The People and the Police

This documentary (please note that it includes racist and derogatory language and profanity) was created by the Office of Economic Oportunity (OEO) and serves as a record of the Washington, DC, community and the turmoil it was experiencing in the late 1960s.

Just months after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the riots that devastated Washington, D.C., the OEO introduced a program intended to bring the city together. The Pilot District Project was created to foster the development of community programs and improve the shattered relationship between the city's citizens and its police force.

As part of the ambitious project, the government agency contracted with a private film company to produce this documentary, as well as training films that could be used when they rolled the program out to other cities around the country.

The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency created to stand up poverty-reducing programs sketched out in the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, a major component of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. (The agency was broken up and dissolved by the 1980s, but many of its programs were moved into other agencies.) The Economic Opportunity Act also established Community Action Programs that gave the keys to change to community members, ostensibly with the belief that empowering citizens would be the most efficient way to bring about real change. A string of riots in American cities in the late 1960s exposed a deeply dysfunctional relationship between urban communities and the police. OEO created the Pilot District Project to address this major problem.

The Pilot District Project never really took off however. Many of the program’s shortcomings are on display in this film. It could not address the stark inequality that existed in the city. Community leaders were concerned about the lack of real power in the Citizens’ Advisory Board; Mayor Marion Barry was heavily involved, eventually becoming chairman of the Board. It is also clear that the community was not a united front. Throughout the film there are contingents of activists, businessmen, and community members all expressing different beliefs about how to best guide the program.

The end scenes of the film present the following information:

• In three years, Project CG 8225 spent 2.1 million dollars
• 800 policemen went through training
• 20 experimental programs and 152 jobs were created
• Two directors resigned
• A new Citizens Board was elected in September, 1971
• The project continues

Although OEO spent $197,879 to make the films, they were never released or distributed.

The original description of the film reads:

Documents the early, turbulent years of OEO'S experiment in police-community relations in Washington, DC

R.1: Police and citizens express their attitudes toward each other. A citizens committee is appointed by the D.C. government, but dissension ensues over control of the program. Project director, Robert Shallow addresses the group; community leader Marion Barry urges citizen control, A pilot precinct is finally selected.

R. 2: Police engage in training sessions, and community leaders struggle to replace the committee with elected representatives. A citizens' board is elected and the white project leader is replaced by a black official, Fred Lander.

R. 3: Dissension between OEO and the community continues, but several programs including citizen riders, an emergency center, local police recruiting and an escort service, get underway. The board continues to struggle, and the program is refunded. At the films close, a small boy expresses his bitterness towards the police.

You can also watch this video in our main National Archives Catalog.