Tracing the History of Slavery and Policing in America

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, HOST: Well, now, to another crisis facing America, a new documentary called “Sound of the Police,” examines the history between black Americans and law enforcement. Here’s a clip from the trailer.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How these cops operate in this country has been America’s dirty secret.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We’re in a country of fearing black people, rooted all the way back into slavery.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There seems to be two forms of policing in America, one for white America and another for black America.

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GOLODRYGA: The film’s director, Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon, join Hari Sreenivasan.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. Stanley Nerlson and Valerie Scoon, thank you both for joining us. First, Stanley, I want to ask, you have a body of work that has looked into so many different facets of African American history and life. Your most recent documentary, “Sound of The Police,” why did you want to tackle this now?

STANLEY NELSON, CO-DIRECTOR, “SOUND OF THE POLICE”: Well, I think that why I want to tackle it now as we started kind of right after the George Floyd movement, and so many people were thinking about the police, I was thinking about the police. But I think that it wasn’t clear the historic nature of the role of the police in African Americans lives. And so, we wanted to try to make a film that talk about history, that this was not George Floyd, it’s not new, Eric Garner, it’s not new, the Black Panthers, you know, all of those things, all those the confrontations with the policemen, for our relationship with African American often have with the police is not something new. It’s almost — like it was baked into the cake of the United States. And so, we wanted to detail but also, talk about the present, but also talk about the past.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Imagine if you had an institution where it was almost impossible to be held accountable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened to the police made me scared of them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No mother should have to bury their child.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Amir Locke was killed in a botched no knock warrant situation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the body cam footage. He’s snuffing this man out as he slept.

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SREENIVASAN: Valerie, this story is poignantly bookended from a funeral service in the comments of parents who have lost their son to police violence. But really, it is, as Stanley mentioned, a historical dive. Why take it all the way back and why do those dots start at slavery?

VALERIE SCOON, CO-DIRECTOR, “SOUND OF THE POLICE”: Well, as our interviewees, you know, point out that, you know, law enforcement in the south was intertwined with slave patrols. And from that, some of the methods, methodology or mechanisms, you know, became part of — like Stanley mention, sort of baked in the cake of law enforcement. So, the reason why we started in the past because that’s where, you know, the relationship between law enforcement and black people, you know, commenced. And so, the idea would be to sort of trace it through the decades or centuries to sort of see how those patterns, you know, persist in the system of law enforcement, where they do, if they do, and that was part of what we are looking at. So, to answer to the question of, how do we get here?

SREENIVASAN: You know, Stanley, what’s interesting is, I think people and the audience might just assume, well, that slavery was kind of the problem in the south, when black people voted with their feet, so to speak, and left and went to the north that things clearly must have been better. But what your film points out is how police in the north were also complicit and enforcement of a different kind of segregation.

NELSON: Yes. I mean, it’s part of the role of the police earlier around in the north was to keep African Americans in their place. So, African Americans had to live in ghettos. And, you know, if you stepped out of the ghetto, then you would be suspect, and the police would enforce that. So, very early on, the police became feared for the African American community, and they weren’t there to kind of serve and protect African Americans, they were there really to control African Americans. And the role for African American citizens — you know, from beginning, from the 1860s until now, the role of the police for African Americans has been very different from the role for many other Americans.

SREENIVASAN: Valerie, you point out in the film that there were so many horrendous lynchings throughout the south and another parts the country where in the photographs you can see that it is with the assistance of police officers who would essentially either participate in crowd control or would be spectators themselves, or certain times, would be unlocking the jail cell before the trial even started.

SCOON: Yes. I think that that was an important thing to include as it shows — it sort of speaks to the relationship with back people and law enforcement that in that time period with sort of obviously sets out the idea that they’re not there to sort of protect and serve black people if they’re standing by or allowing these lynchings to take place. So, I think that that sowed seeds of some distrust, which I think is important to look at and to sort of see how that plays a role in the relationship today in terms of how black people and law enforcement are engaging today.

