Grumble, but never too busy to protect or serve a citizen. Hes a friend of old and young, motorist or pedestrian and serves any race, color or creed. This is your policeman. Here on cspan 3 tuesday, a series of programs on text message and innovation. Well take a look at the latest in transportation technology. Chaney. Book tv on cspan 2. Television for serious readers. In 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther king jr. And subsequent riot yots that devastated parts of washington, d. C. , the office of Economic Opportunity which administered many of Lyndon Johnsons war or poverty programs created a project as a model to help improve poor relations between the police and community. According to the national c archives, they commissioned a series of documentary and training films to record the implementation of the project, hoping they could be shown and used as a model for other cities. Despite investing almost 200,000, they were never released, but were september to a warehouse in maryland. Up next on reel america, three short pilot District Training films that are recently rediscovered and digitized by the national archives. The project, the development of community control, is a 15minute film featuring 32yearold activist marion berry, who later became mayor of the district of columbia. Old people, young people, poor people, all of whom live in the Third District and is not fair for these scitizens to be left out of the picture. Down in our basement, people be hitting people in the head. I dont think any other people in the america could take this kind of stuff. Drive anybody to be a ref aleutian nair. What do you think about the poe liss . They aint nothing but pigs, man. Like they picked me up just because i wasnt in school and like that. So, i said, what youll going to do with me. Going to take you to the pig pen. I said, no, you aint. You going to take me to my aunt. So, he said, all right. All right. I said, so he took down my name. I said, man, yall aint nothing but pigs, yall know that . Told it right to their face. The question always comes when you live in a community thats repressed and people are living like we have to live in a black community, how are you going to handle all these problems. If you solve them by trying to create citizens awareness of a need for graphic change. Washingtons third police district. There is contrast here. From embassy road to devastated 14th street. Violence in the spring rye rots of 1968. An average week in this district will bring 40 robbery, 16 aggravated all thes and a high incidence of rape and arson. 18 addict this is year will die from overdose. By fall of 1968, a committee had chosen this sight for a new idea with high hope and more than a million dollars, the plan was this. Erode suspicious and fear among police and the people. Find ways of helping the police force to be part of the community again. But there were those in the Third District whom the experiment was dangerously flawed. Revisions were unclear. They feared the trick bag. Another signal that the black community could not be held responsible for change. Among the leaders who fashioned war against the project was one man who would see ilt through. Marian berry. 32 years old, former teacher of college chemistry, director of a black corporation called pride, marian berry had a strategy for community control. Told him i could see him in about two minutes. I got a message. Where . In his office . This is the other part of the Third District. I mean, you can see the difference. The streets. Cleaner. This is the more affluent side of the Third District. Again, in most urban cities, youve got that twosided situation. Youve got where we live, 14th street, other parts of the black community and then you got this part of the community. These are the people who are not oppressed. They dont live in the kind of skau lehr that we do. These are the people crying for more protection, more dogs, more guns, more policemen, more jails. Harsher sentences because theyre the ones whose homes are being burglarized and they dont have to do the things we have to do. They dont have to go to meetings and disrupt them. They dont have to break up meetings, kick down the doors, protest the way we do. Now, the question is how do you revolve these two conflicts and points of view, where this part of the Community Wants more policemen, more repressiveness and the other part wants less policemen. Physical presence. They want more humane treatment. More reha bil tbilitative kind programs and thats what i think we have to deal with and since this is where the problem is not as such, i think we have to act on where the problem is. I would like us to take up the business at hand and the business at hand is to choose a preset. We need to be talking about how were going to do this. I cannot longer serve on a committee which cannot possibly make changes if it functions only in an advisory capacity. To people out there, theyre not sophisticated as you people in here and theyre going to be in the trick bag. Im going to be with them. Im not saying im resigning, but any kind of understanding, send me a letter, come back here and get together on this thing, please. Previous question. We are here to select a precept, but whether we realize it or not, we have more power in this room and watching on one committee in a long time and when you break it down in the precinct level, thats how it is. Thats why im having to really push it here. You dont get that power. Control. And selfdetermination by just talking about it because those who have it are not willingly going to give it up and therefore, you have to find various ways of seizing it, really. Taking it or convincing them they ought to give it to them. And unfortunately, only thing we have and i will command is our bodies. And our voices. The only kind of thing that the system seems to understand is when you organize that kind of a con tronation politics. Thats what we did in the 1960s and thats the way the country operates. This country got started on using disruptive kind of tactics that was a revolution, so i learned that from america. Anything i do. This meeting was called to discuss the freed yurs and to take action on the procedures on the election of the board. Mr. Berry to come in. Go right in. How are you . Who made him chairman any way . Mister, im the host. You cant make yourself chairman. What kind of meeting you got going on in here . A meeting with bunch of you folks supposed to be protecting the this is my invitation. Sir we can conduct it in the Third District and i live and work in the Third District, dig it . And i deserve the right to be here, they going to come in here as long as im here. That is all planned. The issue raised on the inside would be why these people ought to come in. Which makes them think wli they in the meeting, those that plan the meeting and those that didnt. The crowd. Im not afraid after of him. The issue is whether people outside can come in. We want the people outside inside. Thats all. I aint going to harm you. I wont touch you if you dont touch me. Believe that. See that . Thats down to the wire, everybody. There is no way that anybody can come in to the Third District, see the gunman and have a meeting against our will. It just wont happen. We told that they was on their own, come into our community and do what they want to do. Thats the issue, so my idea, lets keep pushing and keep fighting