Booked for Safekeeping: 1960 police training film on dealing with the mentally ill


This fascinating video, "Booked for Safekeeping," was a featured selection at my local San Francisco video store, Four Star Video. It's a 1960 film to train New Orleans police in how to reasonably and humanely deal with mentally ill individuals, severely intellectually challenged people, and those suffering from dementia. The director was George C. Stoney, considered to be the father of public access television and an advocate for media literacy. The actors in this film are all New Orleans police officers. You can view it at Archive.org thanks to the Prelinger Archives. "Booked for Safekeeping (Part I)"

UPDATE: Thanks to Rick Prelinger for sharing in the comments some personal background on this film:

This film has great ethnographic value as a document of police culture and a lost New Orleans. When I found it in 1996-97 I got so excited I ran down to NYU to see George Stoney and ask him about it.

He said they were trying to set an example for humane police behavior, which didn't always match up with the way some of the actors defined their workflow.