Frontline and The AP Document Police Use of Force Among the Most Vulnerable

As other programs and programmers increasingly take the rubbernecking approach to documentaries, PBS stalwart Frontline continues to hold the line with thought-provoking investigations on everything from The Power of Big Oil to Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. This week, the long-running docuseries premieres one of its most ambitious undertakings, the result of a partnership with The Associated Press: Documenting Police Use of Force, which is certain to touch a nerve, especially as police departments across the country are scrutinized for their handling of protests.

Of course, the struggle for police accountability is an endeavor that predates the recent demonstrations on college campuses, and is explored in the 2022 Frontline documentary Police on Trial. And it’s a complicated one, as amply demonstrated in Documenting Police Use of Force, which is directed by Serginho Roosblad, a filmmaker and member of the AP’s Global Investigations team, and produced by Mike Shum (Police on Trial, American Voices: A Nation in Turmoil). Police use of force can have deadly results even when the tactics are “less-lethal,” as the designation goes, and sometimes deployed in situations that wouldn’t seem to merit it.

In some of these cases, like that of Austin Hunter Turner, the police were responding to a medical emergency. Documenting Police Use of Force includes body-cam footage of Bristol, Tennessee police officers and paramedics trying to piece together what happened that led Turner to stop breathing by the time he was placed in the ambulance. The footage captures the chaos of any emergency response situation, and the dawning realization of human error. But the moment the body cam is hastily shut off, it no longer feels like we’re in a gray area.

The term “less-lethal” seems at once straightforward and euphemistic, and also, as the documentary unfolds, an inadequate description for actions that end in tragedy with surprising regularity. A three-year investigation by the AP — in collaboration with Frontline and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University — found 1,036 such deaths between 2012 and 2021. This investigation, which is also available online as part of an unprecedented interactive database, marks the most extensive reporting on the subject, and is full of staggering statistics. For example, non-Hispanic Black people made up one-third of these deaths, despite only being 12% of the U.S. population.

If that didn’t already make it clear, Documenting Police Use of Force is a difficult watch, not least of which because it evokes the growing apprehension among marginalized people over calling for any kind of emergency services, let alone police assistance. Veteran journalist Mitch Weiss notes that the data that was painstakingly collected proves that this issue “cuts across every state, it cuts across every socioeconomic boundary,” but the above statistic on the disproportionate toll this has taken on Black Americans also makes it clear that some people are more vulnerable than others — especially those with mental illnesses.

As the most vulnerable populations emerge in this investigation, so too do the less-lethal force tactics that have drawn the most controversy. More than half of the deaths the AP and Frontline investigated involved prone restraint, which, when used for a prolonged period of time, can lead to positional asphyxia and cardiac arrest. Some police officials refute the danger of this method; senior instructor David Rose compares getting a knee in the back while prone and handcuffed on the ground to professional football players in protective gear getting piled on. He defends the less-lethal tactics employed by police departments, saying “We’re real-world practitioners, so we’re dealing with a real-world problem.”

But that doesn’t take into account the effects of racism on the criminal legal system. Take “excited delirium,” a factor cited in 142 of the cases that make up this investigation. Eric Jaeger, a paramedic and educator, provides a succinct and dismaying history about the term:

We’ve now come to understand that 'excited delirium' is a deeply flawed concept. In many cases, the definition of ‘excited delirium’ was built on racial stereotypes and probably more fundamentally, excited delirium was a concept that in many of the cases served to shift the focus from the actions of the first responders — restraint or chemical sedation by police or by EMS — to the individual for using methamphetamine; for engaging in criminal activity; for, in some cases, suffering from mental health emergencies.

Documenting Police Use of Force furthers an important conversation about police accountability. Reporters like Martha Bellisle, Ryan J. Foley, Kristin M. Hall, Aaron Morrison, Justin Pritchard, and Mitch Weiss all take part in the documentary, pushing for greater transparency while also providing nuance via interviews with families of victims, as well as officials and consultants. In addition to Jaeger and Rose, reporters interviewed Jack Ryan, an attorney and former police officer who homes in on the lack of training involved in these cases, and Dr. Roger Mitchell, former chief medical examiner for Washington, D.C.

Mitchell has been advocating for a new system to record deaths in police custody, proposing changes to standard U.S. death certificates that would allow these cases to “be reviewed as not just singular events, but as systems of events that occur.” With its expansive reporting and clear-eyed approach, Documenting Police Use of Force makes the breadth of the problem undeniable.

Documenting Police Use of Force premieres Tuesday, April 30 at 10:00 P.M. ET on PBS and on YouTube and at 7:00 P.M. ET on pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App.

Danette Chavez is the Editor-in-Chief of Primetimer and its biggest fan of puns.