Analysis Of The PBS Film Policing The Police

The PBS film “Policing the Police” brings an insider view into the Newark Police Department. As denoted in the documentary, Newark is one of the most violent cities in America with crime rates nine times higher than New York City’s. The Department of Justice investigated multiple cities including Newark and found that reform was a necessity: 75 percent of the time the Newark Police Department stopped people without legal justification. This is evidenced in the film itself through Jelani Cobb’s experiences; many stops he witnesses are done so based on hunches and use excessive force rather than the cops having reasonable suspicion. In my opinion, the Newark PD as portrayed in this documentary desperately requires reform. Based on the stops shown in the documentary, it it evident that, more often than not, the police in Newark overstep their authority. As previously stated, police often rely on hunches rather than reasonable suspicion to stop a person. In one instance, a man who is walking home is stopped and because he backs away he is thrown to the ground: he has no weapons or anything illegal in his possession. Jelani Cobb forms an important question here: “if you’re surrounded by police officers, do you feel more safe or less safe than you were two minutes earlier?” Personally I believe that the lack of reasonable suspicion to

At the Newark Municipal Council’s public meeting shown at the beginning of the documentary, Newark residents claim that police assault, rob, and retaliate against them, and that the police “are supposed to be serving and protecting the community, but they serve and disrespect the community”. According to the textbook, mainstream ideas of criminal justice include the war on drugs and crime, punishment, crime as a rational choice rather than a social problem, and crime can be eliminated whereas a crosscurrent approach states nearly the