Netflix's 'The Get Down' Shows What a Community Without Police Looks Like

There are not many professions represented in the 1977 South Bronx depicted in the new Netflix series The Get Down. It’s chock full of musicians, producers, politicians, salesmen, drug dealers, pimps, preachers—and even a teacher. But there are no police. The six-episode hip hop origin story makes it clear that there were plenty of quality-of-life problems in the Bronx—crimes against property and humans alike. As myth (or reality) has it, the police simply avoided the South Bronx, where crime rates reached ungodly highs in the early 1970s.

Which is why the timing for The Get Down is so on point. Today, there is a healthy dose of ambivalence among black communities about the role of police. Given the recent rash of publicized killings of African Americans by police, some have been calling for the defunding of police departments—if not their elimination altogether. Meanwhile, as parts of Milwaukee recently went up in riot flames over the police killing of an African American, a young man who identified himself as the brother of the victim, gave a compelling explanation for the unrest: