A former sheriff will stop at nothing to confront the SWAT team he founded. Peace Officer is a feature documentary about the increasingly militarized state of American police as told through the story of William “Dub” Lawrence, a former sheriff who established and trained his rural state’s first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later. Driven by an obsessed sense of mission, Dub uses his own investigative skills to uncover the truth in this and other recent officer involved shootings in his community while tackling larger questions about the changing face of peace officers nationwide.
Peace Officer, directed, produced and filmed by Brad Barber and Scott Christopherson, won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival, as well as the Human Rights Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival among other festival honors. Brad and Scott later appeared on Variety's "10 Documakers to Watch" list and Peace Officer went on to play in theaters nationwide before airing on the PBS series Independent Lens.
About the Filmmakers
Brad Barber is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. In 2009, Brad was nominated for an Emmy as an editor on the HBO documentary Resolved, for which he also served as an associate producer and cinematographer. He has been awarded multiple regional Emmys for his public television short documentary series Beehive Stories, which he made with his students at BYU, and is a recipient of the AFI Docs/NBC Universal Impact Grant for social outreach. Brad has served on juries and selection committees for the International Documentary Association Awards, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and Slamdance Film Festival. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree studying Media Arts and Journalism at BYU, Brad attended USC where he earned an MFA in Cinema-Television Production. He then continued to work in Los Angeles on a number of documentary television and film projects for Showtime, ESPN, Discovery Channel, and several others. Brad has taught documentary production in the Theatre & Media Arts Department at BYU since 2007. His current project is the national identity documentary series States of America. He is married to artist Susan Krueger-Barber and together they have two amazing sons.
Scott Christopherson worked for Ross McElwee of Harvard University on his film In Paraguay. Ross helped guide Scott’s first film titled Only the Pizza Man Knows, which was broadcast internationally for over a year on the satellite cable network BYUtv. Scott worked as the Documentary Arts Director/Instructor for Spy Hop Productions and the Sundance Institute’s youth documentary workshops. His students’ films went on to win multiple awards locally and internationally and were nominated as the top short film in Utah two consecutive years. While living in San Francisco for graduate school, Scott shot, directed, and edited over 20 short films for Project Runway’s season six website. Scott received his MFA in Documentary Cinema from San Francisco State University and he also earned an MA degree in Anthropology from UW-Madison. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Documentary Film at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.
About the Baker
Utah based conceptual artist, Andi Davis, uses her homemade sourdough bread as both surface and medium to communicate her creative vision and connect with her audience – her community. Davis believes bread is akin to life, created to nourish and sustain the body, mind, and spirit. “We break bread as an act of community and friendship once a week in church, we break bread together in fellowship.”