Documentary Screening of "Documenting Police Use of Force" & Discussion

Ron Nixon leads global investigations at The Associated Press. Nixon, in his role at the AP, has overseen investigations that have won major journalism awards: News and Documentary Emmy, IRE, Worth Bingham, Selden Ring and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. He also led an investigation that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2021, Nixon received the News Leader of the Year award from the News Leaders Association.

Nixon is also co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a news trade organization increasing the ranks, retention and profile of reporters and editors of color. Nixon is a Marine Corps infantry veteran who saw combat in the 1990 Persian Gulf War and was part of the Marine Corps security forces battalion, the security and counterterrorism unit. He attended Alabama State University, majoring in music.

Andrea M. Headley is an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She is also an Affiliate Fellow at the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law. She is a scholar of public management, racial equity, and criminal justice policy. At the heart of research lies the question how can we create a more effective and equitable criminal justice system?

Headley’s research focuses on policing to understand how organizational, managerial, and individual level factors affect service delivery and outcomes, with a keen focus on inequities and disparities. Specific examples of her past work include improving police-community relations in communities of color, assessing the effect of race during use of force encounters, evaluating body-worn cameras, understanding national police reform commissions, analyzing dispositional outcomes in citizen complaints, and exploring the gendered norms and cultures in policing. 

Ceoli Jacoby is a journalist based in the D.C. metropolitan area who currently covers state and local government for The Frederick News-Post in Frederick County, Maryland. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in the spring of 2023 with bachelor's degrees in multiplatform journalism and government and politics, plus a concentration in international relations. 

While at the University of Maryland, Jacoby completed internships with Mid-Atlantic Media, Montgomery Community Media and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She fulfilled her capstone requirement through the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, where she reported on fatal police encounters in the state of Georgia between 2017 and 2021. 

During her Howard Center capstone, Jacoby and her classmates traveled to several Georgia counties to investigate incidents where the use of non-lethal force by law enforcement resulted in the death of another person. Jacoby specifically focused on the 2017 death of Devin Howell in Cobb County and the 2016 death of Terrell "Al" Clark in Worth County. One of the officers involved in the latter case was featured in the film "Documenting Police Use of Force."

Serginho Roosblad is one of FRONTLINE's Investigative Journalist Equity Initiative filmmakers. He's an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker who is part of the Associated Press’ Global Investigations team. At the AP, he has worked on a variety of investigative short documentaries, including on police use of force on children, Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, and a contaminated former army base, which might have caused cancer in hundreds of veterans.

As a lover of photography, Roosblad has also directed and produced a trio of award-winning films on prolific photographers in America. Prior to his work in documentary film, he spent much of his early career in journalism reporting on Africa, where he covered a wide range of topics such as drug addiction in Uganda, piracy in Somalia, and the musical heritage of Zanzibar. For his documentary, Roosblad will partner with the production company Trilogy Films.