‘S.W.A.T.’ dives into Black, police conflict in season debut IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The ghost of a bitter chapter for Los Angeles haunts the season debut of “S.W.A.T.,” which casts today’s policeconnected African American deaths as part of a cruelly repetitive history.
Series star Shemar Moore and executive producer Aaron Rahsaan Thomas are proud to claim ownership of the result airing 9 p.m. EST Wednesday on CBS (paired with a second, gear-shifting episode at 10 p.m.).
“We’ve been successful for three years playing super-cops and entertaining folks,” Moore said. “For ‘S.W.A.T.’ to take on what’s been happening around this country, in the world, is very brave and very bold.”
Thomas said it’s a step toward fulfilling the vision for the series he co-created with Shawn Ryan (”The Shield”). It’s a reboot of the 1975-76 series with Steve Forrest as Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson, head of a mostly white SWAT unit. This time around, Hondo is an LA-born African American striving to uphold the law and connect his multiethnic team with the community it serves.
“We attempted from the very first episode to try to say that we’re going to be a show that entertains but also engages our audience. Well, 2020 allowed us to double down on that,” Thomas said.
The episode is one answer to whether network TV dramas, ever reliant on law enforcement officers as unalloyed heroes, can reflect opposing views as the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others drive demands for systemic change in police practices.
The “S.W.A.T.” story line is directly linked to Floyd’s death last May while in the custody of Minneapolis police, Thomas said.
Three months earlier, Thomas had been working on an episode intended to mark the anniversary of the April 1992 acquittal of LAPD officers in the beating of Black motorist Rodney King. The jury verdict triggered days of protest and destruction in Los Angeles, a deadly parallel to the 1965 Watts-area violence that also followed a law enforcement stop of a Black driver.
“At the time, the intent was to tell a story about how we perhaps had made progress because there had been 27 years between Watts and Rodney King, and since there have been 28 years between Rodney King and now,’’ and there had been no major crisis, Thomas said. ``Maybe, maybe we’ve learned our lesson.”