TIMELY DOCUMENTARY PUTS FOCUS ON POLICE
Filmmakers highlight three incidents involving Calgary officers
In the new documentary Above the Law, Godfred Addai-nyamekye is filmed returning to Calgary’s East Village neighbourhood on a snowy day last winter.
It was the same block where he was violently arrested by officers from the Calgary Police Service in 2013. It was where Addai-nyamekye was abandoned far from home in frigid temperatures after being picked up by police. It was also where he was punched and kneed by another police officer after he called 911 for help, fearing he would freeze to death.
“It’s terrifying,” says Addai-nyamekye, who was born in Ghana, in an interview with Postmedia. “The images keep coming back. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is no joke. It’s very mentally challenging, going back to the scene. It brought back a lot of bad memories from that night.”
Still, Addai-nyamekye was keen to co-operate with Calgary expat filmmakers Marc Serpa Francoeur and Robinder Uppal, who use the 2013 arrest as a jumping-off point for their exploration of excessive force and accountability in the Calgary Police Force.
Above the Law, which debuts on CBC Docs POV on July 11 and will stream on CBC Gem, is an hourlong version of a feature-length documentary the filmmakers hope will hit the festival circuit and have a Canadian theatrical release later in the year. Five years in the works,
the documentary was initially to be broadcast in April, but post-production was shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic and pushed back to the fall. But in late May, when images of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked anti-racism protests and calls for police reform worldwide, both the CBC and the filmmakers felt there was an urgency to get the story out at an accelerated pace.
“CBC came back to us and said ‘Guys, we need to push this through right now,’ ” says Serpa Francoeur.
Above the Law looks at three controversial incidents involving the Calgary Police Service. Serpa Francoeur said a turning point for the filmmakers came in 2017 when it was revealed that the same police officer involved in Addai-nyamekye’s arrest, Const. Trevor Lindsay, was also under scrutiny in 2015 for an assault on Daniel Haworth. Handcuffed and in custody at the time, Haworth received a traumatic brain injury when he was bodyslammed to the ground. Lindsay was found guilty of aggravated assault last June. One year later, he still hasn’t been sentenced.
Serpa Francoeur and Uppal also investigate the 2015 shooting death of Anthony Heffernan, an unarmed 27-year-old who was killed by police during a “wellness check.”
The filmmakers talk with Addai-nyamekye and both the Heffernan and Haworth families about their frustration in how all three incidents were investigated and the conclusions reached. Lawyers and activists also talk about what they see as serious issues in the Calgary Police Service, in terms of accountability, how complaints are handled by the organization and the lack of civilian oversight in how police-related shootings are investigated.
Former Calgary police chief Roger Chaffin and current police chief Mark Neufeld are also interviewed for the film.
While Serpa Francoeur acknowledges that the need for reform is not exclusive to Calgary, he did say that the Calgary Police Service had been involved in “scandal after scandal after scandal” in the years the filmmakers were working on Above the Law.
The film cites statistics gathered by CBC News for the year 2016, which showed that more civilians were shot by Calgary police officers than officers in any other Canadian city. In 2016, there were 10 officer-related shootings in Calgary, five of which were fatal. That same year, Toronto had six shootings, three of which were fatal.
Serpa Francoeur and Uppal are both graduates of Henry Wise Wood High School who have known each other since they were children. They co-founded Toronto-based Lost Time Media, a company that produces documentaries and interactive projects that focus on social issues.
“Obviously we are trying to shed light on these cases that really haven’t had the kind of attention that they deserve,” says Serpa Francoeur. “But partly what we’re doing is raising questions. To us, it all boils down to this question of accountability. I think a lot of us operate under the presumption that our systems function well, that there is this accountability and that there is the oversight that meant if an officer does something bad they will have a day in court or be reprimanded. When you actually look at it, sometimes it’s yes, but it seems to be few and far between.”
When contacted by Postmedia, a spokeswoman for the Calgary Police Service said no interviews could be granted on the incidents profiled in the documentary because “some of the events still have court hearings or other legal matters tied to them.”
We are trying to shed light on these cases that really haven’t had the kind of attention that they deserve