The LAPD, as well as the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, have upped their presence around movie theaters in black neighborhoods as a result of the release of Straight Outta Compton, although they remain conspicuously absent in Russian neighborhoods where the new James Bond is showing.
The LAPD is too cynically mired in overt racist profiling tactics and demonstrative brutality to care enough to comment, itself a statement on their part, but LA Sheriffs Department spokesperson Nicole Nishida confirmed this:
“Sheriff’s patrol stations have been working with theater management in their jurisdictions over the last few weeks to develop safety plans and discuss security measures. Deputies will be doing patrol checks during their shifts and the Department will be monitoring the release.”
“The Los Angeles Police Department plans to dispatch additional officers to theaters in its Southwest Division, which includes Baldwin Hills, Baldwin Village, Crenshaw, Exposition Park, Jefferson Park, Leimert Park and West Adams.”
Across this country people are protesting the tactics of police departments who are seen as occupying forces in black neighborhoods, with happenings in Ferguson, Baltimore and other places serving as a fresh catalyst.
The LAPD has its own history of racial oppression.
In fact this undeniable reality was addressed in a song called Fuck tha Police back in 1988 by the group N.W.A., the very subject of the film whose audience the police are now overtly profiling.
So, as that song is a protest anthem, the police bothering and killing black people has been seen as a problem in black communities since at least 1988, although there are earlier examples.
Nonetheless this explains the meteoric popularity of N.W.A., and the song, Fuck tha Police.
Possibly part of the film’s popularity is even derived from its relevance to current events.
Whatever metric you’d like to use to discern there’s a problem in this country – the ridiculously disproportionate numbers of blacks in prison, the disproportionate likelihood of blacks being pulled over or detained without probable cause, the number of blacks killed by police or in police custody, the number of frivolous drug arrests of blacks compared to whites, the number of actual crimes including drug use committed by blacks versus whites in this country and the subsequent disproportionate enforcement of said crimes, the data is out there.
I prefer the eye test.
Such as the fact that this meta example of police profiling and racism has officially collapsed onto itself, and in the climate we find ourselves in, where there is a war going on in the streets of Ferguson between people who are tired of being jailed in the name of economics and police officers armed with riot gear fighting back at them, that the LA Sheriffs Department would openly admit they were profiling theatergoers in black neighborhoods who are going to a popular film which happens to be about a black rap group.
This type of brash occupational sentiment is the reason N.W.A. came out with that song in the first place.
I never even heard of increased police presence being applied at movie theaters, even after the several mass shootings which have taken place in recent years.
Certainly there have been no calls to beef up police presence during any specific movie, ever.
Yet when there are black neighborhoods and black movies about black people questioning authority involved, it’s time to be preemptive.
Interesting. For all the LAPD’s apparent interest in the fields of music and film, they seem to have missed the point entirely.
Here it is:
Fuck The Police.