“When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood” was selected as a finalist in this year’s ShortList Film Festival, presented by TheWrap. You can watch the films and vote for your favorite here.
On this day two years ago, the Los Angeles Police Department got the word out to all local broadcast news stations that it had arrested a man in South Central who had been hiding thousands of pounds of illegal fireworks in the days leading up to the Fourth of July.
The news trucks gathered around East 27th Street as LAPD bomb squad officers prepared to detonate a set of homemade fireworks that were considered too dangerous to be transported from the scene. The footage those trucks got on tape became the basis for Nathan Truesdell’s short documentary “When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood,” which uses newscasts to retell the explosion that not only destroyed the LAPD’s detonation truck, but also injured 17 people and damaged the homes of more than 80 others, which remain unfixed to this day.
Truesdell, a producer and cinematographer on the Oscar-nominated doc “Ascension,” lives in Los Angeles and remembered seeing Los Angeles Times coverage of the police containment truck exploding, sending debris flying that hit houses as far as two blocks away.
The local coverage was a perfect fit for Truesdell’s documentary style, who has used TV news footage in past short docs like “Balloonfest,” which retells the story of when United Way released 1.5 million balloons in Cleveland as part of a publicity stunt, causing airport shutdowns, car crashes, and delaying the search-and-rescue operation of two fishermen who were later found dead.
“I’ve made archival films in the past about American hubris and felt that this story of a completely preventable fuck-up on the part of the LAPD had a similar tragic story trajectory,” Truesdell told TheWrap.
“When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood” ends with protesters cussing out LAPD Chief Michel Moore during a press conference, as more news comes out about how LAPD officers mishandled the situation, including one officer who did not weigh the homemade fireworks before they were placed in the containment truck and instead estimated the weight by sight, leading the bomb squad to load the truck with more fireworks than it could safely detonate.
As the credits roll on the doc, which was released last October, we hear reporters note that residents whose homes were damaged by the blast still were unable to return and had been living in hotels. This past February, city officials pressured those affected who hadn’t left Los Angeles to leave the hotels, but backed off after community backlash. Attorneys for the residents have pointed the finger at both city officials and insurance companies for not providing them with the funds they need to completely repair their homes.
Meanwhile, only one LAPD officer has been disciplined in connection to the explosion, receiving a mere 10-day suspension.
“One of the bomb squad officers anonymously said that he warned the others that they were putting a dangerous amount of fireworks into the containment unit and none of them listened or cared. One unnamed officer was put on ‘administrative leave’ for 10 days and that was it,” Truesdell said. “Imagine if you were sitting in your house that you own and suddenly the police set off a bomb in your front yard, destroying it, and you and your family are forced to live in a hotel for two years. It’s an absolute nightmare.”
While the LAPD’s malfeasance became a hot local topic in LA, and enraged communities and criminal justice reform activists, Truesdell said that his documentary was a fresh, unheard story for people who live in other parts of the country.
“I think people are initially shocked to learn that they weren’t aware of the story, but unfortunately there are too many stories of the police terrorizing neighborhoods in America for people to keep track of,” he said. “The LAPD literally set off a bomb on a residential street in a large American city with no accountability and somehow this isn’t surprising. It’s an awful example of the larger systemic issues happening in our country and we all know that this would be a completely different story had this happened in Beverly Hills.”
The 2023 ShortList Film Festival runs online from June 28 – July 12, honoring the top award-winning short films that have premiered at major festivals in the past year. Watch the finalists and vote for your favorite here.
