Are cop shows a bad influence on people?

[QuinnFillory]

Thanks to recent real-life events, there is more scrutiny on the institution of police than ever before. And, some of that scrutiny is landing on cop shows and how they depict the way law enforcement is supposed to behave. While some of these shows have promised to take more care with their writing, there have been called to remove them from the air.

https://tvline.com/2020/06/26/trevor...u-*********pd/

So, what do you think?

[Agent Z]

It seems like a dead link.

[Güicho]

... there have been called to remove them from the air.

Cops like any profession and groups are full of good and bad people.
TV shows good and bad for better and worse can portray and reflect that.

You don't want to watch a cop shown don't
you don't like the one one being aired, protest to your network.
You want one that depicts cops the way you see and want it, create or help create it.

But flat out banning all "cop shows" for the fact of being cop shows, is getting to totalitarianism level censorship and control.

[LordMikel]

I mean yes, as now I know juries are asking, "what does the DNA evidence show?"

[Revolutionary_Jack]

How times change...It used to be whether crime movies glorify gangsters?

I think the same principle about gangster movies applies to cop movies/shows. Showing a movie from a gangster's perspective isn't going to make people join a gang or form one. Same way, I don't think shows about cops are going to make people join the police.

The difference I think is that you are far more likely to come into contact with or rely on the police than a gangster. And shows like CSI and so on, definitely color people's ideas about what the police do, or can believably do.

I don't think shows like The Wire, which is a critical look at the police system, or movies like The Departed or Traffic, or Madigan are going to be diminished just because the main cast there revolve around cops.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Depends on the show, but I am tired of the constant requirement of rule breaking as the norm, that then goes unpunished.

[Riv86672]

Cops like any profession and groups are full of good and bad people.
TV shows good and bad for better and worse can portray and reflect that.

You don't want to watch a cop shown don't
you don't like the one one being aired, protest to your network.
You want one that depicts cops the way you see and want it, create or help crate it.

But flat out banning all "cop shows" for the fact of being cop shows, is getting to totalitarianism level censorship and control.

^^^This guy gets it.

[Valentonis]

I definitely think that the glorification of rule breakers and officers who circumvent due process is an issue.

[Chris Lang]

Thanks to recent real-life events, there is more scrutiny on the institution of police than ever before. And, some of that scrutiny is landing on cop shows and how they depict the way law enforcement is supposed to behave. While some of these shows have promised to take more care with their writing, there have been called to remove them from the air.


So, what do you think?

Well, TV police proceedurals do have a problem, some more than others. Some have an imbalance between how many crimes are committed by white people and how many are committed by persons of color. I've noticed that disturbing trend in Chicago P.D., with a lot of black and Latino criminals several episodes in a row.

Also, in all the cop shows I'm most familiar with, there tends to be only one black regular character in the police force, and for some reason there's this rule -- possibly an unwritten rule -- that there can't be another until the first one leaves. Specific examples, from the shows I've seen:

In Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Ice T's Fin Tutuola only became a regular after Monique Jeffries left the show. In CSI, Langston didn't join until after Warrick Brown was no longer part of the show (Warrick Brown was killed off, by the way). Rizzoli and Isles only gained Nina Holiday a season or so after Barry Frost left the show (when both the character and the actor who played him died). Chicago PD has had only one regular black member of the unit since the show began, Kevin Atwater.

It's kind of a disturbing bit of tokenism you don't see in other types of proceedurals. Elsewhere in the Chicagoverse, we've got three black regular characters on Chicago Med (Sharon Goodwin, Maggie, April). In Chicago Fire, the unit is led by Chief Boden, and one of its newer recruits is Ritter, making two black regular cast members.

Can anyone name a cop show that's had more than one black regular at the same time?

Of course, it's important to note that cop shows, despite the supposed 'real world' setting are basically fantasies, and in real life police departments are bloated, overbudgeted, and often inefficient. In the real world, sadly, a lot of rapes, murders, arsons, and so forth go unsolved, and cop shows only acknowledge it when doing 'reopening a cold case' episodes where the detective is going after the (previously unmentioned) real criminal that got away years ago.