SREENIVASAN: So, Stanley, tell me, how does it translate from these moments of history that we in your film to, let’s say, your life when you were growing up as a young black man, what did your parents, what do your grandparents tell you about how to be with the police?

SCOON: Yes. I grew up in New York City. And my parents told me to avoid the police, you know. The best way that you can deal with police was to avoid them. And I think there’s a real parallel in that film, when they talk about the future of slave law 1850, and there were posters put up in the north that said, you know, black people, do not trust the police. Do not talk to the police. Avoid the police. Because they are deputized as slave catchers. And part of their job is to assist slave catchers in catching runaway slaves.

SREENIVASAN: Valerie, what’s interesting also is here’s the kind message that Stanleys of the world would be getting from their parents and grandparents, but the dominant narrative, as you point out, and you have this amazing montage of so many different kind of cop shows, so to speak, over the decades, and how police are painted, and what we are told their role is in society.

SCOON: Yes. We have, you know, sort of a contrasting view as some of our experts would point out, you know, we have all these TV shows where everything works out, that there is, you know, fairness, no bias. And if black people are in their — you know, the — as they say, in dragnet, in the dragnet episode, where we have, you know, an active goal to sort of have black people in the show who sort of like will validate the perspective of all is well between — in the relationship between black people and law enforcement, but one of the very writers of that episode, you know, acknowledges that, in reality, that’s not what black people were experiencing. So, a sanitize version of what black people were experiencing, which was not what was depicted on television.

NELSON: Yes. I also was going to add that, you know, something is fundamentally wrong if white folks can say to their kids, you know, the police are your friends. If you’re in trouble, go to the police. You know, Officer Friendly will help you. And at the same time, a black parent of a kid of the same age is saying, you know, avoid the police at all cost. You know, nothing good can happen if you, you know, talk to a police officer. I used to tell my son, you know, if the police are walking down the block towards you and you can calmly cross the street to get (INAUDIBLE) in the street without raising their attention, you should do that. Because just by any kind of contact, something negative might happen. And there’s something really fundamentally wrong with policing, you know, with our country if those two things exist simultaneously.

SCOON: Actually, if I can add just that, it was — that was one the reasons why I decided to work on the project, because when Stanley first offered it, I hesitated because it’s such a large and difficult project and topic. But he pointed out, he asked me, like, well, don’t you have a son? And I was like, oh, yes, I do. And do I worry about him — he didn’t ask me this but I reflected on the idea that I worry about him walking home, I’m like, do you have your I.D.? And I’m trying not to infantilize him, but that fear of him being out in the world, you know, was part of the reason why I wanted to work on this documentary, for the sake of all the other parents and the kids, every law enforcement itself to improve the scenario.

SREENIVASAN: Stanley, there’s a psychologist in your film that talks about how often these scenes are now being played in front of us. And I wonder, is this kind of just becoming background noise, where 20 years ago, 25 years ago, maybe before Rodney King, it was not so common to see video of it, now, everyone has a cell phone in their hand, and they’re shooting video of these things? I wonder what is happening to us when we see this tragedy unfold, I mean, are we becoming numb to it?

NELSON: Well, you know, I think in the opposite. I think that for us to solve the problem we have to recognize that there is a problem. And I think that if you look at where we are today, with where we were five years ago, before George Floyd and before some of the other murders, I think many more people in the United States would say, yes, there’s a problem, right? You know, as somebody says in the film, before when you would talk to your white friends, and they would say, well, what are you talking about? You know? And now, nobody says what are you talking about. You know, it’s very clear that there is a problem. Now, have we gone as far as we need to go or probably should have been at this point in solving the problem? I don’t think so. But I just think, as horrible as it is, at least we recognize, at least some people are recognizing, or more and more people are recognizing that there’s a problem. And I think that’s the first step for change.

SREENIVASAN: Valerie, you also spoke with members of current and former law enforcement, why was it important in this?

