Wyatt Cenac Is Here to Solve Your Policing Problems

Wyatt Cenac, the comedian-actor perhaps best known for his sketches on “The Daily Show,” sits on a couch with the police chief of Elgin, Illinois, a small city just outside of Chicago. There’s about a cushion’s worth of space between them. They’re discussing the Neighborhood Officer Program of Elgin, aka “N.O.P.E.,” and the Residential Officer Program of Elgin, aka “R.O.P.E.,” the latter of which allows a police officer to live rent-free in a neighborhood that’s considered troubled. Both programs were create to improve relations between communities and the police. Cenac kinda eggs the chief, Jeff Swoboda, about the names, and then suggests a more innocuous acronym: Housing for Elgin Law Officers, or “H.E.L.O.” Swoboda gets a red-faced chuckle out of it, and for a moment the distance between them seems to disappear.

This is merely a snapshot of what Cenac is offering in his new HBO series, “Problem Areas,” where over ten episodes he’ll be examining how various cities are tackling complications around policing. He also ponders other issues like how to convert coal workers into solar workers, and poop into fuel, but policing is the primary thread that ties the chapters together. In some episodes, he offers up small solutions, and sometimes he realizes there is little to no solution to be had at all.