Week 4
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Week 4: Rogue Cops

On Training Day Denzel Washington introduces Ethan Hawke to police corruption

Introduction: Film Images of Cops

In American mass media, and in particular the movies, police work is a major topic. News, talk shows, prime-time crime dramas, as well as movies, all feature police as major figures. But, what kinds of images of policing does the media portray? How close or far from reality are these images? What is absent from media portrayals of police work may be just as important as the things the media tends to exaggerate.

Overall, it would have to be said that the attitude of the media towards the police is an ambivalent one. This is probably explainable because we as a society have chosen to have an armed police force, and given officers the authority to make life and death decisions when encountering suspected criminals. News depictions of the police as truly heroic figures, who selflessly give of themselves to protect the public are rare (although after 9/11 NYPD's image was transformed), but some cop movies rely on such characterizations. However, in comparison movies in which cops are depicted in a nonpositive light seem to predominate, at least in our memories. Such police depictions can be placed on a sliding scale with the worst seen as criminals themselves, to officers who must brutalize suspects and witnesses alike because they are otherwise too inept to do their job. All of these would fall under the general categorization of the rouge cop.   

Of course, much of police work is simply ignored by the media, leaving a gap in our understanding of the nature of the job and those who perform it. Police work is frequently glamorized by all forms of media, and made to appear much more exciting than it actually is. Depictions of police doing paperwork (handing out tickets, filling out reports, accident forms, insurance verification documents, etc.) are few and far between. Rarely shown are traffic duties, crowd control, and the social work functions largely performed by regular patrol officers (calming angry spouses, transporting drunks, allaying the fears of frightened citizens when things go bump in the night). We learn little of the real nature of day-to-day police work from media accounts.

Sloppy Police Work

Does Hollywood depict the mechanics of police work accurately? David Johnston in his essay "Shooting Down TV's Cop Shows" takes television producers to task for the depiction of sloppy police procedures that turn up on prime-time TV. If real police used such techniques they would probably be sued or fired, maybe even sent to jail or end up getting killed. While most police dramas hire police officers as script consultants, their expertise is usually limited to technical matters and often their suggestions are simply ignored. For example, on Miami Vice two members of the Miami-Dade Police served as technical advisors. However, their role was limited mostly to coordinating the use of firearms and explosives on the show. When Steve Bochco, the show's producer was questioned on this, his response was that he was more interested in dramatizing the emotional impact of policing than faithfully depicting "the mechanics" of policing.

Examples of poor police tactics abound on prime time. For example, busts occur inside restaurants instead of outside, the result being the creation of possible hostage situations. Crime scenes are not maintained, invaded by citizen bystanders who destroy evidence, and abandoned by patrol officers before detectives have arrived. TV shows also fall to demonstrate major changes that have occurred in policing. New tactics aimed at minimizing unnecessary shootings, avoiding potentially deadly "hot pursuits," or calming distraught people so that, minor incidents and domestic situations don't explode into violence are rarely dramatized. TV cops still use their guns first, rather than think. In reality, the average cop in NYC would have to work 60 years just to shoot once while TV cops shoot several times per hour.

In reality, shows from the past more accurately portrayed police tactics. These included Dragnet and Adam 12 and former cop Joseph Wambaugh's Police Story (1973-77).

The Early Hollywood Tradition

Police dramas would have been thought to be a staple of Hollywood fare since the origin of the movies. However, according to Nicole Rafter, film focused on criminals rather than policing during the first half of the last century. When TV came along in the 1950's, police dramas moved directly from the big screen to the small screen. Only in the 1970s did the Hollywood police drama flourish.

