Fatal police encounters occur with alarming frequency in the Black community. With the advent of 24-hour news cycles, reports of African Americans killed by law enforcement repeatedly make headlines across the nation.
Aiming to examine the issues that contribute to the deteriorating relations between police and Blacks, TVOne will air “Two Sides,” a four-part docu-series executive produced and narrated by actress Viola Davis that seeks to expose the truth behind the deaths of Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, John Crawford and Sandra Bland.
Garner’s case will highlight the premiere episode that will broadcast on TVOne on Jan. 22, at 10 p.m., local time. His July 2014 death ignited the “I Can’t Breathe” movement, which echo the words he repeated 11 times before dying from a chokehold and physical restraint by NYPD officers who suspected Garner of selling loose cigarettes.
The successive programs will feature multiple viewpoints analyzing the fatal cases of Ford, a 25-year-old Los Angeles Black man shot multiple times in August 2014 by LAPD officers conducting an investigative stop; Crawford, a 22-year-old Ohio African American killed immediately by police while talking on a cell phone and holding a toy BB gun in August 2014; and Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman found hanged in a Texas jail three days after her arrest for a traffic violation in July 2015.
A special screening of the first show, held Jan. 13 at First AME Church in Los Angeles, attracted a packed audience who heard from key people involved with the project. On hand were executive producers Julius Tennon and Andrew Wang of JuVee Productions and Lemuel Plummer and Jason Tolbert of L. Plummer Media along with Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, NAACP Chairman Leon Russell, and Black Lives Matter activist and CSU-L.A. professor Melina Abdullah, who played a critical role in elevating awareness about Ford’s death.
Following the viewing, award-winning journalist and TVOne personality Roland Martin moderated a discussion panel about the series and the state of community and police relations.
Tennon said he hoped that “Two Sides” would prompt more positive interaction between police and community members.
“We want people to engage with their police more. Community policing is important. It’s important for the community to trust police and be more open to police [being] in the community,” said Tennon.
“If that bridge is built more, I think it will make people feel more comfortable. I know it’s hard to trust because of everything that’s happened, but I think something like that, a simple thing, can make a huge difference in the community. The hope is this series will lead to people being more respectful towards one another.”
Wang said that while the series focuses on African Americans deaths, situations that escalate to violence affect all ethnicities. He noted, “The reason there is anger is there is no understanding by both sides. Maybe we can stop some of that.”
As a mother who lost a child, Carr urged Black parents to discuss with their children how to respond to police confrontations.
“We must guide and let them know what can happen to them out here. Unfortunately, we have to have a different conversation with our children than Caucasians have with their children. We all should have the same conversation – to respect police officers as long as they respect us,” Carr said.
Both Plummer and Tolbert described their effort to accurately reflect the details of each individual case by using video to tell the stories instead of re-enactments.
“This has been a passion project for me. For this particular show, my goal was to bridge the gap between white, black and blue to spark that conversation,” explained Plummer. “Hearing these stories brought me to tears. It’s not easy to tell these stories. You have to balance it out. We wanted to show more traditional B-roll instead of re-enactments of the characters to add to the environment and I think it worked really well.”
Tolbert, who is also the showrunner, added, “We wanted it to be 100% real from top to bottom. Although re-creations can give you some sort of image, we wanted it to be real and the footage is just as powerful. We wanted you to see the raw emotions that come from everyone that was involved.”
Summing up the “Two Sides” series, Russell observed, “This is obviously a very powerful piece of work. We need to thank TV One for having the courage and necessary energy to create this project.”
