Review: Yance Ford's "Power" Succinctly Details A Violent History of U.S. Policing

by Nick Taylor

There will always be room for art chronicling the systemic and individual injustices wrought on America by its own police force. Hell, you could probably apply that sentiment to police in any country, to an armed institution given virtually unchecked power on any scale. Power, the latest documentary from filmmaker Yance Ford, follows the history and development of US policing with a dry, succinct eye...

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Sundance Review: Tracing the History of the Police in ‘Power’

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Police reform is a hot-button issue, with calls from the left to "defund the police" and responses from the right that “blue lives” matter. Complicating those concepts is the fact that every American has grown up with the police as an established reality. Considering what something else could look like requires an acknowledgment that it hasn’t always been this way and perhaps shouldn’t be. Yance Ford’s documentary Power looks at the history of the police and how that’s shaped where we as a country now.

So much of present-day policing stems from racist institutions, beginning with slave catchers as the original model for police forces, which first began in Boston and quickly spread throughout the country...

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