Recently, John Oliver did a segment of his show about the TV show Law & Order and how it's some kind of Police Propaganda show. About how the cops are always shown favorably, the Prosecutors are bastions of ethics and dedicated to seeking the truth. To Oliver, this seems like far from the truth -- American police often use trickery, deceit and underhanded tactics to get a suspect to make a confession, lying about what evidence they have, witnesses they have, victim identifying them, and other things. This all started as a series of decisions by a fairly conservative US Supreme Court that first decided that police could indulge in minor deceptions -- things like suggesting they were going to potentially find the suspect's fingerprints on the murder weapon when they hadn't even found the murder weapon yet. But then, of course, the camel's nose was in the tent. Things progressed in a series of decisions to the point that Police now can straight up lie to you, claiming they have evidence they don't have. Trying to leverage you to not end the interview by saying if you invoke your right to silence they can't help you. By lying and saying you 'could' call a lawyer but legal aid takes weeks now and we'd have to hold you in a cell the whole time. In a way, Oliver is right. (link to his segment below.)
John Oliver Law & Order segment (9-13-22)
Watch the clip for yourself. (full episode available at Youtube. )
I'm not saying Oliver is wrong. Except that the show has in fact dealt with stories of police abuse. I could go hunting and find them all, but I'm going to limit myself to just one, taken from the list of episodes on Wikipedia. Law & Order Season 1 episodes list
The first episode that came to mind was "A Death In the Family" in which a well-regarded police officer is killed on a rooftop. Police first suspect a local drug dealer, but it quickly transpires that he was shot by another officer, who later is exonerated when it comes about that he had lured her up there with the intention of killing her. So, there are multiple episodes across all the L&O franchises in which police are shown to be the bad guys. There is one in which the Central Park Five case is the model for the episode. Detectives who interview the suspect use bad interview techniques to coerce a confession out of a suspect. "Look, we know you were there, witnesses put you there. Just say you touched her."
But in fact this defendant did not rape anyone and was not in fact there. There were no witnesses which put him at the scene -- that was a lie told by detectives. This is later proven by detectives, who exonerate the alleged rapists. But again, I want to emphasize this -- Oliver is not entirely wrong. The show does portray an idealized set of cops, who are hard driving for the truth. Cops who follow the evidence no matter where it leads. But the reality is far different. We have too many detectives who simply go for the first subject to come under their vision and simply don't care about finding the truth of a situation. They find a suspect, bully them into confessing, use scummy tactics wherein they actually lie to the suspect. Oftentimes they cover up evidence that would exculpate the accused in order to make a conviction more likely. It is not unknown for a detective to gun down a suspect and then make sure a gun is found on the body. It's not unknown for uniformed officers to harass and bully people in the street, and gunning down otherwise innocent people is far too regular an occurrence. One of the biggest problems in American policing is the fact that there simply is no national standard for who can be a police officer, what training police cadets receive, what licensing requirements and what standards for use of force. There is little quality control being exercised. Large departments like NYPD and LAPD can have good quality vetting programs but those are not infallible and are often just plain dropped out of a desperation to fill positions. Candidate cadets have even been told what replies to give on psychological testing interviews. Background investigations are often lacking or simply not done. Communities outside of the big cities often just haven't got any standards beyond no criminal record and not physically disabled. An officer fired from a position in one community is often simply allowed to "Lateral Transfer" to another police department in a neighboring community.
Some further comparison and contrast :
Meet the officers of the Rampart CRASH unit. They were cops assigned to stop gang violence and crimes such as drug dealing. Except they themselves are worse than the criminals they are supposed to apprehend. TV watchers from the early "aughts" should recognize these men as being the men of the Fox TV production "The Shield". But would you be surprised to know that the show was based on the real-life doings of officers of the LAPD ?
Would it also be a surprise you to know that the police station they worked out of, the LAPD Ramparts Division station, was the same one featured in the classic TV show "Adam-12" ? Yup. . . the very same building.
In contrast with this, we have (the aforementioned) ADAM-12, in which paragons of policing Officers Jim Reed and Pete Malloy rode around in the fourth character, Shop number 83012 (or 85012). They enforced the law coldly, impersonally but oftentimes angry with the suspects they arrested, thus showing some humanity. Other officers have problems -- see episode "Badge Heavy" for an example -- but they are dealt with by LAPD's self-policing mechanisms. In short, the show is in fact the propaganda that Oliver believes the Law & Order franchise to be.
To Sum Up:
- We need a national standard for police selection and training.
- We need to alter the way in which police are trained : back down from the militant us vs them mentality, and focus on patience, forbearing and de-escalation.
- A national database of police ethics infractions and incidents of abuse and violence.
- A system in which if you have a serious ethics violation, you should be done as a police officer right there, and it should be a national ban. No more revolving door police departments.
- National standards on police interviews, techniques allowed and forbidding lying to suspects. In Britain, closure rates increased when detectives were given new standards that included not lying to suspects.
A last word.
A couple final thoughts:
The problem of law enforcement in the United States isn't as one-sided as we would want it to be.
It works best when the community is involved. People have to make use of the machinery or it will cease to function. As difficult as it might be, people need to step up and do the work. Provide police with information they need to solve a crime, even if all you do is phone in an anonymous tip. report not just strange activity but also incidents of police misbehavior. Encourage young people of good character to join the police force. Resist the impulse to vigilante actions. Report for jury duty and if necessary serve on a jury. These actions are part of making a democracy work. If you can't do all of them, try doing one or two. Don't say "I can't change things alone" because you won't be alone if everyone pitches in. Okay. I'm going to step down off my soapbox now.
Have a good one.
