In 1968 following then saturation of Martin Luther king jr. And subsequent riots, the office of Economic Opportunity which created a pilot district project as a model to help improve poor relations between the police and community. According to the National Archives, the are they commissioned a series of documentary and training films to record the implementation of the projects, hoping they could be shown and use as a model for other cities. Despite investing almost 200,000 dollars in the films, they were never released, but instead worsened to a warehouse in maryland. Up next on american three short pilot District Training films that are recently rediscovered and digitized by the National Archives. The pilot district project, the development of Community Control is a 15 minute fall featuring 32 year old activist marion barry, who later became mayor of the district of columbia. Hold people, young people, poor people all of whom live in the Third District. And it is not fair for the citizens 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 america could take this kind of stuff. What do you think about the police . They are pigs, man. They gave me trouble because i wasnt in school. They said im going to take you to the pig pen. I said no you aint, unit take me to my aunts. So he said all right, all right. So he took down my name i said, man. You aint nothing but pigs. Youll know that . The question always comes when you live in a community thats repast and people are living like we have to live in the black community, how are you going to get a handle on all of these problems. If you solve them by trying to create citizens awareness of a need for dramatic and graphic change in this community. Washingtons third police district, there is contrast here. From embassy row to devastated 14th street violence in the spring riots of 1968. An average weakness district will bring 40 robberies, 16 aggravated assaults, and a high incidence of rape, arson, and homicide. With drug abuse at least a huge source, 18 addicts this year will die from an overdose. By fall of 1968, a Mayors Committee had chosen the site for a new opportunity. With high hopes and more than 1 Million Dollars the plan was this, you wrote suspicion and fear among police and the people. Find ways of helping the police force be part of the community again. But there are those in the Third District whom the experiment was dangerously flawed. Provisions, were unclear for the project. 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 Pilot Project was one man who would see it through. Marion barry. 32 years old, former teacher of college chemistry, director of a black corporation called pride, marion barry had a strategy for community. Control tell him i can see him in about two minutes. I got a message. Where . In his office . This is the other part of the Third District. You can see the difference, the streets are cleaner. This is the north side of the north district. In most urban cities, youve got that two sided situation. Youve got where we live, 14th street, other parts of the black community, and then he got this part of the community. This is where people are not oppressed. They dont live in squalor that we do. These are people who are crying for more protection, more dogs, more guns, more policeman, more jails, harsher sentences. Because theyre the ones whose homes are being burglarized and they dont have to do the things that we have to do. They dont have to go to meetings, they dont have to disrupt them, they dont have to kick the doors down, they dont have to protest to gain power the way we do. Now the question is how do you resolve those two conflicts and points of view . Where this part of the Community Wants more policeman, more oppressiveness, and the other part wants less policeman. Less of a physical presence. They want more humane treatment. More repeal taped of kind of programs. And thats what i think we have to deal with. Since this is what 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. At the business at hand is to choose, a preset. I can no longer serve on a committee which cannot possibly make changes if it functions in an advisory capacity. To people out there, theyre not a sophisticated as you people in here, theyre going to be in the trick bag. Im going to be with them. Im not saying im resigning but to get 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 realized it or not, we have more power in this room that ive seen in washington on one committee in a long time. When you break it down to the preset level, im trying to take the power we have here. Thats why im helping to really push it. ,. And unfortunately only thing we have is our bodies and our voices. The only kind of thing the system seems to understand is when we organize that kind of confrontation in politics. I believe in that because thats what we did in the 1960s, and thats the way the country operates. This country got started on using disruptive tactics that started a revolution. I learned that from america. Anything i do. , this meeting was called to discuss procedures and take action for the election of the floor. Ask mr. Berry to comments. Hi, how are you . Who made you chairman anyway . I am the host, i did. You cant make yourself chairman. What kind of meeting to have going on in there . You folks are supposed to be protecting. This is by invitation only. My instructions are. We can conduct our own meeting. We can conduct our own meeting in this district, i live in the Third District. I work in the Third District. I deserve the right to be here, and theyre gonna come in here as long as i am here. That was all planned. Why are these people allowed to come into their meeting. It makes people start thinking, why are they in the meeting . And it caused the confrontation between those that plans the