This summer was the hottest on record, and the scorching temperatures coincided with an endless succession of violent tragedies across the U.S. In June a 29-year-old security guard gunned down more than a hundred people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, 49 of whom died, before police stormed the building and killed the perpetrator in a shootout. Less than a month later, at a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, a 25-year-old army veteran killed five cops and wounded 11 other people, holing up in a community college building for a few hours before he was taken out by a state-of-the-art robot armed with plastic explosives (his death marked the first time a police robot had killed a suspect in the U.S.). And here in Chicago, homicides on the south and west sides spiked, the annual murder rate soaring past 500 people by Labor Day weekend. More than ever our cities seem like battlegrounds, swept this way and that by fear of terrorism and growing outrage over law enforcement abuses in black communities.
Whether or not Whitman was a monster, he was definitely a soldier, and his military training had as significant an impact on the planning and execution of his attack as the military gear in Do Not Resist has on civil life here in America. Whitman’s attack was the first modern gun massacre, and like so many subsequent massacres it was carried out with paramilitary discipline. He had distinguished himself as a marksman in the U.S. Marine Corps, and he assembled a full arsenal for the tower assault: three handguns, three rifles, and a 12-gauge shotgun. He never fired on any of his victims more than once, leading some to believe he was following corps tradition. The Austin police department was so slow to grasp the situation that, before it could establish a command at the scene, radio reports drew armed vigilantes to campus, who took up positions in a nearby building and fired back on the sniper. For a while the greensward of the university mall became a civil battlefront, a visible indication that any city can become a war zone at a moment’s notice.
By the end of Do Not Resist, Atkinson has widened his scope even further, reviewing such state-of-the-art law enforcement tools as facial-recognition systems, aerial surveillance programs, CCTV and social media monitoring centers, computer software that forecasts a person’s level of criminality, and even drones. Addressing the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference, FBI director James Comey opens with an anecdote about telling his young children that monsters aren’t real and they should go to sleep. “Monsters are real,” Comey declares, correcting himself. “Monsters are barricaded inside apartments waiting for law enforcement to respond, so they can fire rounds that will pierce a ballistic vest. Because of that reality, because monsters are real, we need a range of weapons and equipment to respond and protect our fellow citizens and protect ourselves.” Outside on the sales floor, a sign advertises the Avatar III robot, a little brother to the military robot that killed the Dallas gunman. The problem of civil violence gets worse and worse, but the toys get better and better. v
Directed by Keith Maitland
Do Not Resist ★★★ Directed by Craig Atkinson
