Director Calum deHartog worked for 10 years in clear and present danger as a Toronto beat cop before he captured the emotional journey of an empathetic police officer and an everyday criminal for the small screen.

The result is the six-minute Bravo!Fact short Urban Trenches, now being developed into a possible TV series with writer Brad Smith (All Hat) and director John L’Ecuyer (ReGenesis, The Guard).

‘Being a newcomer to the Canadian TV scene, I thought why not make a short to sell people on the quality of the work, and show the industry my chops,’ explains deHartog, who worked mostly in Toronto’s derelict Regent Park and Parkdale neighborhoods, and today runs Calibre Entertainment.

Urban Trenches offers a condensed cop drama that gets viewers to the wrong side of the tracks. As the film opens, we see two young men in street clothes travelling and getting off a bus. Coincidentally, the duo return at the climax, one as a tough cop in uniform, played by David Julian Hirsh (Cold Case, Naked Josh), the other a gang member (Joseph Pierre) violently taken down and arrested after a failed robbery attempt.

Just before the bad guy is bundled into the police car, we learn both men have a high school association.

‘Well, everyone has a story,’ the youth says before being hauled away to jail, heralding yet more tough stories about moral choices in the mean city from the career police officer-turned-filmmaker.

DeHartog says Urban Trenches is loosely based on his 10-year career, and was inspired by a true-life arrest he made after a violent struggle with a criminal that sent both men to the hospital, where they shared a moment.

‘That was the event on which we connected on a cerebral level. And it brought home to me his human side,’ he recalls.

That humanity translates to Urban Trenches, with a cop who connects with a captured criminal, a dead brother who represents a heroic figure, and family pain portrayed in the stark, saddened face of a silent mother.

Also key to deHartog’s short is his cinematographer — Miami-based Robert Maya, whose unique style includes hand-held camerawork, a filtered, grainy look and a blown-out sky to accentuate the cop and criminal characters in violent struggle below.

Despite being shot in Toronto, Urban Trenches is set in anywhere U.S.A. Whether an eventual series gets an identifiably Canadian face may depend on where deHartog’s current discussions with Canadian broadcasters go.

His other credits include the 2007 short documentary Stronger Than Love, a project deHartog produced and directed with Oscar nominee Hubert Davis.

But it’s Urban Trenches that’s become his latest passion project. ‘The series is about a neighborhood. It’s not about one person. It’s not a show about cops, or lawyers or addicts. It’s about all of those things. It’s any story. It just depends on how I execute it,’ he says.