meeting and those that didnt. Are you going to intimidate the lady . He cant intimidate me, im not afraid of him. Lets break up this meeting. The issue is that there are people outside and they should come in. Order. So what . It is order. We want the people to come outside come inside. Im going to stand here where i was permitted. I wont touch you if you wont touch me. Meeting adjourned. Everybody out. There is no way that anyone can come into the Third District and have a meeting against our will. That just wont happen. They couldnt hold their own, come into our community and do what they wanted to do. So my idea is in foreign people about the meetings, lets keep us together and keep fighting until they get control of it. Its very simple. At some point its going to happen in time. They got to do that. There is a lot of things that we can do. Here is another thing, for those of you all that are new, it is taken as 15 months to go this far. So what you might be thinking is rest assured that we have working from experience and were gonna do everything we can to protect the interest of all citizens of all times and you learn with us as you go and sort of trust us where were going to move and keep this 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 social, economic, political or armed. This is a peoples movement. Old people, young people, poor people, all of whom live in the Third District. Its not fair for the citizens to be left out of the picture. Unfortunately in washington you have some people who are committed to the community and we struggle and organized, and we were expressing the overwhelming sentiment of most of the people in the Third District. There is a time where it is wrong or harmful for the black community is the most honorable and revolutionary thing to do. Right on, rather. Thats how it operates, if you wait for the community to get ready through massive change through any legitimate structure, you wont get it. Most of the structures are not working for them. The only time that ive really seen a community moving organize was in 68 when they had the disorders without Community Leadership. They burned most of the town down. But through legitimate things, not that they were to legitimate, weve got to have a few people that were in the vanguard. Some people dropped out of it because they are tired of fighting and fussing. By and large most people hug in there and we won. So we just have to try to figure out a way to make sure when you get as old as i am or even before that, that you dont have to live in those conditions where you have to see the drug addictions, 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. That means we have to do something about trying to get some kind of control in our communities, . Right so we can say about whats happening in our community. Right . I think we can do that. Dont you think so . Right on. The officers are showing openly discussing about high crime areas. If we cant talk to the people, we cant get them to understand us and we can understand them. I would say a residents who actually are in the precinct are law abiding, you get a little bit of trouble once in a while. But i couldnt say a lot, maybe 5 might give you trouble. The other 95, they wont give you much trouble because they dont know whether they are wrong or right. Ive never really had any problems with the community itself. I dont consider that they are this riffraff is part of the community. In their first sections they talk openly and easily with each other. We have to talk to the issues that have most importance to you, and feel free to jump in. People fail to understand that the time we are living in now, because of the decisions of the Supreme Court they generalized about the problems, their world today is complicated by courts that dont support them. By young people that dont respect the law, by laws that are hard to understand and worse to enforce. And they are not sure where they stand in the midst of this confusion. Hes making about 500 dollars a night, we arent allowed to go up and case that. But if they could identify and control their adversary, they could handle any problem in cute including community relations. Its not gun control regulations, and tell me when and why i cant take my weapon out, thats not a justifiable homicide . Full. A man hand got any right to live. Its going to change on the robbery statue, this is a felony. You could no longer use it on burglary to, you can no longer use it on arson. If the place is occupied. You know, what is left of this city . To account for itself they havent come up with anything at all everything is about the police. There is that dont know still try to tell us how to do it. These people have a lot of guts. They are to freed of a placement anymore like years ago when a policeman walk down the street and people had respect and were afraid of him. Now a police goes down the street and theres 15 people ready to jump on him. Its these hoodlums on 14th street, no matter how much you try to train up, youre not going to get them to change your mind. I dont care what you do, no psychology or sociology, not a thing. So you have to work on them before you work on us. As they talk they agreed on the need for queen unity 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 couldve just an easily been avoided if we had the full cooperation and the system that we had in the past. The situation at 14th, i would ask people along the side of the street, will you help me . Will you help me . Nobody would help. They are all sitting there, they are clapping and laughing any no saying, get him, get him. Then i did draw my service revolver. I still kept asking, will you help me . Will you help me . They clapped and laughed. It was just like a bullfight. Everybodys just waiting to see what was going to happen. I