Driven to maintain social order, policing in the United States has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, American policing embodies one word: power.

A cogent essay film inviting conscious engagement and reflection on a system of control that has gone largely unquestioned, Power is a sweeping chronicle of the history and evolution of policing in the U.S. With assured precision and deep insight, filmmaker Yance Ford (Strong Island, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling, 2017 Sundance Film Festival) compellingly argues that the perceived danger of race to the status quo is central to the origins of policing and to its unchecked expansion. Asking pointed, uncomfortable questions about privilege and class; about who belongs to the social order and who is excluded; and about our collective responsibility in actively or tacitly permitting those in power to escape accountability, Power confronts us with the prescient words of Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”—BT