Over time, the Hollywood image of policing has changed. Some cite the major reason for these shifts as the changing political moods in the country. Others point to the improvements and reforms police have made themselves to become more efficient and improve their reputation. Nevertheless, conservative periods usually produce more law and order films, that typically give police greater leeway to fully enforce the law while less concern is shown about civil liberties. During more liberal eras, Hollywood has attacked law enforcement. Leftward-leaning films implicitly indict the police as being overly totalitarian in their tactics. Herbert Packer's "crime control" and "due process" models are seen fighting for dominance. (For an excellent analysis of the political biases of films, including crime dramas, see Peter Biskind's Seeing is Believing. While Biskind's work is specific to the 1950s, his insights for analyzing the political rhetoric of film can be applied to any era.)

A history of Hollywood's shifting image of the police has been written by Robert Reiner (Reiner, R. (1981) Keystone to Kojak: the Hollywood cop in Cinema, Politics and Society). Surprisingly, one of the first images of policing to appear was a comical one, a group of bumbling buffoons known as the Keystone Cops. They were featured in a number of early silent features. During the same era, gangsters were, in contrast, presented in a more romantic light. The portrayal of cops as inept, comic clowns was so distasteful to real cops that in 1910, the International Association of Chiefs of Police adopted a resolution condemning Hollywood's image of policing.

However, if one goes back and analyzes the actual nature of policing, particularly big city police departments, during that time period, you would find widespread beliefs (and evidence) that urban police were corrupt, inefficient pawns of machine politics. The Keystone Cops may not have been that far from the truth. Surprisingly the more rougish aspects of early American police are ignored, while the comic aspect of their ineptness is featured. Policing was not, as it is now, a civil service. Policemen received their jobs as part of a political patronage system, which they in turn were obligated to support.

A 1990 movie that deals with this issue is Miller's Crossing. In this film, a contemporary film noir gangster picture set in the 1930's, the police are pictured as "goons." They are under direct orders from the mayor, who is in turn, simply a pawn of the gangland boss. The police do the bidding of the gang lord (through the mayor) and proceed to raid the nightclubs of rival bootleggers. When the ruling gang lord (Irish) seems to be losing power, the police switch sides and do the bidding of the new up and coming boss (Italian). They are directly involved in bombings and shoot-outs at Irish pubs and other criminal activity.

It was only when the public became fed up with corrupt policing that civilian police forces were established, direct control over police was taken away from politicians, professional standards and training adopted, and internal review panels established to ferret out any remaining corrupt officers.

Change was spurred by release of the 1931 Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement by the Wickersham Commission; one of the most important events in the history of American policing. It was the first systematic investigation of police misconduct and became a catalyst for reforms involving new forms of accountability for the police.

Hollywood's image of police as ineffective survived the silent era on into the early 1930's, when a series of gangster films appeared (e.g. Public Enemy, Little Caesar, Scarface). In some of these films the police were conspicuous by their absence. Rival gangs kill and murder each other at will, without the police ever seeming to take notice. We are left with the impression that the mob will continue on forever as a never ending circulation of elites as one mob boss knocks off another after another.

The methods employed by the police to put an end to organized crime are shown to be quite ineffective. The police simply wait out the gang hoping that one of the mobsters will grow tired of the rackets and willingly become an informant on his fellow gangsters. In Little Caesar (1930) the police finally do kill Rico, but only after he phones them to tell them where he is hiding.

In comparison to police, during the 1930s, private investigators were pictured as bright, dogged pursuers of criminals. Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, Sam Spade, etc. were always smarter than the police.

In Charlie Chan movies, the police were depicted as inept crime solvers, wedded to the use of brute force as their sole investigative method. Charlie Chan used his obviously superior but inscrutable Oriental logic to decipher the evidence left by the criminal. Other Asian detectives of the same time period included Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre) and Mr. Wong (Boris Karloff).

Detective films were different from gangster films in that the former sought out a more highbrow audience; they had descended from British drawing room murder mysteries (of which Gosford Park (2002) is a parody) rather than pulp crime fiction. Detective movies involved wealthy murderers in opulent settings (Murder on the Orient Express [1974] would be a more modern example) while the appeal of the gangster epic was to the masses (who were living through the worst depression in American history).

