[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. Hi, everyone. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart and welcome to this fantastic Friday. It's also fantastic because you're here, so thanks for hanging out with us. We got a great show for you today. We're going to talk to the first-ever composer in residence at the Brooklyn Museum, which is a really cool job title. We're going to see about a new exhibit at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, and then we're opening up our phones to hear what you're doing this weekend. Be ready to call at the end of the show for that. That's all in the future. Let's get this started with a new documentary called Power.

Before his new documentary about the history of policing in America begins, director Yance Ford speaks directly to us, the viewers. He tells us that his film requires curiosity and suspicion and it's up to us to have an open mind on what we're about to see. Ford's documentary examines the way in which police forces around the country have been able to amass and wield power. We learn about the origin of the police formed from slave patrols, strikebreakers, and frontier militias in the 19th century. The film also makes the case that American colonization efforts inform the militarized tactics and equipment that modern policing is built upon today.

Still, even after George Floyd's murder and the 2020 protests against police violence, funding for law enforcement remains strong. As gun violence continues to rise around the nation, calls to reallocate funds from the police have lost political momentum. People still want the police in their communities, but that doesn't mean that for those people, radical change isn't still desired. What is the future of America and its police force? Yance Ford tries to answer that question in his new documentary. It's called Power and it's out on Netflix today. We're lucky for him to join us now in studio. Yance, welcome to WNYC.

Yance Ford: Thanks, Kousha. I'm really excited to be here.

Kousha Navidar: We're excited to have you. The title of your film makes it clear that it's about power and it's about those who have it and those who don't and how that applies to the police. When did it become clear to you that you wanted your documentary about the police to be an examination about how power is yielded in this country?

Yance Ford: In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd watching the protests around the country being policed in really aggressive and violent ways, and also watching the ways in which a militarized response to protests after the death of Michael Brown shocked the country into this realization that the police are looking a lot more like an army than they are like police. I asked myself in a way that felt different than I've asked myself in the past, is this what policing is for? Is this kind of violent hyper-militarized policing what we think our police do?

The answer is no, actually. It's not what people think they do. Actually, when you see them on the street, it turns out that this is the case. I wanted to look at the issue of policing and the way the police have amassed power over time from a 30,000-foot view, right? I wanted to step outside of the debates that we're reaching about whose life mattered more and about funding and trying to really nail down a trajectory of how policing grew to be the most powerful institution in American democracy.

Kousha Navidar: When you think about it at that 30,000-foot view, are there pillars of the relationship between police and power that you specifically wanted to break down? I hear history as being one of them. Are there other pillars that you wanted to look at?

Yance Ford: Yes, history is one. The relationship to property is another. It's really important that folks understand that policing was not founded to protect people, to prevent crime. Policing was founded to control our relationship to property or control people who were property. The fact that that's where police originate, I think, really underscores the trajectory in which they've traveled in amassing all this power in our society over time.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking to director Yance Ford. His new documentary called Power is on the history of policing in America. It's out on Netflix today. When I was watching the documentary, one of the characters that stood out to me is Charlie Adams. I'd like to talk about him for a second. One of the documentary's central characters. He's the fourth precinct inspector of the Minneapolis Police Department, which operates on the north side of the city. Adams is Black. How did you first identify Inspector Adams as a potential subject for your film and what do you feel he adds or illuminates about the state of policing in the United States?

Yance Ford: When we were developing Power, we researched hundreds of people who were writing and teaching and really thinking publicly about police and its evolution as an institution in America. One of our producers, Netsanet Negussie, is actually from Minneapolis. We were really able to find Adams among many people who were interested in talking to us about the way he was trying to make change in his precinct, in the fourth precinct in Minneapolis.

The role that he plays in the film is an important one because Adams really illustrates that for all of his good intentions, for all of the desire that he has to divert youth from crime, at the end of the day, Adams is left with one option for the kids into whose lives he's trying to intervene, right? It's a pre-incarceration model called a county homeschool.

The good intentions of individual officers are not enough to transcend the intentions of the institution. The intentions of the institution are to control and contain people of color, people who are considered undesirable. We see that over the course of the 300-year history that we lay out in Power. We've got incredible archival footage that really puts the muscle behind the argument that police are not actually about crime. They're about control.

Kousha Navidar: That history, which is the first pillar that you had talked about in a previous question, you go pretty in-depth in that. You make the connection that the development, I believe, of modern policing as we know it coincides with America's colonization efforts at the end of the 19th century. Specifically, the Spanish-American War in the Philippines, right? Can you talk a little bit about that relationship from the Spanish-American War in the Philippines and the way that we see policing today?

