I certainly didn't think, in a movie that compares police to the KKK in several places, that Spike is remotely suggesting that cops are on the front lines of fighting racism. One can absolutely argue that he's suggesting that cops need to do *more*, and that they need to work in conjunction with those activists who fight racism full time-- those I can see, and one could certainly criticize those suggestions. But I definitely don't think the movie is pro-cop. The movie's protagonist's central struggle is "how can I fight racism *and* be a cop?" for Christ's sake-- and there is no resolution to that struggle at film's end.

The scene where they bust the racist cop and act buddy-buddy felt to me like an obvious build-up to the betrayal by those above him that happens after, in which the KKK investigation is shut down-- and someone can correct me, but I believe the police chief suggests that they'll use him elsewhere, like "in narcotics"-- which I took to mean what it meant at the beginning, that the cops' main need for black officers is to infiltrate and take down other black people.

There may not be easy answers, and I'm confident that Stallworth's real life work being changed will open the film up to further criticism-- but biopic central figures have their lives streamlined/"sanitized" all the time by filmmakers who are looking to use those characters to make their own points. I think Spike does a brilliant job at creating the illusion that "extremes on both sides" are bad, until you get to the movie's doozy of an ending and you see that's he done, in essence, what he did with the destruction of Sal's in DTRT. He's created a conversation starter-- and if you take from it one thing or another, it likely says more about you than it does about the film. That's a mark of great art to me, imo.

So I love Boots and I loved his movie... but the pro-cop read doesn't align with what the story on screen suggested, imo. Interested to hear if other people thought the film was "pro-police."