A More Positive Image Emerges

G Men were early FBI officers

Things changed, however, for the policeman with the coming of the G-man pictures in the mid 1930's. The appearance of these films was the result of several factors:

1) The Hays Code was established in 1934. The Hays Code was instituted and adopted by Hollywood itself as a means of self-censorship ( just like the current G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 movie ratings system). Gangster violence in films (plus some steamy sex scenes in other movies) had led to charges (by religious groups and others) that the Hollywood film industry was taking the country to "hell" and destroying the moral fiber of the nation. The Hays Code included statements concerning what attitude movies must take toward criminality. "Crime must not pay" and, therefore, every criminal had to die or be caught by the end of the film.

2) The rise to prominence of the FBI in the same era was reflected by Hollywood. By 1934 (10 years into J. Edgar Hoover's long reign as chief director), the FBI had received national recognition for its role in apprehending a number of bootleggers and racketeers. Hoover personally took an interest in Hollywood, and in reshaping film stereotypes of law enforcement. He was directly involved in the making of the first film of this genre, G Men (1935). The film included documentary style scenes of FBI training and investigative methods. G Men genre films used all the same cinematic clichés developed in the earlier gangster epics (guns, car chases, German expressionistic film technique, etc.) but now put them to use fighting crime rather than participating in it. Many of the very same actors who had played gangsters (Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney) now played cops.

Also introduced in the crime fighting films was a new attitude toward law enforcement, one closer to vigilantism than actual crime enforcement. Violations of due process, civil liberties, and contempt for the law itself appear in a number of these films. Such attitudes are justified within the films in that the greater good of putting an end to crime demands it. Law and order are presented as nonsynonymous terms. It is much easier for a reel cop to maintain order if he does not have to be bothered with upholding the law.

In the 1940's, G-Men turned to finding Nazis while a new type of film (film noir) focused once again on private detectives rather than police. In film noir the scenes were typically shot quite dark, the detective was sometimes as confused as the audience in trying to follow all of his leads, and virtually everyone was corrupt (including police). In voice-overs the detective would philosophize about life and his role in it.

Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946) played world weary types.

In 1948, a new neo-documentary style police movie appeared called Naked City (later to be a TV show). The goal was to show a realistic, unglamorized portrait of police work, including the tedious parts. Narrative voice-overs were used to quote facts and figures, just like in a documentary. Outdoor city locations were used for shooting many of the scenes. These were ordinary police, not FBI agents. Police vigilantism was neither shown nor stressed.

In another classic police film from this era, Fritz Lang's 1953 The Big Heat, introduces the rogue cop as the only person capable of dealing with gangsters.

 

...the film's uncompromising and grim story of an iron-willed, driven, dedicated, honest, incorruptible homicide detective within a crooked and perverted society and corrupt system at all levels (e.g., the mob, the commissioner, the police, and everyday citizens), and the enormous price that is paid to find justice. The crusading, vigilante rogue cop/hero must erode his idealistic, law-abiding principles when he resorts to the unlawful tactics of the hoodlums after the tragic murder of his young wife by sadistic, viperous gang members led by a big-time crime boss. He enlists the help of one of the gangs' molls in order to seek revenge.

Glen Ford, as detective Bannion, must brow beat every witness and beat up every criminal he encounters.

In the 1950s and 1960s, TV cop shows like Naked City, Dragnet, (1952-59; 1967-70) Highway Patrol, and Adam 12 (1968-75) would use the neo-documentary style over and over again. These programs showed model cops, not rogues, following procedure to the letter, and always getting their "man." One of the ongoing myths fueled by such programs and similar  films is that all crimes are ultimately solved, and perpetrators brought to justice. This is far from the truth. Most crimes are never solved (around 80% of murders are solved, but less than 20% of burglaries). The chances of being sent to prison for committing one crime are 1 out of 100. 1950's and early 1960's crime dramas would never lead you to think that.

