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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Other Topics  |  Television  |  Why do TV shows and movies show police doings things they never do in real life? « previous next »
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Author Topic: Why do TV shows and movies show police doings things they never do in real life?  (Read 12037 times)
WyreWizard
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« on: September 10, 2012, 04:18:08 PM »

Yes. I don't understand why TV Shows and Movies have to be so unrealistic in their display of the behavior of police officers.  I know I have said in a previous message about the movie I come in Peace the main character if he were a real cop he wouldn't be a cop for long.  But I have seen in many other TV Shows and Movies police officers not acting very realistically.  I mean rogue cops.  Take for instance, Dirty Harry.  He is perhaps the the biggest fictional rogue cop in history.  If he were a real police officer, he wouldn't be a police officer very long.  He would instead be in prison on charges of first-degree murder.  Cops in real life only kill a suspect if there is no possibility of taking that suspect into custody alive and if that suspect were a danger to the general public.  But what is even more unrealistic is what they did to the villain in the first Dirty Harry movie after he was captured.  They released the guy, do you believe that?  Released him!  That bastard was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to have killed innocent people and was highly likely to kill again if released!  The police department in that movie had put the general public in great danger by releasing him!  In reality, they would have only released the guy if his crimes were general misdemeanors or third degree felonies.

But back to the original topic of this message.  Cops behaving unrealistically.  I remember one TV show who's title I don't remember about a guy who kills someone he was robbing and finds a winning lottery ticket with the guy!  But what's unrealistic about it was when he was caught.  After he manages to successfully erase the victim's signature off the ticket and put his own, 2 plain clothes police officers approach him and start questioning him.  One of them takes the ticket from him, looks at it for 2 seconds, calls it a fake then tears it up.  Completely unrealistic and wrong.  If that guy were a real cop, he would be charged with evidence tampering.

Many years ago, I decided to put this to a test.  I bought a lottery ticket.  When it didn't tun out to be a winner (no numbers matched) I decided to test if what I saw on the show was real.  First off, I took the ticket to a friend of mine who was a pro at copying documents.  I had to pay a small fee for his services.  But I got a very good copy of the lottery ticket.  I put my name in print on the real ticket and my name in cursive on the fake so I could tell them apart.  Then I went around town asking cops if they could tell which was real and which was fake.  Literally all of them said "I cannot tell by looking.  I would have to take them to a forensic document examiner."  So I went to the police dept in town and asked them if their forensic document specialist could look at both tickets and tell which was real and which was fake.  They agreed and took the tickets in.  I didn't hear from them until 2 weeks later.  I met with their forensic document specialist.  She told me the one with my name in cursive was definitely fake.  I asked her how she could tell.  She said that she looked carefully at the grade of paper, quality of ink, and quality of print.  She said the quality of print was perfect.  But the quality of ink was not as she put it through spectrographic analysis.  Also the paper used was wrong.  She studied it microscopically looking at the quality of grain and type.  This all took 2 weeks.
So that cop in that show broke police policy by destroying evidence.
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Pacman000
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« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2012, 06:03:32 PM »

Maybe you could try Dragnet or Adam-12.  Jack Web insisted on accuracy.   Thumbup

Still, I have no problem with a bit of fictionalization.  Smile Or smilies.  TeddyR
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66Crush
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« Reply #2 on: September 12, 2012, 06:37:48 AM »

I have a problem with the fact that shows like "Cops" never seem to show criminals getting away or kicking a cop's butt. You know this happens, but they won't show it.
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AndyC
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« Reply #3 on: September 12, 2012, 08:09:20 AM »

Having a lot of cops in my family, I find their reactions fall into about three categories. They either get annoyed by the unrealistic bits, they laugh at the unrealistic bits and otherwise just enjoy the show (much as we watch an old b-movie), or in the case of something like Dirty Harry or Lethal Weapon, they get a kick out of it because they wish they could do that stuff and get away with it.

I watched CSI once with my brother, back when it was fairly new. He hated it, and was so vocal about everything that was wrong with it, nobody else could enjoy it. My dad felt much the same way about cop shows, but usually just didn't watch. He didn't seem to mind if the unrealistic cops were humorously corrupt and stupid though. Got a big kick out of Buford T. Justice as I recall.
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Newt
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« Reply #4 on: September 12, 2012, 08:59:01 AM »

I imagine it is the same for any profession: three MD's in the family and we could not watch any medical dramas, hubby gets annoyed by computing/programming impossibilities and I often throw loud fits over shows or movies involving anything to do with archaeology or horses.

