CRIME PREVENTION SCARE FILMS Volume 4

In SEARCH AND SEIZURE, cops are taught the proper way to strip down a suspect and search his or her premises. Highlights include stolen tires being retrieved from a punk’s slummy apartment, reefers being seized from a greasy diner, and teenagers with track marks on their arms being busted lurking in the dark behind a warehouse.
PHYSICAL CONTROL TECHNIQUES: The Baton starts off with a lone patrol cop disabling two thirty-something “juvenile delinquents” with his baton “instead of shooting them full of hot lead” when they accost an MD in a quest for narcotics. A stoic, square-jawed cop in a gym then demonstrates such baton moves as “The Chop,” “The Jab,” and “The Japanese Strangle.”
Pugilistic boxers are used as models in SELF DEFENSE AND DISARMAMENT, a cheap and fairly gritty little short which aims to make sure that the cops are well-versed in keeping up with the new fighting methods ex-GIs-turned-small-time-crooks brought back from World War II.
GETTING ALONG WITH ALL PEOPLE seems like a vain attempt to teach hot-headed New Jersey beat cops how to put aside personal stress and remain calm and reasonable on the streets. Racism runs wild through their thoughts (“Those Spanish-Americans are natural troublemakers!”) before the narrator helps put things in perspective (“I know a lot of mighty fine Negroes!”). This short also resonates with grimy NJ landscapes, low-rent apartments, and decaying corner liquor stores.
Without a doubt, the highlight here is THE DOOR WAS LOCKED, a gorgeous color production from the late Sixties that begins with a prowler checking out the swingers who are dancing wildly at a suburban house party before he sneaks in through a rear door, creeps into the bedroom, and has his way with the terrified lady of the house! After ominously pointing out that the crime rate is increasing six times faster than the population, and that there is only one cop for every six thousand civilians, we’re shown the most effective ways to fortify a home and deal with intruders (“If it becomes necessary, use your lungs and scream!”) before ending with a mother coming home to find her teenage daughter being attacked by a gun-wielding criminal in her bedroom. She barely has time to scream her daughter’s name before we hear a volley of gunshots and the screen turns to black…. Yipes!
Even more relevant today than when it was made in 1971 is BOMB THREAT - PLAN, DON'T PANIC which takes us through the proper procedures to follow should a lunatic plant a bomb in your workplace. Lots of bad Seventies haircuts and loud suits run around a factory looking for suspicious items before a man makes the fatal mistake of thinking a coffee thermos is the one that he misplaced some time ago when, in fact, it’s the bomb planted by a terrorist…. -- John Harrison, The Graveyard Tramp