With the help of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and, well, just about any social-media platform, U.S. citizens have never been more aware of police brutality occurring in their own country. And so, much as Welcome to Leith is (unfortunately) hitting at just the right moment, Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber‘s Peace Officer will, in exactly one month’s time, open to an audience likely to have already had its subject in mind.
Officer is not unlike Leith in that it explores the topic through a specific outlet — this point of focus being “Dub” Lawrence, “a former sheriff who established and trained his rural state’s first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later.” Its exploration of this and other controversial examples of police force has earned it fine notices, including one from this very site. Said we at SXSW: “Peace Officer makes strides against the grain to show that increasingly, police are at the root of the violence and it stems not just from individual actions but instead the training and the systems in place. The militarization of police is gaining national spotlight and now, more than ever, we need a documentary like this to pull back the curtain on what is going on in communities of every kind.”
Have a look at the trailer below (via Apple):
Synopsis:
Peace Officer is a documentary about the increasingly militarized state of American police as told through the story of “Dub” Lawrence, a former sheriff who established and trained his rural state’s first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later. Driven by an obsessed sense of mission, Dub uses his own investigation skills to uncover the truth in this and other recent officer-involved shootings in his community, while tackling larger questions about the changing face of peace officers nationwide.
Peace Officer arrives on September 16.