Netflix’s original series, Seven Seconds, places a magnifying glass on the issue of police brutality in America, a conundrum that has been prevalent on American soil for decades. Now, thanks to the show’s creator Veena Sud, she cleverly attempted to deconstruct the problem in her new story.
Since watching the lives of so many young black men be taken away by law enforcement and the streets, she was compelled to do something. Seven Seconds is centered around an African-American teen in Jersey City, New Jersey who gets killed in a hit-and-run by the police and is left in the freezing cold to perish.
“One of the most provocative things for me watching all these killings happen on television and in our national fabric is, over and over and overhearing and seeing these young people, whether it’s Tamir Rice or Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin left on the ground for so long,” Sud explained to CNN. “It’s such an incredibly violent and horrific thing to think of a child lying in the cold…that was such an image that encapsulated that certain lives matter in this country and certain ones don’t.”
Now, 15-year-old Brenton Butler’s family is left looking for answers, and demanding justice in a country where a black body seemingly doesn’t deserve it. Amid the struggle, there is a deeper storyline here about institutional racism and the treatment of black women in society and the workplace.
British actress Clare Hope-Ashitey plays a jaded prosecutor KJ Harper, who suffers mistreatment by her white male counterparts and finds herself baffled on how to approach this all too common case.
Watch an exclusive clip of the series below ahead of its premiere on Feb. 23.
Source: https://www.vibe.com/2018/02/netflix-seven-seconds-police-brutality/