The Worst Movie I Will Ever Ask You to Watch

The Lies Against the Law Enforcement Profession Demands An Organized Response From All Police Labor And Advocacy Organizations

Aug 15, 2023

From a filmmaking perspective, I must admit that I am a little disappointed with Sound of the Police. Most of the documentary is a montage of ancient photos of black people and white police officers. They’re rarely viewed together in the same shot. Sometimes it looks like cops marching in a holiday parade or standing together for a group portrait. Due to a lack of context in most of the visual media, only the music lets you know which group is the oppressed and who is the oppressor.

Meet Your New History Professors

Al Sharpton, Ben Crump, DeRay McKesson and former Stockton CA police chief Eric Jones inject their opinions within a team of commentators that include activists, historians, college instructors and former attorneys united within a common theme. Sharpton began his climb to fame and notoriety based on what he knew was a lie in Chicago. Crump knowingly delivered a false witness to the state attorney in Sanford, FL. McKesson, in his first on-screen appearance without a puffy down vest, was an out of work schoolteacher who decided to become a full time activist and joined the burgeoning Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, MO. He was one of the authors of the manifesto demanding that the police be disarmed and disbanded in Ferguson. I know more about Stockton than I do its former chief with the city having the highest violent crime rate in California in 2020.

This theme lily pads from chattel slavery to the 1850 fugitive slave act. They show videos of white females, who are repeatedly referred to by the ethnic slur Karen, calling the police on people of color either for no good reason or because they are visibly emotionally disturbed. A spate of racial riots nationwide in 1919 are attributed exclusively to the police.

A Closely Controlled Narrative

The death of Amir Locke sets the stage for the case against cops in this documentary with his grieving parents discussing his potential. While showing body camera footage of that fateful day in Minneapolis in February of 2022, the audience is not initially shown an awakened Locke raising a handgun at a SWAT team member during an early morning search warrant. All we are told is that he was not the object of the search warrant. The officers entered looking for a homicide suspect from Saint Paul and they shot Locke, who was couch surfing with a homicide suspect and sleeping with a gun in his hand.

black car on road during night time — Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

The Talk

Several parents discuss ‘the talk’ and the rules of keeping hands in sight and maintaining respectful speech. Can you recall any high-profile policing incident where there was not disobeying of lawful commands and physical resistance? For all the talk about ‘the talk’ whether shared by President Biden during the State of the Union or former Mayor DeBlasio, we clearly see that the rules of ‘the talk’ are beneficial for all citizens who are stopped by the police.

Racism With Racists, Systemic Racism Without Racists

The documentary is focused on the binary and it divides by black and white throughout. In the entire film you never see in the archival footage whites marching with blacks during the civil rights movement. The assertion is clear: the policing culture itself is racist and corrupts black officers and their contacts with black citizens. In an interview with Salon magazine the question was asked of the director:

“Salon: You also indicate that Black police officers do not necessarily have the opportunity to help their community. They often toe the line because of how they are trained. I can't imagine the mental toll it takes on these Black officers. What observations do you have about this?
Nelson: One of the things we are trying to say is that it is the institution of the police, and not the individual officers — not the individual African American officers or the white officers — but the culture of policing in the United States that is the issue. You can't be a cop without being part of that culture. At some point, African American officers join in. There is the thought that if we get more African American officers, it will become better, but that's not case. All of the statistics show that they join the police department, and the culture of that police department is already there.”

Discussing Stokely Carmichael, a civil rights activist who helped found the Black Panthers and advocated violent protest in the mid-1960s, filmmaker Rob Montz says “Before Stokely left America, he engineered a unique idea – a little drop of intellectual arsenic that has permanently poisoned our politics.” Carmichael introduces the concept of subtle institutional racism, not blatant like poll taxes but a clever and discrete tactic that infects every corner of civic life.

Photo by Herry Sutanto on Unsplash

The Mall Fight

To shame America and policing completely, the documentary shows a fight at a Bridgewater, NJ, mall of a 14-year-old black male and larger 15-year-old Pakistani-Colombian male. No injuries. The police respond and the separate the youth, but they focus on handcuffing the black male while they let the cooperative Pakistani-Columbian male sit on a nearby bench. Though we will never see into the hearts of those officers and fully determine whether they made either a racist or colorblind situational assessment, the conduct of the officer and not the criminal assaults of the mutual combatants remains in the news. However, a situation that was screaming for nothing more than a second set of handcuffs and transport for two to juvie became a New Jersey priority with the Attorney General investigating the two officers under pressure from Governor Murphy. In a morbid coincidence, this was the same day that Locke died.

However, if we need to focus on a teenager mall fight where no one got arrested (or both properly charged) and no one got hurt, for months on end in the upper reaches of state government, we are pretty much dragging the bottom of the barrel of (still unproven) racial injustice.

players and fans on baseball stadium — Photo by Joshua Peacock on Unsplash

Message Bases

The documentary continues hitting the familiar tropes of unjust killings exclusively of black victims. As the narrative is rounding third base to come home, they introduce the fact that Locke was holding his gun without his finger within the trigger guard. A further injustice that he was shot while pointing his firearm at a SWAT officer.

Finally, they attack the police unions. They claim the unions use their local and political power to prevent terrible cops from getting fired. A union representative that I worked with was challenged by one of the police labor advisors, “How can you represent him,” and his response was “You hired him, I’m just making sure that you are keeping your due process promises you made to him.”

A point never mentioned is that major police unions gained their negotiating options when cities, counties and states cried poor-mouth and wouldn’t provide pay raises that the officers, deputies and troopers deserved. Bargaining units took a percentage less to get binding arbitration one year and graduated discipline another. The power of the police unions, unlike pipefitters, carpenters and longshoremen, was to provide due process whether you were doing your job properly or uniform discipline should you fail to meet a standard.

When too much of that got wiped with the stroke of a pen in 2020, no one was rallying for cops to get the wages they sacrificed for that protection.

The Law Enforcement Community

There have been too many of these anti-police documentaries and treatise floating around maligning the profession that have been left unanswered. This one was produced by ABC News Studios and is in theaters while streaming on Hulu.

I recommend that every law enforcement bargaining unit and advocacy group come out strong against this work. Normally I would suggest that this deserves to die from a lack of attention but letting it go is almost letting this fraudulent work be codified as the truth. I’m asking for all the leaders of unions, bargaining units and the like to have some showings of this film and spend some time afterwards round-tabling a strategy to protest it within your community. Discuss the five most destructive falsehoods and prioritize them.

Begin with op-eds in local papers. Depending upon your jurisdiction (sorry Chicago and NYC and too many others) submitting a proclamation for your elected leaders to consider and debate. Compose and adopt resolutions and publish them on social media calling out the lies. A movie like this can make an officer question why they wear the badge. Let’s show Generation Z that we never get rolled and we stand courageously for all our sisters and brothers who serve.

Especially today, please keep all of our peace officers in your prayers.