From the 1960s to the Present

In the late 1960's and through the 1970's, two major issues appear over and over again in Hollywood crime movies: 1) law v. order 2) professionalism v. bureaucracy (or individualism v. bureaucracy). In fact, these same issues make up the background expectancies of all modern police films. Once a viewer recognizes where a filmmaker stands on these issues, reading a film's political slant on criminal justice is not difficult. Right wing films emphasize catching criminals at all costs, display minimal concern with civil liberties, discuss how the police have been straight-jacketed by the Supreme Court, and are anti-psychological in orientation. Left wing films focus on innocent arrestees, police brutality, and police corruption, and may make criminals, outlaws, hippies, radicals, or punks into heroes who outwit the police. Thus, a rogue cop can appear in either a right wing or left wing film.

Law v. Order

During the 1960s, the Warren Court dramatically increased the due process protections of arrestees and placed restrictions on police methods of collecting evidence and interrogating suspects. In addition, civil rights protesters identified the police as systematic violators of civil liberties and practitioners of discriminatory justice. Hollywood, which had been subjected to discrimination itself during the Blacklist period of the 1950s, surprisingly did not respond with a series of movies tacitly supporting the civil rights claimants and the liberal Supreme Court. Yes, showing reading of Miranda warnings became commonplace. A few movies supporting student demonstrations were made. However, if cops were depicted as bad, they were typically isolated as "rogue cops," thus freeing the rest of the force from taint. Thus, pro-order and anti-law films were more numerous than their opposites.

In order to restore order, the police force would have to change its face. On TV shows more so than in movies, minorities and women appeared in police dramas, representing new solutions to the entrenched (and out of touch) all white male police bureaucracy. The all white force of Dragnet and The Untouchables was replaced by Ironside (1967-75), The Rookies, Mod Squad, and Angie Dickenson's Police Woman (1974-78) . Raymond Burr, as Ironside, played a wheelchair-bound police captain forced to rely on his team of a woman, new age white male, and black van driver to solve crime. Mod Squad featured "hippies" turned cops while The Rookies featured the first black uniformed officer on TV.

Only, Angie Dickenson faired poorly, as she got into trouble in every episode and had to be rescued. In the mid-80s, Cagney and Lacey would solve their own crimes and strike a blow for female equality. Tyne Daly did much better this time around than in his first stint as a police woman, opposite Clint Eastwood in The Enforcer (1976). In that film Eastwood treats her with derision, echoing the attitudes of many police officers of that era. Donna Hale's analysis of over 100 movies that feature female police officers found little positive to say about these depictions. "Out-of-date myths of femininity still exist in movies about women in policing." In the majority of these films female officers are romantically involved, killed, or injured at the end of the film. FBI officers fare better than ordinary patrol officers, with the Clarice Starling character the most memorable.

Professionalism/Individualism v. Bureaucracy

These issues emerge time and again in law enforcement entertainment. How can be best control crime? Should and could cops as crime fighters work within the new rules created by the Warren Court, and still catch criminals. Was a new organizational structure or dynamic individualism needed to control crime?

Early 1960s TV cops like Jack Webb did exactly what the bureaucratic establishment told them to do. They never violated the rights of suspects, or intimidated witnesses. In fact, Dragnet was considered the exemplar of the professionalism claimed at that time by LAPD.

 

Dirty Harry was considered sensational because of its overt violence and occasional glimpses of nudity. The duelling combatants (the cop and the criminal) throughout the film - an individualistic, unconventional, neo-fascist, super-hero police detective who throws away the rule book, and his complementary opposite - a pathological, malevolent and sadistic criminal, both share traits of brutal violence and insanity. The police thriller spawned many debates about the political stance of the film and the complex issue of the conflicting rights of victims, suspects, and society. Was it a reactionary message piece against imperfect, "liberal" judicial trends that let 'sicko' criminals get away, literally, with murder? Or was Siegel encouraging audiences to empathically identify with the indiscriminate vengeance of the violent, anarchic, unrestrained vigilante 'killer' on the side of the law who acts as an autonomous police power?

Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan Eastwood followed up with four other fast-paced, commercially-successful, but formulaic 'Dirty Harry' cop-thriller sequels: Magnum Force (1973) (d. Ted Post) The Enforcer (1976) (d. James Fargo) Sudden Impact (1983) (directed by Eastwood himself) The Dead Pool (1988) (d. Buddy Van Horn)

Beginning in the early 1970s, and typified by Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry Callahan, a very different attitude emerges, reflecting the conservative crime control climate of the era. Dirty Harry was in actuality a vigilante with a badge, always on the verge of being put on report for violating bureaucratic rules and procedures, but nevertheless the only cop able to bring to justice the worst criminal types. Law enforcement bureaucracy was as much the enemy as crime. Since Dirty Harry (1971), most right wing cop movies demonstrate little concern when police violate the rights of citizens by practicing unlawful searches, seizures, arrests, etc. In Hollywood and prime time crime dramas and movies, the police often act as if Constitutional safeguards are mere hindrances to effectively stopping crime. Both suspects and witnesses are frequently assaulted or threatened in order for TV and movie cops to get the information they need. The issue of civil liability for illegal police actions rarely comes up. If real life police followed the practices of their media counterparts, the liability suits that would result would bankrupt the police departments of most of our major cities in short order. This is exactly what happened in 2000 with the LAPD Rampart Scandal.

Ben Stein, in the late 1970s, interviewed the writers and producers of police shows, trying to explain prime time's view of police as brutalizers. Most TV police shows of that era had heroes (Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey, Vinny of Wiseguy [1987-90], Crockett and Stubbs of Miami Vice [1984-89], etc.) who routinely brutalized suspects and witnesses. Even though they may be frequently brutal and may sometimes follow wrong leads or miss clues, they nevertheless always catch their suspect before the end of the show. However, the police around them are not often pictured as successfully. Police commanders demand that the heroes, follow the rules; but everyone knows media criminals can't be caught simply by going by the book.

That police officers may be just as "sick" as the criminals they chase is an oft-used theme in 1980s and 1990s films. For example, Clint Eastwood plays a New Orleans police officer in Tightrope (1984). The officer proves to be no stranger to the world of sleazy sex clubs.

Widespread police corruption has been a theme oft explored by Sidney Lumet. From Serpico (1973), Prince of the City (1981), Q&A (1990) to Night Falls on Manhattan (1997), Lumet has focused on NYPD and its many scandals and corruption investigations. Serpico covers the life of NYPD officer Frank Serpico. One of the few cops in his precinct not willing to become involved in police shakedown rackets, he later becomes an undercover cop in the internal affairs unit. Uncovered as a "rat," his follow cops set him up to be killed during a drug bust. He survives, and later goes on to be a police academy instructor. In Prince of the City, Treat Williams play an undercover cop is a corrupt vice unit. He agrees to work for internal affairs as long as he does not have to rat on his friends. As a lapsed Catholic is a world seemingly without a higher spiritual order, Williams finds confession the only way to salvage his soul. In Q&A, the crooked cop is played by Nick Nolte. Finally, Andy Garcia, finds himself in the middle of a police corruption case, and must, as an up and coming prosecutor in the DA's office, decide how to handle it.

Why do Hollywood Writers Have This Image of Police?

Among the attitudes toward police held by the Hollywood writing community Stein interviewed were the following: 1) The police are in our employ, they're there to look after us 2) blacks and young people are hassled by the police, showing the police to be biased 3) the police in many cities are "owned" by the Mafia and may even sell drugs themselves 4) the police are simply ineffective at either preventing or solving crimes 5) police often become a "paranoid in-group," sometimes resulting in their becoming even more brutal than the criminals they arrest. Writers believed some of these police attitudes were seen as the result of the job and its stresses. The terrifying aspects of police work produces a "we" versus "them" attitude among cops. Underpay and ill-treatment by the public only makes matters worse.