SCOON: Well, it’s important to get their perspective on this — on the relationship and the perspective and their perspectives on the problem with law enforcement and black people. I think it — and we could sort of see that there is an intersection, you know, that they understand that black people do want law enforcement — many black do in law enforcement in the communities, they just want a law enforcement that makes them feel more protected and served, and I think that that was important to get their perspective on that.

SREENIVASAN: Stanley, in the film, you’ve got interviews with police officers who talk about their experience patrolling black neighborhoods versus non-black neighborhoods. What is the logic behind their approach in doing things differently?

NELSON: I don’t know if there’s a clear logic. You know, it’s more that police departments traditionally have seen African American as more suspect and have to be policed, you know, in a stronger way, have to policed — have to be policed with more force, and that carries over to police departments today.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things that we see, Valerie, is just the perception of how we feel about police kind of playing out in day-to-day life. And you have multiple examples of videos that have now become kind of famous or infamous of women that we kind of, you know, shorthand as Karens, calling the police. And you kind of get a little bit into the psychology of how or why it’s important to see that there’s a group of people in society that feel the police work for them to try to work on their behalf automatically.

SCOON: Yes. I think we — that comes in the section where we’re talking about the fugitive slave law. And during that period of time, and even before the fugitive slave law, you know, enslaved people, white people it was almost their legal responsibility, and in fact, it was their legal responsibility to report on any black person that they felt was out of place. So, they could — they would see be seen as suspicious or guilty before being proven innocent. And it was their responsibility to constantly report on black people and to feel that the police and they were allied in that or the law enforcement at that time were (INAUDIBLE) with white people in doing that. And so, when we look at the section on Karens, we’re tracing the idea that — this idea that that’s their police, that — you know, that these women, you know, feel like the police are their police, and they can call them when they have a doubt about you or they are questioning why you should be there. And that trend, the feeling like the police are their police, and they can call them to call you to account is part of what we’re addressing in that section.

SREENIVASAN: Stanley, of all the thousand plus police homicides that happen or police murders that happen every year, disproportionately affecting black men or men of color, that 98 percent of the cases, police officers are not charged with a crime. And you have a section in there about how the role of unions continues that cycle.

NELSON: Yes. And that was really important to me, to talk about unions. Because I think, you know, when we think of the problem with policing and how they can get better, we don’t think about the unions as much as we should. And we have a section where we see the unions defending the murder of Eric Garner, one of the things that the union representatives says in New York, you know, is, if you can cry for help, then you can breathe. And, you know, it’s just like really a callusy (ph) to say this man was choked to death. What the unions are — part of what they’re supposed to do, part of their duty is to defend the police, and they defend the police no matter what. And they defend the police and they have not only statistics, they have the (INAUDIBLE) murdered their record and their families record, they have money and they are crops, and they’re elite. And so, it was really important that we talk a little bit in this film about the unions, and the power of the unions, and the power of the unions to shape public’s opinion when this come (ph).

SREENIVASAN: Stanley, what’s your hope for people watching this film?

NELSON: My hope that they’ll — that the door will be opened just a little bit wider, and that they will see the warrant (ph) or the problems and they will understand that change is necessary, and the change is possible. You know, that there’s a way that we could have law enforcement and it not be such a fraught relationship, but that we understand that certain things, again, were baked into the cake. We understand how we can get that out of law enforcement.

SREENIVASAN: Valerie?

SCOON: Yes. I want people to sort of see that, you know, out of discomfort can come change. That change could come. You know, obviously, it’s difficult to look at this relationship, but the reason why we want to look at it is to improve it and to — and I believe that — you know, that’s my hope, that by looking at this, that this would be a part of a conversation starter, that people could sort of move forward to improve that relationship.

SREENIVASAN: “Sound of The Police” is now streaming on Hulu, co-directors Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon, thank you for both joining us.

SCOON: Thank you.

NELSON: Thank you so much.