In Blue, newly promoted to The Force Investigation Department, Detective Parker’s first assignment is to investigate a 29-year police veteran, Sully. Initially she wants to believe him. But his story keeps changing, and a disturbing revelation forces Parker to decide whether to protect “one of her own” or pursue an investigation that could up-end her marriage and her career.
In this unflinching study of the very real and current issues surrounding policing both in the USA and UK, US based writer and actor, June Carryl deftly illustrates how a career that used to be first and foremost (at least ostensibly) about wanting to ‘protect and serve’ has become a magnet for those is search of power.
Examining authoritarianism and corruption within the police has never been timelier. As a black woman in America, Carryl was inspired to write Blue by the seemingly endless stream of tragedy she saw on the news – and from the revelation that, while many on-duty police were terrorised during the U.S. Capitol Riots, it has now been confirmed that a number of off-duty police were amongst the rioters. The overwhelming fear of knowing our police forces are easily corrupted is paralleled in the UK with the murder of Sara Everard by a serving police officer which resulted in the investigation and uncovering of misogynistic and racist failures in London’s Met Police, stoking tensions between police and community. Blue is Carryl’s response to the deaths of citizens – overwhelmingly often, black citizens – at the hands of police that continue to hit the news with alarming regularity.
Blue shines a stark light on the ‘one bad apple’ attitude to police corruption and brutality, critiquing instead the culture that allows and encourages ever more bad apples, and transforms the role of modern-day police to one of authoritarianism. It is directed by Michael Matthews and is performed by writer June Carryl as Detective Parker, opposite John Colella as Boyd Sully.
In focussing down to the microcosm of a preliminary investigation into a single police custody death, Blue peels back the layers beneath the “police as protectors” assumption to reveal not only the individual lives lost and destroyed by police corruption, but also just how endemic the problem has become.
