Did Homeland make police look bad? I though it was pretty pro-law enforcement. In general would you agree that most cop shows make the police look pretty good?
A doc friend hates medical shows because people expect shit to happen like on TV. Do cops have the same problem where victims want things to happen smoothly and quickly like the shows?
I didn’t watch homeland.
I would say that the ratio of good to bad cops on television is about even, but the shows try to be contemporary and hit all those “realistic” characters. The network shows will follow a template that leans toward “humanizing” both the cops and the bad guys. There will be the new father/family cop that has some marital problems or a kid with problems; there will be the rookie adrenaline junkie;the female cop trying to make it in a sexist male profession; there will be the salty veteran; there will be a couple of racist or brutal cops that put the rookie in a moral dilemma; there will be an episode with a questionable shoot; a cop will get killed in one episode(probably the rookie’s training officer that fills him with guilt); and there will be a couple of cliche type gang members.
The cable shows on showtime or hbo seem to be more negative in their portrayal of the cops because the writers have more freedom to express and expose their liberal writer’s opinions(see the wire).
My point is that they will try to get the mike brown or Eric garner type of episodes; the cop gets ambushed episode, black lives matter protests after the shooting of a 12 year old, etc.
Anyway, as for the csi effect(that’s what I call it) people want and expect me to get dna and fingerprints when they leave their car unlocked and shit gets stolen, they want a brick dusted for prints when it is thrown through a window-basically they have unrealistic expectations of what can be done and expect very expensive tests for a minor crime(no I am not collecting a cigarette butt to get dna! No i am not collecting a small piece of a tail light to try and track down someone that hit your car while you were in the grocery store(at Best, you can find out the make of the car.). No i am not going to send an officer in plainclothes to meet the guy that found/stole your iPhone that wants to sell it back to you, nor am I going to kick in a door because you pinged your “find my phone” to a house because those apps have a radius that can be thousands of feet-even if it looks clear that it is that house over there-hell, I can have the phone company do it on serious life at stake type of calls, and I will get a ping that can have a radius of a foot to a hundred.
I even had a person demand that evidence be collected and sent down state to the crime lab, and when I explained that the expense was prohibitive, they said “I am a taxpayer, and I pay for this, so I am ok with the expense and you work for me...”. Well, you can maybe imagine how the rest of that conversation went, and this was one of those unlocked car petit larceny cases, but they swore they locked their car and someone must have cloned a key, or hid in the bushes and used a phone app to record the unlock frequency(thanks csi!) to get into their car to steal loose change and a CD player.
I could go on forever with my sixteen years as a cop, but i think you get the point.
