Media Images of Police: What's Missing?

In American mass media, police work is a major topic. News, talk shows, prime-time crime dramas, and 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. News depictions of the police as truly heroic figures, who selflessly give of themselves to protect the public are rare, but cop movies rely on such characterizations. 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). We learn little of the real nature of day-to-day police work from media accounts.

The 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 turning 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 entitled "Keystone to Kojak." 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. 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 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 stupid and wedded to the use of brute force as their crime-solving method. Charlie Chan used his obviously superior but inscrutable Oriental logic to decipher the evidence left by the criminal. 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 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.

Noir films were also influential in introducing strong female characters, particularly as villains. Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944) comes to mind.

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. Later, on TV, programs such as Dragnet, (1952-59; 1967-70) Highway Patrol, and Adam 12 (1968-75) would use this style over and over again. These programs showed model cops 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.

Lawman or Vigilante?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 have terrible home lives, are divorced or separated, live as loners, or drink too heavily. This is 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 millenium. 

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).

Course Home Page