Director James Jacoby, Columbia Professor and New Yorker Staff Writer Jelani Cobb, and Columbia Professor Betsy West at the Film Friday screening of “Policing the Police” in 2016.
“I think they can do policing much better. Like the community policing things...and the body cameras and the DOJ...But we're never going to have a point where we have perfect policing in substandard housing and high unemployment and terrible education. All these things are part of a kind of larger matrix.”
- Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism Professor and New Yorker Staff Writer on what he witnessed while embedding with Newark police.
In this episode of On Assignment, we revisit a conversation from 2016 between New Yorker Staff Writer and Columbia Journalism Professor Jelani Cobb, FRONTLINE Producer James Jacoby, and Columbia Journalism Professor Betsy West about Cobb and Jacoby’s documentary Policing the Police. The film examines the troubled Newark, New Jersey police department from the inside.
Cobb embedded with the department’s gang unit, seeing first hand the challenges faced by the police. At the time the department was being investigated by the Department of Justice, which resulted in a settlement that put significant reforms in place to address what the DOJ called the department’s “unconstitutional practices.”
The conversation Cobb and Jacoby had with West dug into the nitty gritty of how they gained access to the Newark Police Department, what they had to leave on the cutting room floor, and all the work that went on off-camera submitting public records requests and conducting research.
This conversation was recorded after a Film Friday screening of Policing the Police in 2016. FRONTLINE recently rebroadcast the film and it is currently available to stream. Jelani also appeared on a recent episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast to talk about race and policing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
**IMPORTANT NOTE**: The deadline to submit for the 2021 duPont Awards has been EXTENDED to 11:59pm on July 14. The eligibility period has also been extended to include work produced after July 1 and before or on July 14. Visit duPont.org for more information and to enter.
At the 2020 duPont-Columbia Award ceremony, FRONTLINE was honored for two pieces, one of which, The Facebook Dilemma, was produced by James Jacoby. Watch the full 2020 ceremony, here. Check our Facebook page facebook.com/duPontColumbiaAwards for updates.