‘Bad And Good?’ Seattle’s Black Men And Boys Respond To The Word ‘Police’
From the archive: published Feb 28, 2015, 11 years ago. Details may have changed since.
What would be your first response to the word “police”? A handful of Seattle’s black boys and men were asked to respond in word association fashion.
When 45 boys and men aged from 5 to 50 were asked to respond to the word “police,” the wide-ranging responses were documented on video. They spanned from “bad and good,” to “brutal,” “evil,” “scary,” “slime,” and “detached.” Many don’t hold back in giving full explanations for their responses to the word “police.”
In the new video, produced by Cut Video to coincide with Black History Month, there’s a marked transition from cheerful positive responses to police at the beginning of the video, like “helpful” and “hero” amongst children, to “evil” and “slime” towards the end.
The black men aged 5 to 50 recruited from the Seattle area responded to the word “police” in the following ways.
5* Bad and good 6 Officer 7 Job 8 Helpful 9 People 10 Brave 11 Men and women who are making sure everyone’s doing the right things 12 Po po 13 Justice 14 They fight crime like superheroes 15 Conceited 16 Officer 17 Corrupt 18 Justice 19 Helpful 20 Safe 21 Brutality, abusive 22 Friendly 23 Brutality 24 Change 25 Help 26 Beat down 27 Victims of a generation 28 Self-opposed protectors 29 Brutality 30 Authority 31 I look for them like they’re looking for me 32 Doing their jobs 33 Insane 34 Detached 35 Scary 36 Crisis 37 Untrained 38 Evil 39 Law enforcement 40 Fear 41 Power 42 Stay away from them 43 Brutality 44 Gang 45 Protection 46 Hands up 47 Slime 48 Unjust 49 Violent 50 Force
*Participant’s age
One word, however, appears to be the most common response when posed with the word “police.” Brutal and brutality appear to be common associations. How much of this was due to their location, or indeed the selection process? It’s difficult to know, although Cut Media has said it recruited volunteers through friends and by posting adverts.
You might also pose the question why this response to police is entirely given by males. There is no female voice for the video coinciding with Black History Month.
But the police force doesn’t receive an entirely bad response among the participants. Children’s views are entirely mixed while another young man appears openly positive.
“My times that I’ve dealt with the police I’ve actually received a lot of help.”
A more senior man, however, is forcefully candid.
“The only way we can get the police to stop chokeholding black people to death is if the police start pretending that black people are really people.”
It was reported by the Daily Mail that a spokesperson for the video producer commented as follows.
“As you watch you can see people have a lot of different experiences. For us, we wanted to explore how the concept of “the police” changes in black men as they get older. I think the most constructive approach to this video is to ask why the word police begins so positively and then gets progressively more negative.”
The video makers also said that relatives of some of the men are police officers, and it wasn’t the intention of the piece ‘to pass judgement on police.’
A controversial, inflammatory subject across America, the views of U.S. citizens about its police force, and their actions towards black people, is a subject that will forever remain ripe for discussion.