Originally Posted by
Chris Lang
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.