DeNeen L. Brown at The Washington Post attended our D.C. premiere at the Cato Institute yesterday and put together a thorough piece that’s available online and in print. We’re hearing from a lot of new people today as a result and it’s exciting to see the video receive this kind of attention. We’ve even gotten a couple orders from police departments and I’m looking forward to their feedback because we worked hard to create a resource that would have educational value for police as well as citizens.
Along these same lines, there’s one point that I wished we’d better clarified in our conversation with The Post. Despite its focus on urban settings and black and Hispanic suspects, I’d like to emphasize that 10 Rules isn’t just for people of color. We wanted to place emphasis on representing communities that feel particularly targeted by police, but the legal and practical concepts in the film are valid and useful no matter who you are. Although race can sometimes be a factor in influencing who gets approached by law enforcement, it’s really not a factor in terms of how the citizen should behave during an encounter. Anyone who’s curious about how best to handle police encounters should find the film very helpful.