Policing in America

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2021

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. As the trial of Derek Chauvin plays out, it's a truth and a trauma many people in the US and around the world are again witnessing first hand. But this tension between African American communities and the police has existed for centuries. This week, the origins of policing in the United States and how those origins put violent control of Black Americans at the heart of the system.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we start the show, we want to give you a heads up,
0:02.4	the third descriptions of graphic violence
0:04.6	and other heavy content in this episode.
0:09.2	A few years ago, when we were developing
0:11.8	what would become through line,
0:13.7	one of the first topics we wanted to learn more about
0:16.2	was the history of policing.
0:18.6	This was a year after Freddie Gray died
0:20.8	in the custody of Baltimore police.
0:23.4	We were searching for answers.
0:25.2	We wanted to know how policing in America started
0:28.4	and how the relationship between police and the black community
0:32.0	had evolved to be one so bloody and tragic.
0:36.1	Our research led us to making an episode
0:38.1	on the history of mass incarceration,
0:40.7	and we never got back to policing.
0:43.6	Then almost a year ago,
0:45.6	millions of people around the world
0:47.4	watched George Floyd die in police custody
0:50.4	in what felt like an incredibly disturbing repetition,
0:54.0	one that's been occurring for a very, very long time.
0:58.0	So soon after that happened,
	...

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