Beyond the Echo Chamber: Wyatt Cenac’s ‘Problem Areas’ a New Look at Policing in America

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People have been talking about police violence, and the experiences of African Americans with the police, since slave times. Yet much of the nation has managed to remain oblivious to this discussion.

Wyatt Cenac’s HBO series Problem Areas, which is about halfway through its ten-episode first-season run, plunges boldly into this topic. Cenac asks tough questions, explores “modest proposals,” and builds upon the dialogue each week, aided by professors, elected officials, government employees, activists, police officers past and present, and other experts.

A noted comedian, writer, and former Daily Show correspondent, Cenac takes a Ralph Ellison-esque approach, delivering social commentary with biting, sardonic humor. In one episode, he compares Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s desire to colonize space to the zeal of the Dutch East India Company to create an exclusive society.

“You really think they want to bring the rest of us along?” he asks. “They like the idea of space travel because when they think something is broken they can afford to throw it away. Most of us can’t afford to throw it away. So what do we do?”

“Rich guys are leaving the earth and they’re not paying for their mozzarella sticks,” Cenac warns. “It's tough shit, but it’s our shit and maybe we should try to figure this out.”

Anchoring Problem Areas’ wide-ranging discussion about power, privilege, and wealth is the same key question: “What’s wrong with policing?”

Cenac frames his inquiry by looking at the institution of policing firmly rooted in the cultural landscape of America. He explores interconnected problem areas: the perception of threat, training practices, expectations placed upon officers, and how those who are supposed to be served and protected become dehumanized.

His thoughtful, all-embracing approach allows Cenac to step outside the echo chamber and examine the policing problem from a variety of viewpoints, altering how most discussions of this hot-button issue take place.

The problem of perception is central. When discussing the July 2016 fatal shooting of Philando Castile in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, Cenac shows how the perception of threat for the officer involved was not a gun—Castile had disclosed that he had a legal firearm—but his skin color.

Cenac’s all-embracing approach explores the policing problem from a variety of viewpoints, altering how most discussions of this hot-button issue take place.

Cenac explores how training provided to officers in Minnesota and elsewhere casts human interactions in war-like scenarios. Dave Grossman of the “Killology Research Group” celebrates the “warrior mentality” in law enforcement. Officers are sometimes trained with first-person shooter games. Add to this the disproportionate media representation of brown and black people as criminal and we begin to see how a faulty perception led Yanez to perceive Castile as a threat.

If officers are warriors, citizens are the potential enemy. Chauntyll Allen of Twin Cities Black Lives Matter explains to Cenac that trainings like this “scared [police] into being scared.”

Cenac explores how police departments are working to alleviate this perception problem through community policing efforts. In Elgin, Illinois, the community policing model stresses the role of officers as “problem solvers, not an occupying force,” and asks the community to “look out for their police officers who are protecting them.”

The program name, Resident Officer Police of Elgin (ROPE), gave Cenac pause, as did the program’s public relations activities. After showing videos of officers dancing at community picnics, skateboarding with kids, or issuing fake citations for “driving without ice cream,” Cenac wonders if community isn’t being treated as “a prop to make [police] look good.” He asks an Elgin ROPE officer, “Is this a nicer form of surveillance?”

In March, Elgin police shot and killed DeCynthia Clements, a thirty-four-year-old black woman allegedly brandishing a steak knife while sitting in her pulled-over car. While officers at the scene were recorded assessing the situation and discussing non-lethal options, when she exited the car she was shot to death by Elgin Lieutenant Chris Jensen.

“In the heat of the moment, when confronted with a woman who was four foot eleven and weighed eighty-six pounds, Lieutenant Jensen’s response was to shoot and kill her,” Cenac says. The police are heard on recorded audio referring to Clements as “it.”

Concludes Cenac, “At the end of the day, there is a power imbalance. . . If police truly want to be members of the Elgin Community they should want a result that feels fair to everyone in it. Otherwise, community policing just feels like another choreographed dance.”

Cenac does not limit his focus to the institution of policing. Individual police officers, he notes, are often the first line of defense when it comes to social problems—especially mental illness. It is no secret that mental health services are woefully underfunded in America. Without proper training (most officers receive no more than four days of crisis training which covers mental health issues), the likelihood is high that those with mental illness will be perceived, and treated, as criminal and threatening.

In short, we are asking police to address social problems without giving them the proper tools.

Police officers, are often the first line of defense when it comes to social problems—especially mental illness.

Cenac looks at the Los Angeles Police Department, which has instituted a program pairing officers with mental-health professionals in a System-wide Mental Assessment Response Team (SMART). These teams have been successful in de-escalating problems and providing meaningful protection to the citizen in need. Officers in the program told Cenac that it allowed them to work more effectively with citizens. But Cenac notes there are only seventeen SMART units in the department, and of the 20,000 calls received annually, SMART teams were only able to respond to 8,000 of them.

In one episode, Cenac debunks the myth that police are always pulling guns on citizens. Only 27 percent of all officers have ever fired a gun in the line of duty, he notes. And those who do, often experience PTSD and other forms of psychological distress. “In 2017,” Cenac tells us, “128 officers died in line of duty; 140 died by suicide.” Data shows that almost as many police deaths that occur in the line of duty involved vehicle crashes, not gunfire.

Through his show, which HBO has already greenlighted for a second season, Cenac explores potential solutions. He examines how the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department, which took over the policing of Falcon Heights, Minnesota after the death of Philando Castile, employs a “character-based” hiring practice, focusing on four key principles: respect, responsibility, honor, and truth.

Cenac shows how such programs are steps in the right direction. He also shows how they still do not address the underlying problem of racism in America.

A 2017 Pew Research report found that black officers were twice as likely as their white counterparts to view police killings of black citizens as “signs of a broader problem and not isolated incidents.” According to the report 92 percent of white officers and 57 percent of white Americans surveyed agreed that the U.S. has already made the changes needed to give blacks equal rights. Conversely, only 29 percent of black officers and 12 percent of black Americans agreed.

Yet black Americans remain chronically unrepresented in police departments. “Minorities remain underrepresented in the vast majority of larger police departments throughout the country,” concluded a report by the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing under President Obama. “Particularly in jurisdictions experiencing rapid demographic shifts, police largely do not reflect the racial and ethnic makeup of their communities.”

The problem areas Cenac explores require us to think about not just policing, but also race and racism, the poor, the mentally ill, and all those who are viewed as “social problems” in America. We must address the ways in which the police force fails to create an environment that protects citizens and asks far too much of individual officers.

Cenac makes it clear that no matter what solutions we develop, we must first agree as a nation that the problem exists and the system is broken. Otherwise, we might as well hop aboard the first flight to space without paying for our mozzarella sticks.

Lisa Beringer is an associate professor of sociology at Ivy Tech Community College in Fort Wayne, Indiana.