The resulting image that we see on prime time is one in which cops are allowed to exorcise their demons, by brutalizing criminals. Society's poor treatment of the police has driven them to behave the way they do. On the shows of the late 1970s, of course, we tend to see only the effects of the brutalization, but not what causes it.

NBC Cop Shows

Not until 1980s shows like Hill Street Blues (1981-87) and Miami Vice did we see that stress was severely impacting our nation's police officers. In early TV police dramas such as Dragnet or Adam 12, officers showed no stress-related problems at all. These were stoic cops. But, by the mid-1980s police dramas had become more like soap operas (soaps were becoming more like crime dramas during that era as well). 1980s TV cops had emotional problems, they were anxious about themselves. Some of the stories were as much about the cop trying to cope with his own personal problems as they were about catching criminals. 1980s TV cops still caught the bad guy, but they suffered while they were at it. Most had terrible home lives, were divorced or separated, lived as loners, or drank too heavily. This was quite a change from Jack Webb. However, their way of coping with this stress was always to take it out on their suspects. Hollywood police rarely seek therapy or look for positive ways of displacing their aggression. NYPD Blue represents a continuation of this trend from the 1990s into the new millennium. 

More Violent Criminals Require Drastic Measures: The 1990s

From the mid-1980s through the present the level of violence depicted in Hollywood police dramas has increased remarkably. While Twitchell might label such violence "preposterous" and write it off as Hollywood playing to adolescent male fantasies, the number of bullets, car wrecks, bombings, and explosions in cop movies are up dramatically. Police may need to be nearly suicidal or psychotic (Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series [1987, 1989, 1992, 1999] ) or simply not human at all, like RoboCop (1987, 1990, 1993).

RoboCop serves as cop, judge and executioner in a Detroit overrun by drugs, guns, and total repute for civility. The future of crime fighting is bleak as well as evidenced in Blade Runner (1982), Judge Dredd (1995), and Minority Report (2002). In the latter (Steven Spielberg's most political movie to date), all premeditated murders have been eliminated by the use of seemingly infallible precognitient beings whose predictions allow the police to prevent crime. The damages to civil liberties and privacy are highlighted.

Training Day and The Shield: The World of  post-Rampart LAPD

Denzel Washington assembles his crew of crooked cops

The Rampart Scandal has proven to be the most costly police corruption case of all time. Originally begun by the LA DA's Office to uncover links between the worlds of new generation LAPD members (see Barker, E. (1999), Danger, Duty and Disillusion. Waveland Press), the Rap music scene, and urban street gangs, the investigation targeted Kevin Gaines (deceased), David Mack, and Rafael Perez.

As the DA's Office attempted to get Mack and Perez to confess to their own crimes, they instead told one story after another about internal corruption in the CRASH unit and other parts of the Rampart precinct. For example, "Perez met with investigators more than 50 times and provided more than 4,000 pages in sworn testimony. Before he was done, Perez implicated about 70 officers in misconduct, from bad shootings to drinking beer on the job." Many convictions had to be overturned and defendants sued LAPD. "The city, faced with more than 140 civil suits stemming from the corruption scandal, estimates that total settlement costs will be about $125 million."

