Worst TV police

[random11]

Let's face it, police and law enforcement agencies in TV shows, especially in superhero genre are not very effective.
After all, you have to have a reason why the superhero had to work outside the law or why the "cop plus one" shows require someone with zero experience in law enforcement to catch crooks.

Still, there are some shows where the police goes WAY beyond the regular incompetence, and I'm going to make a competition, selecting the worst of the worst.
Add candidates or vote for existing ones here.

Here are the initial candidates, I'll try to update the post with new suggestions:

Gotham:
Superb in both inefficiency, corruption and laziness.
Every criminal can just waltz inside, even if they are wanted in three states or armed while wearing clown suits.
Most people are corrupt, but will happily be honest after a short one minute speech by Gordon.

Grimm:
While they have an excuse in a form of a captain that helps to cover things up, there is a limit to how many cases can be closed without officially catching anyone.

Lucifer (my current vote):
EVERYONE working there should be fired, tried for countless of crimes, and then hired again just so someone will have the pleasure to do it all over again.
Pushing witnesses from the balcony, dealing drugs, covering murders, you name it.

[Kitten Champion]

Dragnet's police were pretty awful. The degree to which they simply ignored basic constitutional rights and did whatever they wanted was absurd. Granted that's not uncommon in a lot of police fiction - without addressing grittier stories where it's intended - in order to save time/narrative convenience to ignore basic ethical and legal standards, but Dragnet was the police procedural for a while and it's really in your face about its abuse of authority. Unlike, say, Castle where the world is pretty loose and needs to be for the premise to be interesting.

Blindspot's FBI is pretty whackadoodle. Some of that's intended, as corruption within power is a widely developed theme and everyone having something to hide is drama fodder. However, they suffer from the Star Trek thing where everything has be done by the main cast regardless if it makes sense or not and they frequently have around five-to-six people dealing with potentially world-ending events every other week or so. It's stuff which would be fine with something comic-booky like Agents of SHIELD but when they're just a small segment of the fictional-but-real FBI they just come off as both hyper-competent and super-negligent for not addressing the week's villainous plot with nearly the resources it deserves. Patterson - the tech person - is possibly the most valuable human to have ever lived for all she does by her lonesome.

[Fri]

Does non fantastic show that's actually about corrupt and evil cops count? Because if so, wouldn't "The Shield" is in the top of this list. The main characters are specifically corrupt cops who deal with drugs and steal and murder to hide their crime and such, and there's no ambiguity there, the whole series was actually kicked off when the main characters murders a fellow officer to hide that they're dealing drugs on the side.

[Xyril]

In my experience, TV police tend to be better than reality. Where you might see "police who can't solve crimes without outside help/brilliant rookie" as a negative portrayal, I see "self-aware about their own limitations and open-minded about unconventional resources for getting the job done." While you might have a problem with "covered up questionable police killing because an investigation would show that the victim was actually a dangerous monster," I tend to find everyone in that situation far more sympathetic than reality, which is often "threaten to refuse to cooperate on all of a prosecutors pending cases if he prosecutes a cop for domestic violence because a conviction would complicate past convictions and undermine public faith in police."

With the exception of a small percentage of largely British detective fiction, where the police are incompetent AND unlikable AND territorial about "their" cases, primarily for the purpose of creating a secondary antagonist and foil to the talented amateur sleuth, I find that the flaws and limitations of even unhelpful police tend to be balanced by sympathetic, even admirable qualities. Comic relief sidekicks, for example, even when bumbling and borderline incompetent, are also often eager, personable, and honest to a fault. The grumpy, strict, ultra-orthodox detective who detests being forced to work with private detectives/profilers/fake psychics/real psychics is often also hyper-competent at traditional police work and remains by the book even when others would take morally questionable shortcuts in order to make an arrest.

[Mightymosy]

Let's face it, police and law enforcement agencies in TV shows, especially in superhero genre are not very effective.
After all, you have to have a reason why the superhero had to work outside the law or why the "cop plus one" shows require someone with zero experience in law enforcement to catch crooks.