until they get control of it. Its very simple. Going on. At some point, i dont think we can do and another thing, for those of you that are new, it has taken us 15 months to go t. O. Get this far sork a lot what you might be thinking, a lot of questions you might have, just rest assured that we are working from experience and were going to do everything we can to protect the interest of all citizens at all times that you have to sort of learn with us as you go and sort of trust were going to move and keep the thing going. I believe very strongly in leadership. I dont believe that the masses of people are aware and can articulate the problems and solutions. And therefore, youve got to have good, honest leadership that knows where it wants to go and is in the vanguard position and thats always been true in any revolution. Whether its social, economic, political or armed. This is a peoples movement. Old people. Young people. Poor people. All of whom live in the Third District and its thot fair for these citizens to have an idea today to deliver be left out. Unfortunately, in northwest washington, you have some people who are committed to the community and we struggle and we were ek pressing the overwhelming sentiment of most of the people in the Third District. Theres a time that which is wrong for the black community is the most honorable thing to do. Thats how it operates. Ready for the community to get ready through any legitimate structure. The only time that ive seen the community really move and organize was in 68, when they would the orders without Community Leadership. They burned most of the town down, but through legitimate things, not that it was too diligent. Weve got to have a few people, there were some people who dropped out of it because they were tired of fighting. Hung in there and then won. So, we just have to try to figure out a way to make sure whence you get as old as i am an before that, that you dont have to live in those conditions, where you dont have to see the drug addicts, the dope. How do you take a dude like this and make sure he grows up to be a man, that he can stand tall, get the kind of advantages and opportunities that other people get. So, that means we got to do something about trying get some kind of control, right . So we can have something to say. How you doing, about whats happening in our community. Right . And i think we can do that. Dont you think so . Right on. Next, a 1971 film commissioned by the office of Economic Opportunity. The Pilot Project Police Training is a 20minute documentary showing efforts approach their work. The officers confronting him in high crime areas and then engage. I would say a residents who live in the presinlgts are a little bit lawabiding. 5 of the trouble, the other 95, they know whether theyre wrong or rigts. The community itself, i dont consider this riffraff and what not out on the street as part of the xhupt. In their first sessions, the men were asked to speak out about things that bother them. That talk openly. To have most important, feel free to clearly understand that the time we are living in is now because of that edition decision that Supreme Court their world today is complicated by courts that dont support them, but young people that dont respect the law. But laws that are hard to understand and worse to enforce and theyre not sure where they stand in the midst of this confusion. If they could identify and control their adversary, they could handle any problem including community relations. Its not gun control regulations and tell me when and when i cant take my weapon out, bull, a man hadnt got any right to live. Now, its going to change on the robbery this is a felony. You can no longer use it on a burglary two. You can no longer use it on an arson. You know, whats left of this city . To account for itself, they havent come up with anything at all. Everything is about the police. Theres those that dont know, still try to tell us how to do it. These people have a lot of guts. Years ago when a police map walked down the street. Now, policeman goes on the street, tries to make an arrest, theres 15 people ready to jump on him. Its these damn hoodlums on 14th street, no matter how much you train up, youre not going get them to change your mind about it. I dont care what you do and no psychology or sociology is going to do a damn thing for it. As they talked, they agreed on the need for Community Cooperation and support, but the problem remains. How to get that support. If theres any way to do it, thats got to be the only way. That had taken place, just as easily if we had had the full cooperation and insistence that we had had in the past. And situation at 14th, i would ask people along the side of the street, will you help me . Will you help me . And nobody would help. They were all sitting there, they were clapping and laughing and you know, get him and all this. Then after i did draw my service revolver, i still kept asking, will you help me . It was just like a bullfight. Everybodys got to wait to see what was going to happen. I fell, hit my arm and shot her in in the stomach, but if they had helped, all that, everything could have been avoided because had someone helped, i would never have drawn the service revolver. Look at that. Having fun. We have instead of three judges today, we have three instant social scientists to throw the other way, but we dont want to lose sight of the law. In the inner city and the vague or ambiguous, to give the man solid foot ng this area, specific laws and regulations were examined. Using the technique of roleplaying. Georgetown, good neighborhood. Almost all residents in the area are white. The party is going in the same block. Nothing. All of them looking for a hotel. Officers played the parts on both sides. In situations prepared by the training staff. No, sir. Identification for what . I dont have any identification. The men were able to play the roles well. It was easy to identify and give the right feelings to the problems they face every day. They began to look at themselves objectively. Now, complexity is added. How do the men respond when additional problems are presented . My name is difficult. I need to have to get a community heeder. Here, an officer play iing the part of the Community Leader joins the action. Go see my girl. Hey way to go. All right. Finger extended, index finger. Well just a shake, regardless of what he may think of a revolver, it give me the opinion to frisk him at that point. I dont believe they had to, a basic legal right to stop the man and inquire as it was portrayed here. We have a difference of opinion between those instances as to whether it was a legal stop. Hes also frustrated this man is. He was looking at a building. Or the landscaping. Whats your advice about rushing up op people . Dont do it. The men can cope with a clearly defined adversary, but the Community Leader doesnt fit into that category. I think he should have waited until things was calm and talked then about the situation. He was so involved thinking about the community. If he was coming out to assist me on the suspect and he could, id be grateful to him. Instead of having bis disorder on the street. Yet, were talking about the same action. Is there anything wrong with letting a citizen come up an talk to this guy . Even if you know hes not trying take him away by interfering, to help you and
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