The series, which looks through . CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly suggested that former Rep. Dale Kildee had passed away. Being a documentary show, Flint Town features real-life people, and in particular, features several members of the Flint Police Department. By giving its audience a view of Flint though this lens, the show gives viewers an insight into the state of policing in America and documents the struggles of Flint Police Department as they put their lives on the line to protect the community while simultaneously struggling to gain the trust of the community. 2016 Eisteddfod. And in 2020, a group called the Defund San Antonio Police Department Coalition issued a travel warning for San Antonio, labeling the city as a sundown town. And the guests came in droves. Flint explosion: Three missing after home blast felt five miles away. Some of us just dont want to leave., There are some people who say, you know, Im looking for a ticket out of here. But theres a much larger percentage of people who love this place, Walling said. Welcome to Flint Town, Two Guns, The Rat Pack, Death and Homicide, The Numbers, Devil's Night, Two Worlds, and The Stand Off are a few of the most well-known episodes. For once, it was nice to see someone making an attempt to get at the humanity of both sides of this conflict. But people in North Texas don't need Netflix to understand the problem. [1] [2] [3] The documentary focuses on the thoughts and conflicted emotions of police officers serving to protect urban areas of Flint, Michigan (unofficially nicknamed "Flint Town") struggling with poverty, crime, financially strapped public services and the Flint water crisis. Even before its pipes started leaching lead. As a water crisis erupts and a new mayor is sworn in, the understaffed police department faces Federal extortion charges while struggling to protect the city. Lansing [Michigans capital city] did this, and it took them 12 years to do it. Thats not to say the Flint Town series is faultless. Covid-19 is on fire," said Debra Furr-Holden, director of the Flint Center for Health . A team of researchers reported that Flint's homeseven the ones at the. Change starts with us. As a water crisis erupts and a new mayor is sworn in, the understaffed police department faces uncertainty while struggling to protect the city. Myth Three: White discomfort supersedes human rights. But even with that project finally reaching its completion after years of strife, and EPA administrators saying Flints water is better than its ever been, most of the Flint residents I interviewed said theyre still wary of what comes out of their tap. Tuesday 23 November 2021 13:26. Flint is a town in the county of Flintshire. After a panel appointed by Michigans Republican then-governor, Rick Snyder, declared the city in a state of financial emergencytaking its finances, and therefore most major decisions, out of the hands of City Hall and putting them under the control of a hand-picked emergency manager, Walling and Flints other elected officials became effectively ornamental. (AECOM defends its work, telling POLITICO in a statement that the company is very satisfied with the results delivered, and noting it exceeded expectations set by the citys pipe replacement program.). Flint was founded as a village by fur trader Jacob Smith in 1819 and became a major lumbering area on the historic Saginaw Trail during the 19th century. With, As far as reception is concerned, Season 1 of Flint Town boasts a, While we wait for Netflix to make an announcement on the future of the show, here is the trailer for Season 1 to give you a glimpse into how the documentary explores the state of policing in the city of Flint. Steel Magnolias is a 1989 film based on the stage play. Flint Police Department records show there were 39 homicides, 97 rapes, 148 robberies, and 1,135 aggravated assaults in 2019. Stay connected with Flint news, public notices, and city meetings. Dr. Laura Sullivan, a Kettering scientist who has advised the city on water issues, described to me how the citys aging and inadequate infrastructure led to an outbreak of Legionnaires disease that accompanied the water crisis. Robert Frost and. Ask the Great Lakes Now Team Your PFAS Question, Beneath the Surface: The Line 5 Pipeline in the Great Lakes, Collection 1 An Exploration of the Great Lakes, Collection 2 Threats to the Great Lakes, Collection 3 Virtual Field Trips in the Great Lakes, Collection 4 Lesson Plans from Our Monthly PBS Program, up-to-date community reporting of Flint and the water crisis, coverage of ongoing problem of urban drinking water systems, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Partnership, Court: Nessel can try again to return Line 5 lawsuit to state court, For Ann Arbor water managers, ongoing battle to keep toxic chemicals at bay, Report: MI and OH must spend hundreds of millions more annually to curb toxic blooms in Lake Erie. Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud, one of the lead prosecutors appointed by Nessel, warned that those who made plea deals based on those charges would walk away from this with nothing [on their record] and promised a more robust investigation that would result in a higher level of accountability. The problems plaguing Flint are complex, multifaceted issues that require more than oversimplified solutions. Mayor Dayne Walling, then a 40-year-old Flint native who had won a Rhodes Scholarship before coming back to serve his hometown, raised a glass of that rivers water, toasted a jolly Heres to Flint!, and downed it in one swig, surrounded by his fellow bureaucrats who dutifully followed suit. Nine former Michigan officials, including ex-Gov. Since the slow-motion collapse of the American auto manufacturing industry, its population had shrunk by 50 percent from its postwar peak to just under 100,000 residents. The town sits about an hour east of Yellowstone National Park, and for much of the year, it hosts droves of tourists, until they're swept out by freezing winds that gust in from the mountains. In that scenario, the future of American politics looks a little less like the nation before Covid or before Trump, and a little more like Flint in 2020. As voters weigh renewing a police funding tax, Chief Johnson looks for other ways to raise revenue. Flint Town, in all of its glory, tells the critical story of how over 10 years, the funding for the police department has wilted to the very bare minimum. Were interested in how systems work in a community like Flint. He believes that if Flint Town returns, it would cover an institution other than police, offering up local politics, education systems, [and] journalism, as possible examples. Although Walling literally pressed the button, the decision to use Flint River water had much deeper roots. If you spend enough time there, youll find someone eager to tell each of thembut the most convenient place to start is April 25, 2014. There was no question that the program was not the most efficient at times, and I think there were a lot of contractors that had never done this kind of work before. Their cases are pending. Among them were Adam Ant, Donal Logue . When I asked him about his evaluation of Weaver, he was guarded in his response, but invoked an oft-repeated campaign sloganone thats hints at Flints desperate need to believe in something beyond its own ongoing diminishment. The sun sets over a field outside of Anna, Illinois. One day later, Jerry Ambrose, the city's emergency manager, overrules the vote and . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Seven Years On: The Flint water crisis has yet to conclude. And read the Great Lakes News Collaboratives coverage of ongoing problem of urban drinking water systems. White discomfort does not take precedence over the literal safety and human rights of others. In the unfolding pandemic, economic crisis and reckoning on race, governors and mayors are shaping our shared future. We didnt have the chance for residents to weigh in. She had a press conference, it was on the ticker at CNN by 4:00, and she was on Rachel Maddow by 9:00. The breakdown in trust is rooted not only in the water crisis itself, but its domino effect on state and local politics over the following years: a halting pipe-replacement program marked by accusations of graft; a criminal investigation into those responsible for the crisis that mysteriously rebooted and dropped charges against state officials; a city government still decimated by post-Great Recession, state-imposed austerity measures; a basic inability to believe what should be neutral facts. They might not trust the results of a presidential election, behaving as if they live in a banana republic and not a robust, if flawed, democracy. Over the course of the episodes, the police faced a crucial millage vote and a city government wrangling over funding.[4]. After six years of lies, deliberate or not, a revolving door in a disempowered City Hall, and the dysfunction wrought by a high-profile, high-stakes recovery process, they find themselves still unable to trust either their water or the people telling them to drink it. Weaver was elected as an outsider, someone who would give voice to Flints common man and upend the sclerotic status quo through sheer force of personality. Places such as Raspberries and The Loft offer lively weekend recreation for the adult crowd. As part of a United Nations-sponsored World Water Day celebration, the City of Flint parked 12 semitrailers stacked with pallets of bottled water on the citys street corners, offering them to any city resident who could show an ID. Racism now looks like the stereotypes and personal biases that keep people of color out of certain jobs and neighborhoods. I shudder to think whats going to happen if these cases just evaporate into thin air, because its going to be yet another trauma inflicted upon the community, whether people intend it that way or not., For me, you cant have trust without truth-telling, Shariff said. For months, it turned out, Flint had had been exposing its residents to that lead at levels that could cause lifelong damage to the health of its children. Watch Great Lakes Nows latest segment that touches on the lingering impacts of the Flint water crisis on the region: Michigans 20th Century water systems too big for its shrinking city populations, Arbitrator: Official wrongly fired in Flint water scandal, Q&A: Doctor who exposed Flints lead levels sees similarities in Benton Harbor water crisis, Some Chicagoans Wary of