Yance Ford: Sure. We have these three points of origins, right? Slave patrols, clearing the Western frontier, and breaking strikes in the northeastern cities. What we also have is this feedback loop that comes from the use of American military forces as police forces in other countries. When we go to occupy the Philippines, for example, in the Spanish-American War, what we bring back from that experience are people who transition directly into policing like August Vollmer. You'll see August Vollmer in the film, right?

What August Vollmer does is he brings a military mentality to police. He wants to transform police into a reflection of the military. That kind of introduction at that early stage in policing really never goes away. People don't talk about it necessarily until they see the explosion of militarized police on our streets, but that influence doesn't ever go away. That's why this international deployment of troops that then become police forces in American imperial projects, those police forces then come back from their overseas assignments and become police here. The feedback loop is infinite essentially.

Kousha Navidar: Let's pause there for a second because August Vollmer, for listeners who might not know, he was the longtime chief-- Yance, correct me if I'm wrong. He was the longtime chief of the Berkeley Police Department.

Yance Ford: That's correct.

Kousha Navidar: He's considered, like you said, the father of modern policing. He also happened to be a veteran, which you mentioned, of the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. Can you go just a little bit more into how we still see his legacy today in 2024 policing?

Yance Ford: Sure. August Vollmer did things like put cops on motorcycles, which was the beginning of mobile policing. He creates the idea of precincts. He employs radio to connect police to one another. He brings this mentality from the effort to contain and control Philippine insurgents back to Berkeley, back to America. He brings that mentality to policing. If policing were ever going to have a crime control and public safety desire at the heart of it, it's never actually realized because Vollmer brings this occupation, this sense that police forces are in communities to be in control.

They're in communities to be the ones who dictate how communities live publicly, how they're able to conduct their lives. Ultimately, police are the ones who define public safety as opposed to public safety being something that's defined by communities themselves based on their needs that they identify. Vollmer really establishes this outside order that's placed on communities.

Kousha Navidar: You can't tell the history of policing in America without focusing farther into the future on the unrest of the '60s and the '70s and the civil rights and Black power movements. An interesting point in the documentary is when you point out that we collectively have misunderstood the role police played in the violence of that time. How so?

Yance Ford: Well, I think that much like the protests that we've seen recently, the protests in the '60s, they don't turn violent until police are inserted into those situations. When police are inserted into those situations, they come in full force. They come in swinging. They don't come in with the mentality that civil disobedience or First Amendment rights are a part of the American project, right?

They come in with the desire to clear and contain these protests in the '60s. What we see begin at that moment continues to expand and evolve. Now, when police are deployed in response to civil unrest, it looks like armies being deployed. That's not accidental. That trajectory is traced really clearly in the film. I think that people will be astonished to see footage from 1930 that could be footage that was shot in 2023.

Kousha Navidar: As part of this movie, you bring up the footage. There is a lot of footage. There's one moment when we actually don't see George Floyd's death. You black it out. You say this is the blind spot. How much can we fill in with the blind spot? That was a very moving moment, for me at least. Can you talk a little bit about that, what you mean by the blind spot, why you chose to show it that way?

Yance Ford: Sure. We obscure the majority of the George Floyd video. What we do instead is focus on Officer Thao. By focusing on Officer Thao and the two people who were trying to motivate him to interrupt the actions of Derek Chauvin, what we raised is the issue of complicity. If they're not directly involved in acts of violence or police brutality, how many of them stand by when they are committed? That's just one episode of violence in the movie that we choose to obscure or mitigate so as not to traumatize the audience with repeated images of young people of color frankly being shot and killed. We also have to be honest about what modern policing looks like. George Floyd is what modern policing looks like as much as anything else.

Kousha Navidar: How about for you? You're the director. You're the one that blacked out all of the footage, but you had to watch it all. As a person of color, how did you take care of yourself, I guess, as you were making this movie?

Yance Ford: I think that when you're making a film like this, when you're making any film really, it requires a lot of compartmentalization. You take off your hat as Yance Ford and you put it down when you walk into the edit. You put on your director hat and you do your job as a director. I'm also a huge believer in mental health. I've got a team of people who keep me healthy and balanced and focused. I'm lucky to have an incredible team at Multitude Films. At Story Syndicate, I've got an incredible editor. I've got an incredible composer, an incredible archivist. I'm not doing this by myself. We are all supporting each other, but you have to really compartmentalize when you are exposed to so many images of violence.

Kousha Navidar: What would you say to somebody who maybe is weary about watching this film, wants to engage with it but hears there's a lot of tough footage that is blacked out, but you still need to engage with it? They're weary of seeing violence. How would you respond to them?

Yance Ford: I would encourage anyone who's hesitant about watching Power because of the violence that might be in the film. I really want to reassure you that we have done everything that we can to make sure that watching the film is not a traumatic experience, right? It's not a violent incident after violent incident. In fact, we spend a lot of time in history in Power.