The CSI stuff is just egregious, though.   Thumbdown  And a great disservice since it has had an effect on court cases: juries' expectations of evidence have been changed unrealistically.
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tracy
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« Reply #5 on: September 12, 2012, 12:25:21 PM »

I think the people that make many cop shows simply want to give folks what they feel they want. I agree with Pacman000 about Dragnet....that's a well-made program.
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AndyC
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« Reply #6 on: September 12, 2012, 12:42:14 PM »

I think the people that make many cop shows simply want to give folks what they feel they want. I agree with Pacman000 about Dragnet....that's a well-made program.

The truth is that real police work can be boring and tedious and routine in between the interesting bits that make the news. Real police work, unedited and unembellished, wouldn't make a very good TV show.
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66Crush
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« Reply #7 on: September 12, 2012, 11:46:10 PM »

I imagine it is the same for any profession: three MD's in the family and we could not watch any medical dramas, hubby gets annoyed by computing/programming impossibilities and I often throw loud fits over shows or movies involving anything to do with archaeology or horses.

The CSI stuff is just egregious, though.   Thumbdown  And a great disservice since it has had an effect on court cases: juries' expectations of evidence have been changed unrealistically.

Don't even get me started on shows about music.
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WyreWizard
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« Reply #8 on: September 13, 2012, 12:02:04 AM »

I have a problem with the fact that shows like "Cops" never seem to show criminals getting away or kicking a cop's butt. You know this happens, but they won't show it.

I remember one episode of Cops where the suspects actually got away.  I saw it back in 1992.  These two police officers were chasing a confirmed stolen vehicle.  But rather than stopping the vehicle sped away.  So a chase was on.  The chase lasted 10 mins.  The cops did find the vehicle, but the suspects were long gone.

The vehicle was parked in front of an alleyway.  The doors were open and the engine was running.
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AndyC
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« Reply #9 on: September 13, 2012, 08:49:46 AM »

I imagine it is the same for any profession: three MD's in the family and we could not watch any medical dramas, hubby gets annoyed by computing/programming impossibilities and I often throw loud fits over shows or movies involving anything to do with archaeology or horses.

The CSI stuff is just egregious, though.   Thumbdown  And a great disservice since it has had an effect on court cases: juries' expectations of evidence have been changed unrealistically.

Don't even get me started on shows about music.

Reporters have generally been portrayed pretty well, except that the amount of excitement can get exaggerated. I think that might be because the reporter is not often the protagonist, but usually a helper, a nuisance or just there. Even Kolchak, if you forget about the monsters, is pretty realistic. He's probably more accurate than most, in fact, except for the part about still being employed after spending days chasing one story after your editor has told you to forget it, and not even getting anything printable out of it.
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tracy
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« Reply #10 on: September 13, 2012, 12:49:22 PM »

I think the people that make many cop shows simply want to give folks what they feel they want. I agree with Pacman000 about Dragnet....that's a well-made program.

The truth is that real police work can be boring and tedious and routine in between the interesting bits that make the news. Real police work, unedited and unembellished, wouldn't make a very good TV show.

Excellent point. It can't all be glamour and action.
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Ed, Ego and Superego
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« Reply #11 on: September 14, 2012, 05:20:50 PM »

I once read/heard that Barney Miller was the most realistic show to cops.  I can't judge.

I must say, I hate watching shows that fictionalize science in an attemptto be "realistic" , and my wife once threw me out fo the room during an NCIS marathon.  I will accept giant monster stomping Tokyo, but bad movie/TV science really cheeses me off.

-Ed
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JaseSF
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« Reply #12 on: September 14, 2012, 07:45:08 PM »

How about the disaster end of the world films that completely get the scientific details wrong when clearly the writers didn't even bother to look up anything about ther subject matter? More in the realm of fantasy than reality more often than not. The reality of many things is just plain boring when compared to leaps of fantasy unless one has an interest in said things.
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Living_Dead_Girl
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« Reply #13 on: October 07, 2012, 08:07:21 AM »

Well they never are realistic in anyway, with how things work in hospitals and how Nurses and doctors really operate. it's hollywood, and the truth is boring, so they lie and throw in explosions.
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Jim H
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« Reply #14 on: October 07, 2012, 04:30:39 PM »

Quote
He is perhaps the the biggest fictional rogue cop in history.  If he were a real police officer, he wouldn't be a police officer very long.  He would instead be in prison on charges of first-degree murder.  Cops in real life only kill a suspect if there is no possibility of taking that suspect into custody alive and if that suspect were a danger to the general public.

Which killing would get him a murder charge?  In the first film at least, every single shooting was a clear case of self-defense. 

But yeah, police do a LOT of things they don't in real life, and CSI is actually a science fiction show.
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