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Police and Policing Videos Reflection

Kimberly King

Delta State University

CRJ 670

Dr. Donna Ossorio

02/22/2026

Police and Policing Videos Reflection

A common theme across the Frontline: Policing the Police, This American Life: Cops See It Differently, Part 1, and Cops See It Differently, Part 2 is the perceptual divide between Police and the communities where they operate, the source of which has severe moral, ethical, and practical implications.

Policing the Police anchors this divide in history. The movie brings back the policing crisis in Newark by detailing the events that triggered it in 1967, when the Police beat up a black cab driver, proving that community mistrust is not irrational (Jacoby & Bourg, 2016). An investigation conducted by the Department of Justice in 2014 revealed that 75 percent of the pedestrian stops made by officers of the Newark Police Department were not legally justified and that police misused force and looted civilians regularly. The statistics become physically tangible when the audience sees the officers making field investigations, that is, stopping and frisking young Black men without much explanation. These men seem humiliated and powerless at the same time with George Floyd’s case been a perfect example of escalated police misconduct (Wu et al., 2023). The work of Mayor Ras Baraka in establishing a Civilian Complaint Review Board that has subpoena authority, strongly opposed by unions of police officers, is an example of how structural accountability is fought even when the wrongdoing is well-documented.

The Cops See It Differently Part 1 supports this divide with the lived experience (This American Life, 2015). Lisa Mahon, the daughter of an ex-corrections officer who did not typically suspect the Police, describes a traffic stop so maniacal in character that she had ordered her 14-year-old son to begin recording. Her desire to document the experience is a painful fact, which is that even people who respect law enforcement may be threatened by it. This also leads to an ethical issue of consistency and professionalism since officers are acting inconsistently; they are therefore taking away the very social trust on which good policing relies.

Part 2 of Cops See It Differently makes the situation more complex as it puts the perspective of the officer in the center ( Cops See It Differently - Part Two, 2015). The police officer of the NYPD, who remains unnamed, looks at the video of the fight with Eric Garner and is almost exclusively concerned with Garner not cooperating, and, apparently, cannot place his misery or demise at the center of his attention. This is not made out to be evil, but I found it ethically disturbing. It shows the extent to which occupational culture can constrict the moral perspective of an officer, such that compliance with the procedural regulations becomes more apparent than the value of a human life.

Combined, these three sources show that the crisis of policing is not only functional but also ethical in nature. Reform cannot be achieved by simply changing the policy; reform has to be a challenge to face, whose pain is considered and whose humanity is prioritized in any interaction. Devoid of such reckoning, such evidence-based reforms as consent decrees have a tool without the cultural base to support them.

References

Cops See It Differently - Part Two. (2015, February 13). This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/548/cops-see-it-differently-part-two

Jacoby, J., & Bourg, A. (2016). Policing the Police. FRONTLINE. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/policing-the-police/

This American Life. (2015, February 6). Cops See It Differently - Part One - This American Life. This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/547/cops-see-it-differently-part-one

Wu, H. H., Gallagher, R. J., Alshaabi, T., Adams, J. L., Minot, J. R., Arnold, M. V., Welles, B. F., Harp, R., Dodds, P. S., & Danforth, C. M. (2023). Say their names: Resurgence in the collective attention toward Black victims of fatal police violence following the death of George Floyd. PLOS ONE, 18(1), e0279225. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279225