Still, there are some shows where the police goes WAY beyond the regular incompetence, and I'm going to make a competition, selecting the worst of the worst.
Add candidates or vote for existing ones here.

Here are the initial candidates, I'll try to update the post with new suggestions:

Gotham:
Superb in both inefficiency, corruption and laziness.
Every criminal can just waltz inside, even if they are wanted in three states or armed while wearing clown suits.
Most people are corrupt, but will happily be honest after a short one minute speech by Gordon.

Grimm:
While they have an excuse in a form of a captain that helps to cover things up, there is a limit to how many cases can be closed without officially catching anyone.

Lucifer (my current vote):
EVERYONE working there should be fired, tried for countless of crimes, and then hired again just so someone will have the pleasure to do it all over again.
Pushing witnesses from the balcony, dealing drugs, covering murders, you name it.

I begrudgingly put the police (CBI, later FBI) from "The Mentalist" here.
As much as I loooove the series and its characters, the series has one big big flaw:

Spoiler: Mentalist spoiler

Show

The number of cases the police solves in all seasons combined: 0. It is always their associate, Patrick, who solves the cases. Talk about one-dimensional episode construction. They couldn't have given one bloody case to Lisbon? Cho? Rigsby or Van Pelt?? Not ONE?

At least they are not overy corrupt and evil like the examples you guys listed (at least most of them aren't ), so they are probably honorable mention at best for this list, thank god

[An Enemy Spy]

Heh, my dad is an actual (retired) police officer and he's always eager to point out how cops in TV and movies screw it all up.

[Giggling Ghast]

I think the Springfield police department takes the gold medal.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=20mBi8-QsSc

[Khedrac]

There are mutliple problems with fictional law enforcement:

1> Unless they are the protagonist, they are not going to be any good at their job as the solve has to go to the protagonist.

2> The author's usually don't know that much about legal specifics and police procedure.
The authors usually try to get as much right as they can, but particularly for TV series they have multiple writers with deadlines to meet - and it shows.

3> When the protagonist is police, the rest of the police still suffer most of the same problems as they are not the protagonist(s).

4a> Whodunnits (1) - these have to go to extensive lengths not to name the actual guilty party before the big reveal. If you read Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn series there are conversations where all the police clearly know who they are talking about, but they are not named so as to keep the reader in suspense (unless they have worked it out).

4b> Whodunnits (2) - the traditional "gather everyone together for the announcement" is just wrong procedurally - the series "Death in Paradise" remarks on it several times, but because the first Inspector ended up doing it a few times it has become a trradition that the others "have to" follow.

4c> Crime Drama - without the need to present all the clues so the reader/watcher can work it out does enable better procedures (e.g. Castle) but the limited length of an episode often seems to mean that they take the word of quite dubious witnesses at face value, presumably there is a lot more double checking supposedly going on than makes the screen, but again it makes the police look less competent.

5> Forensics (in modern shows) - we are all used to greatly time-compressed forensics in modern TV crime shows (books are often far more accurate) - when they say they can run the DNA in a few hours? - try days or more than a week... Again the necessities of TV.

6> Incredible experts (e.g. Abby from NCIS) - probably for budget reasons we end up with specialists who seem to know far too much about far too many things, this is made worse by the authors not being experts (they may have checked police procedure, but not everything else). In the Abby example, I can buy her being an expert multi-dicsipline forensic scientist, but it does not make sense for her to be a world-class computer security expert as well (especially when MacGee is supposed to be slightly better).

etc.

Finally, the authors often need to ignore something simple/standard procedure in order to make their plot work - again deadlines tent to enhance this effect.

Of course, this doesn't make the shows less good - just makes suspension of disbelief important.

[Rogar Demonblud]

For shows that are currently on, I'd give the palm to Hawaii 50. They manage to have multiple violations of the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments each episode, yet somehow that cases are not immediately thrown out.

[Lord Vukodlak]

URL and Smitty from Futurama

[random11]

Let's see:

Unfortunately, I haven't seen (or at least don't remember) both Dragnet and Blindspot, so I'll just add them to the list.

