"Brick City"

Last night we watched the first episode of a new documentary from the Sundance Channel, "Brick City,"about fighting crime in Newark, N.J. produced by Forest Whitaker (available in the free movies on demand section for Time Warner subscribers).

It had been billed as Newark meets The Wire, though it's not living up to that yet. An extraordinary portion of the first episode was spent on an earnest if somewhat dreary hagiography of Mayor Cory Booker and setting up characters in a familial drama that emerged at the end of the hour. Perhaps down the line the series will get me to the thing that actually drew me to it - the Newark police director Garry McCarthy's reportedly successful use of more pro-active, data-driven policing as opposed to primarily reacting to calls. Only references to this in part one, but little detail.

There were brief hints -in total probably fewer than two minutes of air time - of difficulties faced by the chief in getting his officers to shift to the new approach. Scenes of managers struggling to understand what it means not to merely report data but to "analyze" and understand its implications. Another telling, brief scene (my pals over at CLEAT would probably be yelling at the screen) showed McCarthy intervening to stop a fired police officer from speaking to the Mayor at a public event. But overall the episode substituted rousing speeches by Booker for any real examination of the controversies that arose in the execution of McCarthy's new approach.

For example, implementation of public surveillance cameras usually is controversial. But the episode examined that controversy by filming a youth forum led and controlled by Booker, who seemed to treat the differences of opinion as a high school debate exercise, congratulating all for a good job at the end. Even with that soft-pedaled approach, about half the room raised their hands to say they didn't like the surveillance cameras.

We did learn a few interesting tidbits about what Newark does with its cameras. In most places where they employ public CCTV - as in London where they have thousands of cameras everywhere in the city - they're either tape-only or occasionally you'll see a smaller number (as in Dalllas) staffed with volunteers. Newark put up just 109 cameras, and their monitoring was staffed by on-duty officers. These hotspot locations were apparently aimed at turf-war zones in an ongoing Crips/Bloods feud about which presumably future episodes will focus.

While Booker and McCarthy credited the cameras with a reduction in murders - and sure enough, they captured some murders on tape - you couldn't identify anyone from the grainy pictures, so the primary benefit seemed to be the ability to immediately dispatch officers. Still, they may be squeezing the maximum effectiveness out of the tactic compared to many other places they're used.

Don't know if we'll watch the rest of the five part series - Kathy agreed the Cory Booker hagiography was pretty over the top and we both thought it needed much tighter editing - but perhaps future episodes tell more about what the police director is doing differently on the ground. Part one was a little like the Mayor's audition tape for "The Bachelor," or perhaps more accurately for New Jersey Governor or Senator, one suspects.