A three-part documentary series about gun violence in Bakersfield, billed as a “true-crime thriller” by executive producer Colin Kaepernick, calls out the recently elected speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and his Central California district for having the highest rate of officer-involved shootings in the country.
Killing County, which premieres on Hulu Feb. 3, follows a Bakersfield family trying to make sense of the loss of their loved one. During their quest to heal, they come to realize they are far from alone in suffering the impact of gun violence.
“This is one of the most powerful projects I’ve ever been involved with,” Kaepernick said in the trailer for the docuseries.
Kaepernick recently shared in a Tweet that Kern County has the highest homicide rate, the most crime and the highest number of people killed by police——or, in his words, “police executions”—making the title Killing County all the more fitting.
It’s not the first time Bakersfield police have been cast in an unflattering light. Kern County officials banned John Steinbeck’s iconic novel The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 in part because of its negative depiction of local officials.
Gun violence and crime are so rampant in Bakersfield and the surrounding area that Gov. Gavin Newsom once called the county “the murder capital of California.”