"The shield" certainly enters the list, but I'm not sure how high.
Part of the problem is that they WERE effective in what they did.
They were corrupt, but at the same time they also prevented bigger crimes while allowing and profiting from the smaller ones.
Sure, part of it was lies they told themselves to sleep better at night, but it was also partially true.
Also, it has an advantage over the other shows because it's the only one in the list rated for mature audience, so it's not the actins themselves that were worse, it's just that this show unlike others is the only one that can allow itself to show the consequences of the bad actions.
Another point is that while the strike force was corrupt, the rest of the cops (well, most of them) at least tried to do good. Sometimes they failed, but usually because they were in impossible situations.

The mentalist, as well as any other "cop plus one" show like Castle or Monk enters the list, but among this genre I think Lucifer is the worst.

Hawaii 50 certainly enters the list, no argument here.

I'm not counting Simpsons or Futurama since they were not the focus of the show.

One more entry I forgot, Torchwood.
At least in the first season when they were still (sort of) a law enforcement agency, almost every episode started with a disaster caused directly by one of the main characters in the force.

[Kitten Champion]

One more entry I forgot, Torchwood.
At least in the first season when they were still (sort of) a law enforcement agency, almost every episode started with a disaster caused directly by one of the main characters in the force.

You rarely have a show where the protagonists are so deeply incompetent outside of straight comedy, and at the same time the writers seem unaware of this with them still casting this organization as badass super-skilled alien fighters.

Though, if you really want the worst police, it's probably going to be fictional dystopian societies like 1984 or any specific work about real-world fascist policing.

[Algeh]

For shows that are currently on, I'd give the palm to Hawaii 50. They manage to have multiple violations of the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments each episode, yet somehow that cases are not immediately thrown out.

I'd be more impressed if they branched out and tried to violate the rest of 'em too, particularly the 3rd.

There was a topic? Oh, right.

I think there's a distinction to be made between deliberately non-realistic police comedy (such as Police Squad!) as opposed to a show where they're terrible at their jobs to make the story more interesting but it's supposed to be at least vaguely connected to reality. I'd put things like The Simpsons in the first category.

Personally, the ones I tend to enjoy watching are the "cop plus a wacky sidekick" genre (Castle, Due South), and those, as other posters have mentioned, have to have a pretty terrible police department for the genre to exist since it doesn't actually make sense to invite random people to help the police fight crime...I also really liked Mathnet as a kid, but I suppose the concept of "the police have a beat devoted to math-related crimes, because we get a lot of those around here" makes even less sense as a premise...

[LaZodiac]

In an episode of Blue Bloods they are interrogating a guy who has a katana on his wall. They take the katana and slice him across the hand. They say that since they're cops no one will believe him or care if he complains.

This is the least bad thing about this show. I think I won the thread.

[tomandtish]

For shows that are currently on, I'd give the palm to Hawaii 50. They manage to have multiple violations of the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments each episode, yet somehow that cases are not immediately thrown out.

Yeah, H5O is pretty bad. Lawyer friends of mine (on both sides of the fence) point out that their "interviewing" room for suspects alone would get any confession thrown out for intimidation... Handcuffed to a single chair in a windowless room?

[JDMSJR]

Let's not forget the Sunnydale Police Department from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[Sapphire Guard]

Gotham has to be a contender. I've lost count of how many times the precinct has been stormed.

[tomandtish]

Let's not forget the Sunnydale Police Department from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

It was never totally clear whether Sunnydale was incompetent or corrupt. Fair amount of evidence that they KNEW what was going on (at least those in charge) and were covering it up. I remember a conversation between Snyder and Chief of Police (Bob) during the episode School Hard:

Chief: I need to say something to the media people.
Snyder: So?
Chief: So? You want the usual story? Gang-related? PCP?
Snyder: What'd you have in mind? The truth?
Chief: Right. Gang-related. PCP.

