Flint Town

3/20/18. This is a difficult documentary to watch because you have all of a sudden become privy to what police officers have to deal with on a daily basis in a somewhat neglected and impoverished town with way too many problems for its way too tiny police department. If you ever want to become a police officer, you should probably watch this to test your commitment. These officers are so totally dedicated to what they do that it's incredible what they have to put up with on a daily basis. While it is about Flint Town, it really is more about how its police department functions and how it deals with issues that are way above their heads. Their jobs are the hardest in the world.

..... a decimated and demoralized Flint Michigan Police force struggling to cope with violent crime after the city's downward spiral into an epidemic of record-high murder rates.

The opening shows scenes of Flint as it was during the boom years and which began to crumble in the late 70's following the closing of the Chevrolet and Buick factories, two of GM's biggest plants.

At one time, Flint had the highest per capita income of blue collar workers in America. I know, because I lived and worked there for a while during its boom years. Businesses flourished and the nightlife scene, a sure indicator of disposable income, was New Year's Eve virtually every night.

The factory closings led to massive unemployment which in turn bred the violent and virtually uncontrollable crime rate. Neither City Hall nor the State Government succeeded in finding secondary industries to replace GM's closed plants. The drug industry boomed.

Due to the economic crash, the Police force shrunk from a high of over five hundred officers down to one hundred or so due to City Hall mismanagement, graft, incompetence and the misappropriation of the city finances.

The documentary reveals the problems and frustrations of the skeleton police force through the eyes of its Chief and various police officers who patrol streets of boarded up, condemned houses in poverty stricken, drug infested neighborhoods whose poorly educated residents seem condemned to never escape their toxic environment.

It's well done and worth watching.

Awesome series! A real eye opener on what is happening STILL in Flint. Everyone across the nation, in fact most likely everyone across North America knows about the disgusting, lethal water in Flint. This series takes you to actual day to day life struggles in Flint thru the eyes of some men and women in blue. The real people trying to keep the community together with only 1/3 the manpower. Amazing people make up the police force and any city would be thankful to have them watching over their neighborhoods. It is such a shame to see how they each give so much of themselves to only get knocked back down again and again by the corrupt city council! Absolutely disgusting!! It really is a must see for everyone.

Superb documentary reflecting not only the human element of the police officers in Flint but the community they serve.

From some one who lives in England where officers are unarmed and police through concent it was fascinating to see extremely brace law enforcement through austerity.

Great soundtrack and cinematography gives this documentary a real edge.

Big respect to the Flint PD bravest!

Being a Flint PD officer and a factory worker in the town where I grew up, this program had special meeting for me. That cat-walk into the entrance of the Flint Police Department was exactly the same in the early 60's. Only far fewer travel there now.

Fate had me leaving a generation before everybody else. Going back now, visually, is frightening and enraging.

Flint is a 3rd World city in a First World Country. As was shown again and again, from the local perspective, nobody else even cares about their suffering. Maybe, this raw and accurate depiction of Flint could finally become a wake-up call.

Flint has always been a blue-collar down. It was the American Dream for all the South. The mass poverty starting with the Depression, found thousands of Southerners migrating to "the shops in Michigan," and the Flint Automobile Industry hired them all, including my dad.

We, whose dads were called "shop rats," had a good life, with much diversity before it became a cultural catch-phrase. Something that probably will never be given enough credit, Flint was partly responsible for Southern blacks and whites being forced to work together on the assembly lines--and out of that, came mutual respect, understanding, and a bit more tolerance and less bigotry.

Now all that's gone, and Flint Town shows how and why. Can it be fixed? A hundred thousand blameless souls sure hope so.