Lead Pipe Replacement, Featured image: The Flint Water Plant was originally constructed in 1952 and renovated in 2014. ), By then, more than five years had passed since the switch flipped that began the crisis. Urbane where his predecessor was crass, credentialed where Williamson had only a rap sheet, brainy instead of flexing his political brawn, Walling was exactly the kind of homegrown talent a troubled, once-proud city needed. Welcome to Flint Town 39m As a water crisis erupts and a new mayor is sworn in, the understaffed police department faces uncertainty while struggling to protect the city. Rick Snyder appointed Darnell Earley as emergency manager to help the city of Flint cut costs to remedy its financial crisis. Crews work to replace a water main along Flints Dupont St. on March 5. Over a two-year period, filmmakers embedded with cops in Flint, Michigan, reveal a department grappling with volatile issues in untenable conditions. Flint local Phillip Barnhart puts it perfectly in a recent interview with TheHUB Flint. It's an inevitable trade-off for the life we live, and it's not just a fact for us normal working folk. Self - City Administrator 1 episode, 2018 John Boismier . Its also had four state-appointed emergency managers who are fully unaccountable to voters. Hopefully the scope of those challenges will at some point begin to narrow, but I dont think were at that point., I get elected in 2009, he said. Self - Flint Resident 1 episode, 2018 Sylvester Jones . In the nation outside Flint, with the coronavirus vaccine at hand, the eyes of normal people are eagerly turning toward a post-pandemic world. Co-director Zackary Canepari has already signalled his willingness to go for another season to explore in-depth more systems that flog day-to-day life in Flint. Once things started to look hinky, local elected officials could have made a different decision.. It looks like micro-aggressions in the workplace. However, I dont believe in using that humanity to excuse ones passive racism. I believe that is a conversation we dont have often enough. Some even died. Instead of actually going after the people who poisoned us, theyre just going after Todd Flood. At its worst, Flint Town is a profanity-laced Trump endorsement where white police officers, most of whom do not reside in the city, play Robocop. One of the citys primary goals during its recovery has been very straightforward: Replace all of its lead and galvanized steel pipes with safer, more modern copper lines. Its water quality has undeniably recovered, and despite concerns about equity, the new developments that dot the citys downtown are striking when compared with its trajectory just half a decade ago. Fewer than 500 remain to be inspected. In a city with a long legacy of dysfunction, its the rare action that can be matched to a clear and obvious positive outcome. Four major myths you missed in the Netflix Flint Town Series added by Ashley Hamilton on 03/14/2018View all posts by Ashley Hamilton , You must be logged in to post a comment Login, Copyright: 2017 Bridges Communications Group, Inc., Publisher of TheHUB. Local news outlet MLive trumpeted the news, and Michigans Department of Environmental Quality tacked it to their ongoing list of promising signs that indicated the citys potable present and future. Chief Johnson's new team targeting high-crime area takes action, to mixed response from the community. The series covers a period from November 2015 to early 2017, the same time frame as the 2016 presidential election. And with the gravity of that loss comes the possibility that no number of promises kept, and no amount of empirically-provable repair, can bring it back. You ended [the investigation]. As a temporary fix to start saving money while that pipeline was completed, the city began drawing its water from the Flint River, something it hadnt done since the 1960s. Benjamin Pauli, a professor of social sciences at Flints Kettering University and author of Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis, draws a direct connection between the state takeover and the groundswell of anger and mistrust around the water crisis, describing how even before the water switch Flints activist community was interested in democracy, and it just so happened that water and democracy were starting to come together.. Maybe theyll end up with one charge surviving, and theyll at least make a show of trying to hold a few people accountable with that charge, but the gap between that as an outcome and what residents were hoping for and expecting is huge., Its hard to maintain peoples trust in institutions when you dont see justice being done with your own eyes. A second season could see many other real-life personalities being featured. But her tenure in office revealed the difficulties faced by all outsiders once they get inside. The documentary follows the Flint Police Department over the course of one trying year filled with budget cuts, local and presidential elections, and, of course, a water crisis. As far as reception is concerned, Season 1 of Flint Town boasts a perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics consensus reading, Flint Town dives deep into an essential subject matter with admirable objectivity while presenting candid and