The Force – first look review

Immers­ing him­self in one of the most trou­bled police forces in the US, film­mak­er Peter Nicks hap­pened to time his exam­i­na­tion of Oak­land law enforce­ment at a crit­i­cal junc­ture in its his­to­ry. Filmed from 2014 onwards, The Force reveals that, thanks to a series of much-need­ed, decade-long reforms, the depart­ment was well below the nation­al aver­age for police-relat­ed shoot­ings, which gave rise to protest move­ments like Black Lives Mat­ter. In fact, crime as a whole was sig­nif­i­cant­ly down in a city pre­vi­ous­ly renowned for vio­lent assaults and theft.

With access to sen­si­tive inter­nal mate­r­i­al, Nicks’ fly-on-the-wall PBS doc cap­tures the year’s new recruits being put through their paces – includ­ing the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal tear gas and arms train­ing. Chief Whent reminds the pre­dom­i­nant­ly male force that the public’s per­cep­tion of their work is para­mount, that they rep­re­sent the US gov­ern­ment and must be held account­able at every level.

At one point, Whent even releas­es police body cam footage to the media to try and and calm and clar­i­fy a case involv­ing a sus­pect and a police pur­suit. Such ges­tures and sen­ti­ments come back to haunt the chief, but the point is seem­ing­ly clear. As a piece of PR, the mes­sage appears to be that Oakland’s cit­i­zens can and should be able to hold their law enforce­ment to task.

Inevitably, things begin to unrav­el fol­low­ing the events of Fer­gu­son, MO. Sev­er­al offi­cers’ exces­sive response to a pos­si­bly armed sus­pect sets off a dis­as­trous chain of events, before a sex scan­dal threat­ens to undo Whent’s work and take the entire depart­ment down.

Despite its premise – and promise of unpar­al­leled access – the film feels con­strained by what it can or can’t show (pre­sum­ably so as not to incrim­i­nate cer­tain offi­cers). A dis­cus­sion around the sub­ject of police force – with one insist­ing that 13 rounds of ammu­ni­tion to sub­due a sus­pect is not exces­sive – is one of the few occa­sions where we feel privy to some­thing tru­ly shock­ing and alarm­ing. Too often, though, what is pre­sent­ed feels more like an air­brushed ver­sion of events.

There is pre­cious lit­tle analy­sis as to why the depart­ment had such a ter­ri­ble record pre-2003. Or, for that mat­ter, what makes the new recruits want to become police offi­cers in the first place. What exact­ly is the char­ac­ter pro­file of a US police offer? Ques­tions like this are nev­er asked.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the inher­ent racism that blights the force, stain­ing its rep­u­ta­tion in the nation­al con­scious­ness, is bare­ly touched upon. In a telling sequence of events, a scan­dal involv­ing a 16-year-old pros­ti­tute and a num­bers of offi­cers is viewed as infi­nite­ly more shock­ing than any sus­pect­ed wrong­do­ing in the use of exces­sive force against black suspects.

The film would have undoubt­ed­ly ben­e­fit­ted from adopt­ing a black per­spec­tive, even if only in part. Despite its sin­cere attempts to explore the so-called ​“tox­ic, macho” cul­ture in the depart­ment, race ulti­mate­ly remains the sin­gle most alarm­ing issue affect­ing law enforce­ment, both in Oak­land and across Amer­i­ca. Oak­land PD may have had a bet­ter track record for much of the last decade, but those stats soon begin to fall away as the nation becomes again caught up in a prob­lem that, with­out any real analy­sis or legal prece­dent, refus­es to go away.