We spend a lot of time revealing things like the presidential montage, which shows that every president since LBJ, from LBJ to President Biden, has given hundreds of billions of dollars to policing from the federal level. It's not just about the incidences of police violence or police murder. It's also about understanding how this institution has grown and prospered over these last several-- actually, the last generations.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Yance Ford, the director of the new documentary, Power. We're talking about the history of policing in America, which is what the documentary is about. It's out on Netflix today. Stop-and-frisk is another important element that the documentary looks into. Stop-and-frisk, of course, being the infamous policy in New York where hundreds of thousands were frisked every year during the Bloomberg administration, a disproportionate number of whom were Black. Yance, talk to us a little bit about this part. What does the stop-and-frisk represent about the disconnect between the people and the communities that they serve?

Yance Ford: Sure. With stop-and-frisk, and you see it in the film with a character named Nilesh, who talks about his experience as a high school student being stopped multiple times. Basically, stop-and-frisk is the way in which policing moves from an institutional experience to an individual experience, right? Stop-and-frisk is an intimate experience. People are emptying your pockets. People are looking underneath your tongue. People want to know if there's things in your shoes.

There's a way in which stop-and-frisk is one of those unique moments where the institution suddenly becomes really personal and becomes about this ability or lack thereof to mitigate the power of the state over your body because what we see in Power ultimately is that police are the power of the state made real. The police are the most frequent interaction that most people will have with our government more so than any elected official. Most people will interact with police. Stop-and-frisk is just a perfect example of the way in which something that's massive suddenly becomes very, very intimate.

Kousha Navidar: That idea of the police being the most intimate way that you interact with government really came into my eyes when I was watching this when you were speaking to Charlie Adams, who, again, is the fourth precinct inspector of the Minneapolis Police Department. He himself is a Black officer, served for 30 years, is that right?

Yance Ford: Since 1986, and he's got no intention of retiring.

Kousha Navidar: He says how he used to believe that the lack of Black cops was the reason for the problem. Now, he's not so sure. That really struck me. What do you think accounts for his change of mind?

Yance Ford: I think that Charlie Adams, and you'll see this in the film, I think that Charlie Adams is really aware of the power of the institution in which he works. Policing is greater than any one officer, right? What the film does in taking this 30,000-foot view is really moves us away from this traditional argument about good cops and bad cops or bad apples and good apples, and really asks people to consider the scale and the scope and the power of this institution.

When you hear Charlie Adams say, "I used to think that Black officers or Black chiefs were the solution, but I don't think that anymore," there is a quality of sadness in his voice that can't be denied. I think that's because he understands that he himself in relation to the institution of policing and what he wants to achieve in the fourth precinct can only go so far.

Kousha Navidar: We talked about George Floyd a bit in terms of seeing the footage. During the protest, there were promises made about "fixing police in America." From your experience working on this documentary, what, if any, progress would you say has been made? How would you characterize America policing post-2020 based on your research?

Yance Ford: Post-2020, I think that you could point to some departments that have done things like Camden. There are little projects in Brooklyn, but the thing about Power that's so fundamentally different than other films about policing is that it stops asking questions about what individual departments are doing and starts asking questions about what policing is doing as a whole. En masse, I would say that the only thing that's changed since the murder of George Floyd is that police have become less afraid to show how militarized they are. They are freer to use this military equipment, training, and mindset when interacting with civilians. We see it in the film in the '60s and we see it in the news today.

Kousha Navidar: You have a few voiceovers in this documentary, including at the start where you set up the film by saying, as we mentioned at the top, "This film requires curiosity or at least suspicion. I leave that choice up to you," and you say that directly to the audience. Why did you feel it important to speak to the audience directly before you started the film?

Yance Ford: Well, I believe, as a director, in a radical transparency, right? When I'm making a film, I know there's going to be someone on the other side of whatever screen or theater screen that you're seeing the movie on. There's somebody there, I'm talking to someone. I recognize also that in making a film about policing, power is going to make some people suspicious and power is going to make some people curious. I wanted to use that moment as an invitation for people who had either mindset coming into the film who maybe have made assumptions about what power is going to be.

I want that moment where I speak directly to you to be an invitation into the film because the film is really a journey through history that we take together. When you hear my voice in the movie, it's often at times when asking critical questions becomes key to making connections between different points in history in the movie. To admit that people are going to be suspicious of my intentions or curious of my intentions is simply to admit that people have been engaged in a really contentious relationship about this issue for a long, long time.

Kousha Navidar: Well, the documentary is called Power. We are here with Yance Ford, the director. The documentary is on the history of policing in America. Its history, its rise, and its state today. The documentary is out on Netflix today. Yance, thank you so much for your work and for coming down today.

Yance Ford: Thank you, Kousha. Appreciate it.

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