In a city that had previously witnessed the Rodney King beatings videotape and the riots which followed the not guilty verdict for the officers involved, issued by a Simi Valley jury, the Rampart Scandal was further proof of the fundamental problems within LAPD. It is not surprising, that LA film makers would respond to these issues with a new, more dark perspective on police corruption and brutality. In addition, a film (Extreme Justice) about the LAPD S.I.S. (special Investigations Unit) had been made in 1993. In the film, the S.I.S. is shown tracking criminals, allowing robberies and rapes to take place so that they can catch criminals in the act, and opening fire when the armed assailants refuse to lay down their guns. "We're not a third world death squad" tells the captain to unit members; nevertheless every arrest shown in the film resulted in the death of all suspects. The movie uses the rhetoric of conservative anticrime films, but in the end one cop (depicted as a rogue cop throughout the film) stands up to the unit and reveals to a reporter the actions of the death squad.

Training Day's scriptwriter, David Ayer, grew up in the Rampart section of LA. Originally envisioned as a story that takes place primarily inside the police car (Ayer also wrote The Fast and the Furious  (2001) concerning illegal street drag racing in LA), director Fuqua decided to open up the story by filming in a number of LA's most notorious ghetto neighborhoods.

The story involves a young police officer (Ethan Hawke as Officer Jake Hoyt) who wants more than anything to become an undercover officer, and use this as a route to a police management position and ultimately financial security. He is partnered with veteran undercover officer Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). The story can be interpreted on a number of levels: as a tale of moral choices and temptations, as a depiction of the rogue cop as monster/devil, and as a depiction of the pervasive corruption that infects contemporary urban politics.

Throughout the film Hoyt is offered a series of choices; to use drugs or drink alcohol on the job or not, arrest suspects or let them go, take illegally gained money from drug dealers and corrupt cops, and ultimately whether to become involved in a murder. Alonzo tests Hoyt throughout their first day on the streets, seeing how far Hoyt will go to become accepted as his partner. Ultimately, Hoyt decides the compromises are far too many for him to make, but Alonzo plans to have him eliminated. The only truly noble act Hoyt has done that day (to stop the brutal rape of 14-year-old girl) saves him.

In his Oscar-winning performance Denzel Washington plays a character that is more monster and devil than human being. Throughout the film Alonzo tempts Hoyt with the spoils that joining his team of crooked undercover cops will bring. The obvious parallel is in the biblical story of Satan's temptation of Jesus. Alonzo shows Hoyt the city of Los Angeles from the perspective of one of its rulers, offering Hoyt power, money, and sex if he will give in to the dark side. While Alonzo's original plan was to use Hoyt as a patsy for a planned murder, he spends the day continuously reevaluating Hoyt to see if he has the brains, guts, and evil inclinations necessary to be a rogue cop. Only after he fails in his last attempt to convert Hoyt does he order his annihilation.

As a rogue cop, Alonzo violates just about every one of the Bill of Rights protections every day. He uses fake search warrants, bribes judges to have personally expedient warrants written, questions detainees at gun point, metes out street justice rather than arresting criminals, steals drugs and money from suspects, creates situations which result in open gunfights in urban neighborhoods, and murders for greed. While Alonzo claims to be using his brain to outwit his enemies (it's a post Rodney King world in which police brutality is no loner tolerated, he says), he quickly shows that this is just a ruse.

However, Alonzo goes far beyond being a rogue cop. He perceives himself as an indestructible god/devil, a wolf in a world filled with sheep. Like Zeus, Alonzo has fathered children with a number of mortal women, and uses his sexual potency (displayed in a lifted scene) as a sexual lure. He uses trickery to ensnare his victims (acting as a Robin Hood type when expedient), and shows no loyalty to other cops, including his original partner, played by Scott Glenn. When he enters ghetto neighborhoods his arrival is treated with dread, but he receives no respect.  Once Hoyt stands up to him and shows Alonzo's vulnerabilities, the gang bangers refuse to come to his aid. Alonzo can not believe that Hoyt would actually shoot him or that he can be killed. It takes the arrival of the Russian mafia (Hollywood's ultimate bogeymen) to finally exterminate him.

