Friday, March 29, 2024

HBO’s New ‘Problem Areas’ with Wyatt Cenac Talks Policing (VIDEO)

*”Problem Areas” is an attempt to better understand the relationship between the police and communities, primarily the African-American community. This is in an attempt to try and come up with a blueprint for the road ahead.

The HBO show holds a personal thread for the veteran comedian, Wyatt Cenac. At 19, he was arrested, allegedly, for having sparked a riot. An accusation that Cenac describes as “honest bullsh*t stuff” since he couldn’t understand how telling a mall cop to ‘f*ck off’ amounted to inciting a riot.

With his brother having served jail time in Texas jail and his father murdered on the job as an NYC cab-driver, it’s quite easy to see how the justice system has failed him and many others. Unlike many however, he has decided to help mobilize the change required to fix the system.

As we talk about policing and the responsibilities of law enforcement bodies, we can’t help but mention Saheel Vassell. This was an individual with known mental issues, who was fatally killed earlier this month as a result of excessive use of force by the police in Brooklyn. The police mistook a metal object in his hand as a weapon.

Similar instances in Sacramento last month involving Stephen Clark and that of Decynthia Clements in a Chicago suburb, speak of the agonizing problem of gentrification. With the execution of black people picking up at a marked and disproportionate frequency, Problem Areas could not have been better timed.

The season comprises of 10 episodes that are tied together around a singular thread. Each installment is broken down into three segments, with the first two involving contemporary issues, and a tad more humor. While the third segment follows Cenac around as he travels around the country. He goes to cities like Oakland and Birmingham in order to allow different stakeholders share their perspective on the failure and successes of policing, its inadvertent consequences, its racial history marred by violence, and its transition towards reform.

With Problem Areas you can see that it is driven by a sense of curiosity that asks pertinent questions while trying not to allow frustration to enter the discourse. There seems to be

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