SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 9.13.2026
The New York Times published an article with its list of the best films on Amazon Prime.
Scrolling through the mostly anodyne selections the blogger search ground to a halt. On the list is the highly regarded “Riotsville USA”. A documentary about what can be categorized as the origins of the modern Police State America. On a Sunday afternoon I watched this riveting, educational and disturbing piece of documentary film making.
When I see the ongoing militarization of American law enforcement I will never again wonder about the origins of the American police state after watching this film.
The following review claims the Riotsville USA story is “in some sense, laughable”. It is not in the least funny.
Excerpted from The New York Times 9.13.2026
The mid-1960s saw a conspicuous rise in civil unrest in the United States. The war in Vietnam, substandard living conditions for people of color, and a larger shift in consciousness all contributed to people wielding violence as a tool of protest. The new documentary “Riotsville, USA.,” shows the federal government’s response to this tactic as both sinister and, in some sense, laughable.
The Riotsville of the title is the name of a fake town built as a training ground for law enforcement, in which riot story lines were enacted by soldiers. More than one of these towns were built by the U.S. government, with the events filmed for official review. The documentary’s director, Sierra Pettengill, uses a variety of archival footage here. There are government films of Riotsville exercises, clips from talk shows, and a mini-narrative of a public television station whose progressive politics led to its defunding by the Ford Foundation. And searing footage from riots near the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami, which received scant media coverage at the time.
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