The American detective: authoritarianism and the purpose of police

FOREWORD: Killing cops, not cool. Cops killing people, also not cool. These are not mutually exclusive opinions. So this post is going to be fairly serious, because there are a lot of difficult things we want to discuss here. As one of us did her thesis on criminal sociology and the other majors in media studies, this subject felt like a natural fit. But we wanted to do this also, because one of us is REALLY into police dramas (the British ones for real and the American ones for guilty pleasure).  On the other hand, what truly triggered this idea was watching Chicago P.D. and connecting it to the current climate surrounding police brutality and the lack of accountability that seems to be expected from the police. We'll mainly discuss American shows and briefly contrast them with their British counterparts.

The role of police

In American shows, it seems, the police's main objective is to maintain order and act as a kind of punisher for the criminals as well as a liberator for the victims and their families. We'll address more fully the police's relationship with criminals and victims in these shows later. This part is more about order and authority. There is a great article about the birth of police and how its purpose has always been to protect current power structures and hierarchies (seriously, read it; it summarizes everything so much better than we ever could). You rarely see these shows question the collective action of the police. You occasionally see some individual wrongdoing, but it's never connected to systemic problems in the police force. In addition, the characters never seem to learn from these mistakes, but instead continue to perpetuate their harmful behaviour. Their methods are escalation, aggression and even violence. The makers of these shows portray aggression and violence as effective tools for crime prevention. When in reality, you know that's bullshit. There are plenty of studies. Using the fear of police as a crime deterrent is totalitarian. 

For instance, in Chicago P.D. (and in multiple other ones) their boss is actively beating people up and that is portrayed as efficient policing. He disregards their own rules and in return, is revered for it. This would be great, if the show framed his behaviour as toxic. But the show itself glorifies this approach. Even when some of the subordinates challenge this behaviour, they never do anything to fix things. This is emblematic of most network (like ABC, NBC, FOX etc.) police tv-series, you know, the ones that everyone sees. It reflects poorly on the American cop shows that a comedy show about the police (Brooklyn 99) addresses issues of prejudice and discrimination more reasonably than their dramas.

Criminals and victims

 

The criminals detective shows are obsessed with are invariably violent perpetrators. It's almost comical how ignorant the portrayal of criminals is in American shows. Often, the criminal is the manifestation of what's evil and wrong in society. They don't get redeeming qualities or sympathy. Depicting criminals at least somewhat humanely, is what the Brits do a lot better. In British shows the focus is very much on why the crime was committed as opposed to punishing the criminal. Wire In the Blood is a pretty good example since the whole point is to investigate the thought patterns of those who commit serial violent crimes. There are a few instances where the criminal is actually sympathetic, and frequently they have deep traumas and have been victims of crime themselves. Still, even the British won't go the extra mile to actually discuss the complexity of why crime exists in the first place. Crime is one of the most complicated and difficult social issues there is. Not even criminologists and sociologists have come to an agreement to why people commit crime. There is no one explanation that would neatly answer this question and resolve the issue. And depicting criminals as "others" is not helping. 

Victims are the one thing that most detective shows portray similarly. They are the innocents who either have no connection to the crime or the criminal. If they do, it is unwittingly. These shows ignore the fact that in reality the vast amount of victims of violent crimes actually have criminal history themselves. The victims rarely have any character either, they only function as an accelerator and justification for the officers' aggression and violence. This kind of polarization of criminal vs victim feeds into the simplistic narrative that crime just exists and that criminals deserve to be marginalized. Not a thought is given to the idea that changing the structures of society and its approach to criminals and crime would be the most effective way to prevent crime. Obviously, this isn't an issue with only the American police. It's pretty ubiquitous. 

We do realize that these are fictional works, and the other one of us still really enjoys a lot of these shows despite their problems, but it would also be naive to say that media doesn't in some way affect your perception of the world. All in all, what we get when watching these shows, in particular the American ones, is that the police are there to serve the powerful through borderline authoritarian means of aggression, fear and violence. Rather, those qualities are seen as requirements to do the job well and not as the horribly damaging unprofessionalism that leads to people's deaths in real life. And what many of these shows don't understand that the lack of accountability and putting your loyalty of the police force above the community you're supposed to serve and protect, hurts not only the society at large -  be it criminals, victims or bystanders - but also the police community itself.