Finally, Training Day shows a criminal justice system that is corrupt from the top down; and by implication shows society to be equally amoral. Alonzo meets with a top ranking police official, a prosecutor, and a judge for lunch. We discover they are the directors of a massive conspiracy to divert stolen drug shipments and drug monies for their own gain. They give Alonzo the go ahead to murder Roger (Scott Glenn), and take his millions in stashed drug money. In the alternative ending of the film the "three wise men" show up at Hoyt's home, asking for their money. When he tells them it is already in the police evidence room they leave in disgust.

It is a short step from the LA of Training Day to the city depicted in the Fox FX channel show The Shield. Even more so than Training Day, The Shield focuses on the political aspects of the law enforcement bureaucracy and its relationship to political power blocks within the city (Tallahassee actress Tyra Ferrell plays one of the local community leaders). As whites, blacks, and Hispanics vie for power (both within the police department and in city politics), everyday police activities, including the rogue tactics of Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his elite strike force, are continually recast as ammunition for the political struggle. Officers draw power from their group affiliations, while the negative and positive activities of the police are politically interpreted. The rogue cop Mackey must decide whether to play along with his manipulative superiors or become an amoral agent freed from any higher authority.

Rogue cop Mackey with his team

So pervasive has corruption become in LA, that LA cops jump at the chance to get out town to avoid internal affairs investigations. This is the theme of Insomnia (2002). Al Pacino, as Will Dormer, fears that in post-Rampart LA if his credibility is attacked, a number of his former captures might be overturned and criminals let loose.

 
Al Pacino begs Hillary Swank to stop the chain of police corruption

Media Images and Public Perceptions

Do the images of police work that appear in the media affect the public's understanding of law enforcement? The NYC Police Foundation wondered about this question and interviewed both the public and police officers to find out, resulting in this mid-1980s survey. The study reached a number of interesting conclusions:

• 1) For a significant proportion of the public, TV cop shows are assumed to depict reality. In particular, people believe that their favorite shows are credible.
• 2) On the other hand, the police concluded the shows to be inaccurate, and rarely depict real-life police work.
• 3) The public, however, claims that TV police shows have little impact on their image of the police, stating that they get their information mostly from news.
• 4) The police believe the public gets its information mostly from TV cop shows, not news.
• 5) The police believe TV cop shows hurt their image with the public, rather than improve it.
• 6) Police object most strongly to the way TV shows depict them as driving irresponsibly, violating the Constitutional rights of suspects, and not using their weapons responsibly.

When the public was questioned concerning their attitude toward the NYPD, they were rated highest in areas that TV shows tend to give a positive portrayal of: character, integrity, honesty, and professionalism (Compare that to the image of NYPD that appears in films such as Serpico (1973) and Prince of the City (1981) which picture NYPD as riddled with corruption and deceit). The police received lower ratings on the areas that TV shows frequently portrayed as standard operating procedure (e.g., respect for Constitutional rights of citizens, responsible use of weapons).

Other specific findings of this study include:

• 1) 40 % of the public believe police shows offer accurate portrayals of police work v. only 14% of the police interviewed.
• 2) Do TV police dramas hurt the image of the police? 46% of the public said they had no effect, while 48% of police said such programming hurt their image.
• 3) On the issue of violations of Constitutional rights of citizens by police, the most surprising slip occurred. It is on this issue that the public are probably most effected by TV. The result of the constant violation of such rights by TV cops is that a significant portion of the public has come to expect it as standard operating procedure of real police officers. 
  • 61% of the public said TV police respected the rights of suspects while 34% of the sample said that real police do not respect suspects' rights. In comparison, 60% of the police interviewed said TV police did not act within the law. 
  • On weapons use 64% of the public said TV police used their weapons responsibly, while 67% of the police said they did not. 
  • While viewers were accepting of the driving patterns demonstrated in TV cop shows, real police recognized the driving as irresponsible.

Fifteen years after this study was done, one is left to wonder how the continued depiction of cops as corrupt is impacting on public perceptions of law enforcement.