Sunnydale was too small for TPTB to not be aware, although the rank and file might not have been. Given that the Mayor had a vested interest in keeping the truth mostly buried....

[Rogar Demonblud]

I'd be more impressed if they branched out and tried to violate the rest of 'em too, particularly the 3rd.

Third? *thinks* Oh yeah, quartering. They aren't soldiers, but they have seized people's residences for stake outs on a few occasions. Your call if that counts, although there was a case in Nevada that said it doesn't apply to cops.

They've gone after the Seventh (double jeopardy) and Eighth (cruel and unusual punishments, including torture) on occasion, more so the latter.

[Metahuman1]

This many posts and no one's listed The Blacklist yet?

[Hopeless]

The only maths related crime show I've watched is Numbers?
What is this Mathsnet or whatever called?

Does Rizzoli & Isles count?

[Bastian Weaver]

Gotham, definitely Gotham.
The cops in The Mentalist only call for help when they stumble into something they can't crack by themselves, and Lisbon's team are not cops, actually. So as long as it's not weird killings usually related to a serial killer mastermind, the cops in Mentalist's world seem to do okay.

[comicshorse]

The main character from 'Chicago Code'. Behaved like a spoilt 8 year old when anybody dared disagreed with him, was known to spot such wisdom as 'there are only two kinds of police shootings; good ones and great ones' and tipped off the biggest crime lord in Chicago to an FBI operation that was about to get the evidence to arrest him and his mob on the grounds only he should get the guy

[Bohandas]

I think the Springfield police department takes the gold medal.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=20mBi8-QsSc

I don't know; I think the police departments from Southpark and Mr.Pickles have them matched.

[Bohandas]

Actually, now that I think about it, what about [Darkly Dreaming] Dexter? It's not a systemic issue but one of the people on the force is a deranged homocidally violent vigilante in his spare time

[Peelee]

I also really liked Mathnet as a kid, but I suppose the concept of "the police have a beat devoted to math-related crimes, because we get a lot of those around here" makes even less sense as a premise...

That reminds me of one of my favorite TV show synopses, actually. I can't remember it exactly, but it was roughly, "Columbo is about a police lieutenant who investigates homicide cases among Los Angeles's rich and famous upper crust, who commit murder at a shockingly high rate."

[MikelaC1]

Its really old show that no one probably remembers but City of Angels had some really bad cops.

And its not quite as old but still before anyone's time but The Rockford Files cops were rather incompetent.

[Xyril]

Gotham, definitely Gotham.
The cops in The Mentalist only call for help when they stumble into something they can't crack by themselves, and Lisbon's team are not cops, actually.

As far as I am aware, CBI is basically a state-specific analog of the FBI. I suppose it's an issue of semantics more than anything else, but do you not consider the FBI cops?

From a legal perspective, pretty much any statute that mentions "law enforcement" or "police" have been consistently interpreted as including the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and pretty much all of the state-level analogs that are authorized to engage in law enforcement activities in the U.S. What might distinguish the FBI/CBI is that they don't generally have default general jurisdiction over some geographical area--they have automatic jurisdiction over a very specialized set of crimes, and for everything else, they can only really consult or take over based on what local police consents to. However, this doesn't really make them any less "cop" to me--even within the larger local police and sheriffs departments, there can be divisions that specialize only in certain situations, and don't go around patrolling the streets and handing out tickets, but to me they're still cops.

[Xyril]

In an episode of Blue Bloods they are interrogating a guy who has a katana on his wall. They take the katana and slice him across the hand. They say that since they're cops no one will believe him or care if he complains.

This is the least bad thing about this show. I think I won the thread.

You really haven't. Did you even see the mention of The Shield? The bad thing the about Blue Bloods isn't the stuff that the son of the police commissioner gets away with. The bad thing is that the PC and those around him are depicted as people who are pro-police, but still understand the arguments in favor of rules and accountability... and yet as the allegedly reasonable protagonist still end up concluding that most of these abuses are acceptable.

[Dorath]

Murder, She Wrote. How did they never figure out nobody ever got murdered unless Fletcher was around?