A tragicomic account of how the Los Angeles Police Department blew up a city block

The US filmmaker Nathan Truesdell specialises in deploying archival footage to shine a light on local government incompetence and malfeasance – often to droll, tragicomic effect. For his most recent film, When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood (2022), he trains his pointed editing skills on an incident from 30 June 2021 in which the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad detonated some 42 pounds of confiscated fireworks in a residential, working-class neighbourhood. The resulting explosion destroyed the armoured vehicle intended to contain it, injuring 17 and badly damaging many nearby homes. Weaving together local news reports and footage from press conferences, Truesdell untangles the web of carelessness and incompetence that led to the explosion, as well as the lack of accountability and inadequate response that followed.