hard-hitting personal testimonials. On IMDb, the show has a solid rating of 8/10 on IMDb, based on nearly 2,500 votes. And its a positive kind of desperation, in that its a desperate desire for something better.. Dr. Benjamin J. Pauli, assistant professor at Flints Kettering University. October 27, 2021. From 2016 to 2019, this looked like a real possibility. People think were just poor and have no means to leave. Sherman's Lounge. His father, David, thinks his eldest son was poisoned by lead in their drinking water. Several people have been injured, with fatalities reported . Children and residents who were under 18 during the crisis will get the bulk of the funds. Flint police battle with a store that's a magnet for criminal activity. We are not exactly heralded for the quality of our primary or secondary school education. Welcome to Flint Town. In fairness to Mayor Weaver, I do think the citizens of the city deserved to see [pipe excavation] done in different parts of the city, Walling said. She currently is a paraprofessional at her alma mater, the International Academy of Flint, and plans to pursue graduate studies this fall. Equally wary was Jim Ananich, a lifelong Flint resident and outgoing leader of the Democratic minority in the Michigan State Senate. We need to hold our educators, lawmakers, and other civil servants accountable for the services they are paid to provide. One of Weavers campaign promises was that she would declare a state of emergency in the city, out of a belief that the city needed to fan the media flames more aggressively in order to draw the national attention and resources necessary to remedy the crisis. New lines ensure fewer lead-related issues will arise, and now, the pipes abide by the federal Lead and Copper Rule. She did so in December 2015, a month after her election, and President Barack Obama then declared a federal emergency in January 2016, freeing up $5 million in aid. Flint Town is an eight episode American documentary television series that was released on Netflix on March 2, 2018. One of the things about Karen is that shes a regular person, and not a politician, and so there were some issues with that, mostly from some of the people she listened to, said Mays, the activist. (Photo Credit: Open Door Co./Nomad Films Inc.). We have dealt with much more than most and still we rise. Davon Davenport, a 9 year-old fourth grader in Flint, used to get A's and B's in his classes. By Jelena Aska Published May 3, 2021 The band was formed from the first season of the reality television show 'Making the Band' in 2000 It's safe to say that the early 2000s were the peak of boy bands and numerous successful ones were competing against each other for the throne of the best boy band at the time. Heres everything we know about it thus far. The creators have likened the thematic undertones of the series with that of The Wire, which is a crime-drama one of the most prominent and visceral takes on the drug culture in Baltimore. Although it's been seven years since the Flint water crisis became one of the state's biggest public health disasters, Flint's struggle with both the repercussions of the initial incident and with getting clean water have not ended. This article was very helpful with my presentation about the Flint Water Crisis, thanks ! Despite a parade of presidential contenders through the city in 2019 and 2020, eager to prove their bona fides on environmental and racial justice, Flint residents are skeptical that their salvation will come through the ballot box. kelly tripucka net worth flint town where are they now. City and state officials denied for. The officers react to tragedy in Dallas. There are plenty of ways to tell the story of what went wrong in Flint leading to that moment. That sequence was extraordinarily difficult. FLINT, Mich.In a city synonymous for half a decade with disaster, something remarkable happened in February 2019. 2021-22 Welsh Premier League, Regular Season. Flint Police Officer Bridgette Balasko, 29, a 2007 graduate of Lake Fenton High School, is featured in an eight-part Netflix documentary called "Flint Town.". Season 1 of the show, consisting of eight episodes, premiered on Netflix on March 2, 2018, and received outstanding reviews from television critics and viewers alike. Since then, fans and critics have been waiting for a second season, which is yet to be confirmed. By Ashley Hamilton on 03/14/2018Comments Below. The state provided more than $350 million to Flint, in addition to the $100 million from the federal government - all of which is helping with water quality improvements, pipe replacement, healthcare, food resources, educational resources, job training and creation, and more. Instead, the citys success rate in finding the pipes in question plummeted from 70 percent to 15worse than would be expected if homes had been chosen completely at random. At that town hall, what people walked away feeling is that the attorney general now feels like Todd Flood poisoned us all.. Derek Robertson is digital editor for Indianapolis Monthly. Approximately 80% is allocated for them, with most of that going to children who were under 6 when they were exposed. Throw your hands in the air, hooray, hooray. 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