Do Not Resist

Director Craig Atkinson won the Tribeca Film Festival's Best Documentary award for 2016 for Do Not Resist. As noted in The Guardian, the film “shows how US police have become an occupying army" and asks an important question: "How did we get here?”

After the Boston Marathon bombing, Atkinson became very concerned with the tactics that police were using on innocent civilians. That began his three-year journey of investigation. One year later, Ferguson happened. Atkinson saw for the first time the military might of the police in full form and force.

Atkinson's father had been a police officer and member of SWAT teams for many years in Detroit. He was granted unprecedented access to police conventions and equipment expositions for a look at power and force from the inside. He was also a ride-along with a SWAT team that destroyed a family's home for a gram of loose marijuana, after which they confiscated all the family's money. Footage from congressional hearings shows James Comey addressing police conventions; and in a most disturbing scene Dave Grossman, the top motivational lecturer of police officers in the United States, states that: “We are at war and you are the frontline. What do you fight violence with? Superior violence!” Finally, futuristic surveillance techniques developed in the wars abroad are being used to an alarming degree here at home.

You will not find this film on Netflix. Right before Tribeca, the director was offered a deal for an amount in the mid six figures. His first thought was that he could finally pay off his student loans! However, Netflix insisted that they would have creative control and the right to edit the film as they saw fit, without his input. So after much thought, Atkinson turned down the deal, even after they sweetened the pot. Business Insider has published an article investigating this and Netflix's business practices.