Peace Officer
Gravitas Ventures
Reviewed by Tami Smith, Guest Reviewer for Shockya.
Grade: B
Director: Scott Christopherson, Brad Barber
Screenwriters: Brad Barber, Scott Christopherson
Cast: William J. “Dub” Lawrence, Liz Wood, Jerry Wood, Nancy Lawrence, Radley Balko, Kara Dansky, Sheriff Jim Winder, Sheriff Todd Richardson, Det. Jason Vanderwarf, Officer Derek Draper, Mike Stewart, Chris Shaw
Release date: September 16, 2015 at IFC Center, New York City
While returning home from the office on one cold snowy evening in March 1974, I was attacked by a man who wanted my money. He punched me in the face, pushed me down to the ground and fled, but was caught and swiftly arrested thirty minutes later by a ten-man police team. The handling of my case by the police was flawless. The detective in-charge accompanied me to the grand jury and testified, resulting in my attacker’s receiving a five-year jail sentence. These were the men who swore to “serve and protect”, and they did!
A different scenario is described in Peace Officer, a 105-minute documentary that deals with an alarming police brutality in the state of Utah. The film is narrated by Dub Lawrence, who served in law enforcement since 1975, became a Sheriff at age twenty-nine, created a S.W.A.T. team and later retired from the force. On December 2008 Dub witnessed the killing of his son-in-law Brian Wood by the S.W.A.T. team he created. Brian Wood had assaulted his wife, Liz, during a mental breakdown and threatened to kill himself with a revolver inside his pickup truck.
Directors Brad Barber and Scott Christopherson document some other cases of police aggression such as: the fatal shooting of an unarmed 22-year old woman who was buying illegal drugs, the home invasion of a married man accused of being an A.W.O.L, and the invasion of a plain-clothes police team, without a warrant, into a suspected marijuana grower’s home, ending in his suicide in jail.
These events are told in a detailed personal manner that may leave some of us astonished. How could these events be happening? Dub Lawrence suggests that we live in a different world now, where police officers view themselves as the military and the rest of the population as the enemy that must be subdued by any means necessary.
Peace Officer is edited skillfully by Renny McCauley, showing us the similarity of law-enforcement’s behavior in each of the cases, while utilizing a variety of police tapes available and recreating other situations. Dub Lawrence delivers a gripping narration.
Unrated. 105 minutes. © Tami Smith, Guest Reviewer
Story: B
Acting: B
Technical: B
Overall: B
