent or corrupt.
Every time Mr. Lawrence found a shell casing missed by police – like, for example, at a crime scene where a cop was fatally wounded – or disproved their claim through his due diligence, a heavy sigh of disappointment came from Mr. Kelvyn Anderson, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission and a stickler for transparent and thorough police investigations.
“I was floored to see him find that type of evidence in what’s supposed to be an official investigation,” said Mr. Anderson, who noted that for years his agency has tried to answer questions posed by grieving families, but “we don’t have access to materials.”
“I was frightened,” interjected SEPTA’s Chief of Transit Police, Mr. Thomas Nestel, who was the only representative of law enforcement at the screening, which was hosted by the Philadelphia Daily News. “The shooting of a police officer is the most intense crime scene there is,” he continued, “for this guy to find 10s of 20s… of 30s of casings… of evidence… is kind of disturbing. It sort of points at… how good was the investigation?
As I watched the film, which exclusively featured white families who’ve been terrorized by police, it was impossible not to think about the December 2014 officer-involved shooting of Mr. Brandon Tate-Brown, and perhaps part of that was because I was sitting next to his cousin, Mr. Asa Khalif, lead organizer for the Pennsylvania chapter of Black Lives Matter.
Mr. Khalif, however, didn’t view the film as an activist, but rather one of the grieving family members seeking answers that Mr. Anderson spoke of.
“I know how it feels… to feel helpless… I know the pain those families are feeling,” he said, as he fought back tears.
The investigation into the shooting death of Mr. Tate-Brown was, by all accounts, a massive cluster-f*ck, though neither the District Attorney nor the Police Commissioner have enough scruples to admit it and re-open the criminal investigation in order for justice to prevail.
The original reason police gave Mr. Khalif and his family for shooting Mr. Tate-Brown was that he, after being pulled over for a traffic stop and removed from his vehicle by two rookies, was reaching into his car for a gun after breaking free from an officer’s grip.
What turned out to be true was that Mr. Tate-Brown, after seemingly being roughed off by the officers in a struggle, was shot in the back of the head while unarmed and fleeing, and that the crime scene on December 15th, 2014, was staged to fit the police’s narrative.
Mr. Anderson said that his agency is considering calling for a third-party investigation into the shooting of Mr. Tate-Brown, an idea he first made public to Techbook Online two weeks ago.
In discussing Mr. Tate-Brown – and at the very beginning of the gathering – it was noticed that Mr. Charles Ramsey, Philadelphia’s celebrated police commissioner who recently berated the local BLM movement on Fox News for not being open to dialogue, wasn’t present at the screening, nor was any representative of the Philadelphia Police Department for that matter, though an invitation was extended.
Mr. Ramsey and his colleagues may have thought it was an ambush and rejected the invitation, but in my opinion, not attending the screening of ‘Peace Officer’ speaks to the hypocrisy he’s often criticized for by activists.
Mr. Nestel, however, received high praise from Mr. Khalif, who appreciated him at least showing up, knowing things could get tense, like they did at #PhillyAfterFerguson, when Mr. Nestel was called a racist by several outraged audience members.
“There are a lot of people like me that want to fix things, that empathize with grieving families and watch movies like this and see the problem,” said Mr. Nestel. “I don’t like it when people look at me and see me as the enemy; I want to come up with ways to fix it.”
Mr. Nestel threw out several possible solutions, the one most practical was a “legislative answer.”
“A lot of the problems exist because police are following what they believe is the law,” said Mr. Nestel, who predicted that legislation will be the great equalizer in building trust and confidence back into the field of policing. “What’s going to happen in our country will be the tracking of deadly force,” he added.
Well, just yesterday, NYPD Police Commissioner, Mr. William J. Bratton, announced new rules, which includes documenting “every instance when force is used not only in an arrest but also in other encounters with the public,” according to The New York Times.
And as noted in ‘Peace Officer,’ Utah in 2014 became the first state in the nation to require police agencies to report basic statistics on tactical deployments.
So Mr. Nestel is right, what plays a huge part in the rift between police officers and the communities they serve is the oppressive laws police are required to enforce, which means activists, in addition to scrutinizing police officers’ training and their interactions with citizens, should observe lawmakers more closely, as to ensure the polices they draft aren’t exacerbating America’s police state, but instead is mitigating it.
‘Peace Officer’ is the perfect example of when an elected official with intentions of being tough on crime creates a rule of law that becomes more tyranny than order.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
Cover photo: Helen Ubinas