I'm Rebecca Lervoy and this is You Can't make this up as the podcast where we uncover the true stories behind

your favorite Netflix documentaries and films.

On today's episode, we take a closer look at the Netflix documentary film, Power.

Every single sworn police officer died of America has the right, has the power to pull out a gun and shoot you.

Today we're talking to Director Yancey Ford.

From the slave patrols of the 1700s

and the first publicly funded police departments of the 1800s

to the uprisings of the 1960s and 2020s the scope and

scale of American law enforcement has expanded over time. Once a tool of the

powerful to maintain social order, the police have now become a power unto themselves.

The Netflix documentary film, Power, offers a visceral and immersive journey to demonstrate how

we've arrived at this moment in history.

It examines urgent questions about a growing and largely unchecked authority,

who is policed, who is protected, who gets to decide and why.

If we were starting a country tomorrow

and part of what we had to invent

was a system of law and order of criminal justice,

of police, there's almost. of the police.

There's almost no chance we would invent the system we currently have. And I'm joined now by Director Yancey Ford, welcome to you can't make this up.

Thanks for back, I'm really excited to be here.

So you make a lot of visually interesting choices,

and we will talk about that, but we need to begin at the start of the film. After the title card, the screen stays black,

...