fell, i hit my arm and shot her in the stomach. But if they had helped when i asked them to, anyone, everything could have been avoided because if i had had someone help, i would never have drawn the service revolver. Look at that. We have instead of three judges today, we have three instant social scientists but we dont want to lose sight of the law. Statutory law on the inner city can be very ambiguous. To give a man solid footing in this area, specific laws and regulations were examined. Using the technique of role playing. Georgetown, good neighborhood, almost all residents in the area are white. And now the party is going on in the same block. All of them are looking for a hotel. Officers played the parts on both sides. In situations prepared by the training staff. Identification please. I dedication for . What 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, complicity is at it. How do men respond when additional problems are presented . Here in officer playing the part of Community Leader joins the action. Did you have your index finger extended . Give it a shake, regardless of what he may think of a revolver, it gives me an opinion to first came at that point. I dont believe they had to, how to basically go right to stop the man and inquire as it was portrayed here. We have a difference of opinion between those two sides as to whether it was illegal stop. Hes also frustrated this man is. He was looking at a building or the landscaping. Whats your advice about rushing up on people . Dont do it. The men can cope with a clearly defined adversary, but the Community Leader doesnt fit easily into that category. I think you should have waited until things was calm and then talked about the situation, he was so involved thinking about the community. If you are out with an uncooperative suspect, and i could be grateful to him. You can see it as an attempt to assist the officer. Is there anything wrong with letting a citizen talk, even if you know he is not trying to take him away by inter feeling, to help you and say, maybe i can calm him down. One guy comes in, another guy comes in, and then youve got a crowd. How did the man react when a crowd does forum . Another version of staying cool under fire. We are down at the station now, he is going to be arrested. We are going to the station now. He will be frisked. We conversed, we saw him try the doors a couple of times. And there was time to be frisks. I respond the way in normal person. What did you feel more resentments towards the subject or towards the citizens who intervene at the time . What would be your two officers advice . It would be just a matter of judgment as to how well i knew the two officers. I have to, or else there be nothing else left to go on. What would be your feeling towards the citizen . No adverse feelings, they had felt that they had a legitimate ripe, you listen, if they want to make a statement then you take it. Its not easy to give into the citizen who is riding you at the time and then all of a sudden you become stronger, more aggressive, or what have you. They could point out a mistake i made or call me all kinds of names, i think i wouldnt overreact. I would have a feeling you know that i dislike this person, but i wouldnt overreact. That is human nature. But also you know we can control our nature. Our purpose here today now the training prepared the man to go into comedian top with the citizens, take the First Step Towards a positive image. Be better hopefully and the police will get to know citizens better hopefully. And that the goodwill is generated will spread through the community. I dont think theres anybody who can quarrel with that. Thats exactly what theyve been calling us for years, community support. Who would meet you . Who are you getting through to them . To the worthwhile people. The worthwhile people . An old problem sticks in front of their minds. Most of their experience with a community has been limited to the troublemakers, the others are not their concern. How can we go in and make a good impression so they will support us more . That is the issue. Why are you fighting that . Im not fighting that, i am all for it. But what i say is, the people who you really got to get through to arent here. You are not going to reach the people that are hardens police haters, or the people on the fence. The people you get through to these people probably dont have to be impressed by the police as much as the criminal on the street. You said impressed. We want to make good impressions. We dont want to impress the people, that is a different thing. One way to begin this dialog with the community is with the youth of the inner city, the street youth. If youre on the street and cant give a good account of yourself making a good impression for some officers was just a chance to lecture, for others a fatherly chat. You are walking on the street and you are on your way home the topic chosen is loitering. You can say, dont stay out here so late. We want to try to understand each other and i think if we really try to understand each other and be square with each other. So we want to do is have one observer from each group to tell the rest of the group what happened. The youth perceive these officers of having been honest with you or are they trying to run a game on you. I feel they were honest. You have anything else to say . No, i dont have anything. Okay, next group. He asked how he felt about us, like i was a nice old man. Did he tell you that . That was his words. How you feel about that . I feel hes all right. He asked me about my feelings, it wasnt easy but i told him i believe in being very positive in fair. If i find him wrong then did you believe what he said . Like i said, you know yes or no . I really couldnt tell. You cant say. Okay. Now Police Trainees were put toget