And sometimes, cop shows go so far out of their way to make their protagonists superheroes that it impacts real-life juries. A particularly egregious offender is CSI, where forensic science is portrayed as working so fast and so accurately that it might as well be magical. In the real world, the analyses can take a lot longer, and there's no guarantee they will be right. Unfortunately, members of a jury have been known to take too much of what they saw on CSI as being reflective of actual forensics.

As far as brutality goes, Chicago PD is, again, an offender, as it's led by Hank Voight, a sergeant who believes in bending the rules in the name of dishing out justice. He's been known to beat up suspects and intimidate informants, sometimes by locking them in a cage. He's balanced out by more level-headed characters such as Jay Halstead and the aforementioned Kevin Atwater, but still one has to wonder how he's managed to stay as head of the Intelligence Unit for six whole seasons given how many times he's gone overboard.

Elliot Stabler on SVU certainly has had his hot-headed moments, and moments where he's been brutal toward a perp, though usually the people he's been brutal toward were unrepentant jerks who enjoyed the abuses they themselves had committed. But again, Olivia Benson was there to be the more level-headed one.

Anyway, yes, there are indeed a number of elements of cop shows that are problematic, and if they are to continue, they will need to address these things that have been the elephants in the room for a long time.

[GozertheGozarian]

The CSI Effect has shown some of these shows have given juries unrealistic expectations.

[Jim Kelly]

I think that many of us have known this isn't how it is in the real world, but we suspended our disbelief for the conventions of the genre. However, most recently, I'm finding it hard to do that--and I think movies and T.V. shows made just before 2020 but only coming out now are going to spark our cognitive dissonance. I wonder if, once shows go back into production, they will rethink some of those conventions.

[numberthirty]

...

Can anyone name a cop show that's had more than one black regular at the same time?

...

While it's certainly not a regular thing, it seems like this was the case on Detroit 1-8-7 and maybe High Incident.

[Agent Z]

Also, in all the cop shows I'm most familiar with, there tends to be only one black regular character in the police force, and for some reason there's this rule -- possibly an unwritten rule -- that there can't be another until the first one leaves. Specific examples, from the shows I've seen:

In Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Ice T's Fin Tutuola only became a regular after Monique Jeffries left the show. In CSI, Langston didn't join until after Warrick Brown was no longer part of the show (Warrick Brown was killed off, by the way). Rizzoli and Isles only gained Nina Holiday a season or so after Barry Frost left the show (when both the character and the actor who played him died). Chicago PD has had only one regular black member of the unit since the show began, Kevin Atwater.

It's kind of a disturbing bit of tokenism you don't see in other types of proceedurals. Elsewhere in the Chicagoverse, we've got three black regular characters on Chicago Med (Sharon Goodwin, Maggie, April). In Chicago Fire, the unit is led by Chief Boden, and one of its newer recruits is Ritter, making two black regular cast members.

CSI Miami was also guilty of this. In the first six seasons, the show's only black cast member was the coroner Alexx Woods. She was replaced by Tara Price who was written out after one season. The show later added a black detective named Walter Simmons who remained with the show for the remainder of its run.

Can anyone name a cop show that's had more than one black regular at the same time?

The original Law and Order t.v show had two black cast members on at the same time with Jesse L. Martin (seasons 5 to 9) and S. Epatha Merkerson (seasons 4 to 20 the final season). Anthony Anderson joined the cast in the show's final two seasons.

[numberthirty]

...

The original Law and Order t.v show had two black cast members on at the same time with Jesse L. Martin (seasons 5 to 9) and S. Epatha Merkerson (seasons 4 to 20 the final season). Anthony Anderson joined the cast in the show's final two seasons.

Come to think of it, Lethal Weapon(Roger Murtaugh/Sonya Bailey).

It's just easy to lose track of it being the case because it gets overshadowed by the way the show unraveled.

[Agent Z]

Come to think of it, Lethal Weapon(Roger Murtaugh/Sonya Bailey).

It's just easy to lose track of it being the case because it gets overshadowed by the way the show unraveled.

While it focused on prosecutors as opposed to cops, Shark had Henry Simmons and Sophina Brown. In fact, that's where they met before they got married.