Booked for Safekeeping

Really interesting to see. Makes you want to know how many of these were professional actors. Some folks were reallly bad and some better than most actors in the 60s. ("Paul"). Obviously filmed in real locations - apartments and stores and police cells.

I have been a corrections nurse for over 20 years, and I was surprised at how much of the information holds true today. The directions for officers to take their time and attempt to calm the agitated person down by talking slowly is still the standard today. While at least in jail and prison people are no longer left restrained while in their cells, the part about checking the wrists for injuries and removing the restraints as soon as they are no longer needed is exactly what is taught today.

BEING ONE FILM in a series of training aids designed primarily for police departments throughout the country, the production manages to both maintain a very natural look & feel. At the very same time, it appears to have a highly professional and even theatrical quality about it.

WE BELIEVE THAT this was among several of this series that was employed by the Chicago Police Department's Training Division when we were undergoing training in the Autumn of 1967. We also well recall another in the series that dealt more exclusively with the police having to care for those who failed at suicide. Just as today's title employed real police personnel from the New Orleans P.D., this second film had "actors" culled from the CPD, Police Academy staff. At least three of them were still active during our screening.

AS FAR AS its status as movie art, it really does not rate too badly. While its intent is instruction as well as making a political case for improved emergency mental health facilities throughout the whole nation; it still manages to move along at a proper pace, tell a definite (if generalized) story, "entertains" and keep one's interest and attention.

WE MUST COMMEND the non-professional members of the cast, who remain anonymous even today, some 56 years later. Their efforts in being well directed by writer/producer/director George C. Stoney are well enhanced by the voice-over narration of actor James Daly; who served in the same capacity for the series run.

IN CLOSING WE must make just one personal, critical observation. Whereas this mental health series was intended to instruct the cops in the field, we think that it may have been a situation of a 2 way street. It would appear those in the fields of medicine, mental health and their corresponding advocacy organizations learned as much from the street experience of the first responders as do the cops from the films.

IT THEN IS a simple case of being a 2 Way Street!

I'm not completely sure whom this industrial film produced by Louisiana was shown to. It discusses procedures for police dealing with crazy people -- no ties,and light their cigarettes because they can't have matches -- but it seems insufficiently technical in terms of police procedure to be aimed at cops. It might have been aimed at the high school audience and intended to show that just because Louisiana governors like Earl Long were insane did not mean you had to run screaming in terror when their minions showed up.

James Daly narrates from an efficiently written script, with reasonably short words in reasonably short sentences. The message is to treat the criminally insane decently since they are likely to be more afraid of you than you are of them.