Summary Of The Documentary Do Not Resist

I watched the documentary Do Not Resist with my roommate on Friday.This documentary is about the militarization of local U.S police departments in recent years. It first presents a disturbing scene of the police speaking through a loudspeaker, while protesters are chanting and approaching the police in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014. The documentary then presents a debate of whether the local police departments need more and advanced equipments. James Comey, the FBI director, among many other Executive Branch officials believes that officers are facing an increasingly dangerous environment, thus the police officers need a range of weapons and equipments to respond and protect the fellow citizens and protect
My first reaction was that the police officers were over-equipped for this protest. However, I also tried to think in the perspective of the police officers. Being present with militarized equipments on the streets was possibly a way to demonstrate police authority. If the situation was under control, these equipments were only the symbols of authority of the executive agencies. This hypothesis may seem to clear the responsibility of the police officers in riots but this is not my intention. The police departments brought out the equipments during the protests in front of the protester, mostly people of color. However, these protests took place in Ferguson did not happen naturally. These were the aftermath of unjust treatment, such as police brutality and other forms of discrimination, experienced by people of color in the U.S. criminal justice system. For the minority, the massive equipments were symbols of the superiority of the law enforcement and the continuity of unfair treatments in their desperate