I wish that there were no clips of surveillance footage, showing the life ebbing out of a beaten man as the police laugh and joke, oblivious. I wish that, since 1969, more than 2,000 people hadn’t died at the hands of the UK police. But there are and they did, and, harrowing as the images are, they need to be seen. Ken Fero’s documentary about the struggle for justice of the families of people who have died in police custody is powerful and profoundly upsetting. And it is essential viewing for the times in which we find ourselves living.
