Kino Lorber
Former Oakland Chief of Police Sean Whent
For ninety-three gripping minutes, Peter Nicks’ award-winning documentary The Force unspools like a soap opera, about sex, texts, and excess. The immoderation in this film is exerted not by glamorous TV actors, but by the beleaguered Oakland Police Department, supposedly in the line of duty.
The Force zooms in on Oakland’s “not so finest.” For thirteen years, the Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight after a 2003 scandal over veteran police officers allegedly kidnapping, planting evidence on, and beating citizens. Blatant police brutality against black people in the Bay area inspired what was originally named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense—so-called because Huey Newton and Bobby Seale’s original mission was to police the policemen trampling on unarmed African Americans’ rights.
In The Force, we see archival footage of beret-clad Panthers marching and chanting “off the pigs!” We see Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent telling academy recruits: “We have to own up to our history. We have to—it’s our legacy.” The Force follows Whent and others responding to the federal consent decree to reform the department from what Mayor Libby Schaaf describes as a “toxic macho disgusting culture.”
The cinema verite style film, which won the Directing Award for a U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Bay Area Doc at the San Francisco International Film Festival, opens with a creatively edited montage and proceeds to unfold events from 2014 through 2016. This period includes the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Nicks takes us behind the scenes at the Oakland Police academy, where we hear the mayor tell recruits, “I have your backs. But I won’t put up with inappropriate behavior.” Pastor Ben McBride, primary civilian trainer for the department’s Procedural Justice & Police Legitimacy Course, reminds them that “the original police in the South were slave patrols. During Jim Crow, police kept lynchings civil.”
Out on the streets, we see Whent meet and talk with often disgruntled residents, such as one older burglary victim who complains about the police department's response time. While Whent readily concedes “we need to do a better job,” he defends the department by stressing “violent crime is our priority.”
Despite its gloomy subject matter, the film offers some hope.
Nicks explores the possibilities of police department reform, including the use of body cameras. We see footage from body cameras of officers in hot pursuit, but when scenes of another dead young black male are publicly released, reporters wonder if the police are selectively showing their own narrative, while activists allege that the police engaged in “video cuts” and “doctoring” of the video feed. But Whent maintains that body cams enhance OPD’s “transparency” and “accountability.”
A twenty-year police department veteran, Whent becomes entangled in a sex scandal involving a number of his offers and an underaged purported prostitute (the daughter of a police dispatcher). Outraged citizens charge police with statutory rape. We see Whent forced out by the federal monitor because of how he handles the sex scandal.
As if sex with minors isn’t enough, the Oakland Police Department is then accused of sending racist texts. At a press conference, enraged Mayor Schaaf declares, “I am here to run a police department, not a frat house.” In the span of nine days, Oakland burns through three police chiefs, but instead of the mayor appointing another one, the command staff is directed to report to City Administrator Sabrina Landreth.
Oakland residents mobilize to establish civilian control over the force. At a demo, Pastor McBride, the force’s own community liaison, declares: “They covered up corruption. We’re going to pull this system down through the power of nonviolent direct action.”
Though it fails to provide a critical overview of the role of police in maintaining the status quo of elite rule, The Force is as compelling as any work of fiction.
The Force will be theatrically released in L.A. and N.Y. on Sept. 22, followed by other cities and broadcast on PBS’ Independent Lens documentary series Jan. 22, 2018.
Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian/critic and co-organizer of the 70th Anniversary Commemoration of the Hollywood Blacklist (see: https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/hollywood-blacklist-tribute).