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raincitygirlI have finished rewatching The Unusuals and something is annoying me. It probably annoyed me the first time around as well, but I wasn’t sufficiently exercised by it to blog about it. There’s this point of view that there are two types of people in the world: cops and everybody else. And cops deserve special treatment from their fellow cops when it comes to interactions with everybody else. It’s a vague background thing until Episode 6, “The Circle Line”, at which point Walsh (one of the leads, and portrayed as an estimable guy) outright verbalizes it. With the hastily tacked-on corollary that, “Now I’m not talking about corruption.” Oh, I’m so glad, dear. What ARE you talking about?
Now, bear in mind that I am a white middle class thirtysomething able-bodied woman. My only interactions with police officers in the past have been positive ones. If someone in a police uniform came to my door and asked me to do something, my first assumption would be that they had my best interests at heart. Indeed, I betrayed a good deal of naivete in an LJ conversation last year in which I discussed the fatal shooting by police of a young man (black, if I recall correctly. A visible minority, at any rate). There had been police leaks in the media that the man had a gun, and I had believed them. So when the official report came out and it turned out the victim was unarmed, I was shocked. Police sources leaking lies to the press? I had not seen that coming.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I’ve never had any negative personal experiences with police. That said, I read the newspapers. I’m aware of corruption scandals, police brutality scandals, cover-ups by fellow officers of criminal behaviour. The Trayvon Martin case has been in the news this year (yes, I know his killer wasn’t a police officer, but there’s no question the actual cops behaved very strangely).
Right here a few years ago there was the case of Robert Dziekanski, an immigrant from Poland who was Tasered to death by five Mounties in Vancouver International Airport. They then sat around for 15 minutes, *not* attempting CPR (nobody did that until the paramedics arrived, 15 minutes later. By then it was too late). It probably would’ve been just another statistic if another traveller hadn’t filmed the entire incident. The RCMP confiscated his video, which contradicted their version of events, and didn’t give it back until a judge ordered it.
Frankly I’m amazed they didn’t “accidentally” erase it before they handed it over. Maybe they knew the scandal would be even worse if they did, given that the media had hold of the story by then. And the Polish-Canadian community was in an uproar. The Braidwood Inquiry (much later) suggested that an awful lot of RCMP higher-ups knew damn well that these five front line officers had made, at BEST, a horrific error in judgment. And they closed ranks behind these guys anyway. Maintaining the public image of the Mounties was considered more important than the actual behaviour of actual officers which got an actual person killed.
So, you know, there’s a reason why the fictional Walsh’s insistence that cops are “special” grates on me. It’s the mindset which leads to people closing ranks, covering for fellow officers’ misdeeds, etc. If there’s one thing the Braidwood Inquiry showed, it was that officers who had never ever been investigated for misconduct themselves were busy making allowances for and cleaning up after fellow officers with a history of misconduct. I find it difficult to believe that every single Mountie implicated in the Dziekanski cover-up was a bad apple. Seems more like there was a culture of protecting fellow officers from non-cops, even when certain fellow officers didn’t deserve to be protected.
Yes, police officers have a stressful and sometimes very dangerous job. I personally am very glad there are people out there with the temperament to handle a job like that, because I wouldn’t want to do it no matter how much you paid me. But being willing to do an icky job doesn’t mean you get a free pass when you abuse the privileges of that job. Because “Oh, it’s so hard” and “People on the outside just don’t UNDERSTAND what it’s like to be a cop.” Which is the line the Unusuals was feeding the viewers, and which would’ve aggravated me more if the show had run longer than 10 episodes before disappearing into the ether. And to be fair, there are plenty of other, more successful cop shows out there which do the same thing.
I get on dramatic grounds why TV writers write this kind of thing. For one thing, there’s a grand tradition of it, and they probably get told all about the thin blue line in Television Writing 101. Also, viewers like heroic characters and maverick characters who don’t follow the rules. Finally, on practical grounds, embracing that kind of siege mentality is a great way to build camaraderie between your characters. They’re not just co-workers who have no choice about working together, they’re a FAMILY.
There are a heck of a lot of cop shows on TV. One of these days it would be nice if there were a show called “The Rat Squad” or something similar, with Internal Affairs investigators as the protagonists. Now that’s got to be a tough job.
Edited to add:executrix makes a good point here.
Now, bear in mind that I am a white middle class thirtysomething able-bodied woman. My only interactions with police officers in the past have been positive ones. If someone in a police uniform came to my door and asked me to do something, my first assumption would be that they had my best interests at heart. Indeed, I betrayed a good deal of naivete in an LJ conversation last year in which I discussed the fatal shooting by police of a young man (black, if I recall correctly. A visible minority, at any rate). There had been police leaks in the media that the man had a gun, and I had believed them. So when the official report came out and it turned out the victim was unarmed, I was shocked. Police sources leaking lies to the press? I had not seen that coming.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I’ve never had any negative personal experiences with police. That said, I read the newspapers. I’m aware of corruption scandals, police brutality scandals, cover-ups by fellow officers of criminal behaviour. The Trayvon Martin case has been in the news this year (yes, I know his killer wasn’t a police officer, but there’s no question the actual cops behaved very strangely).
Right here a few years ago there was the case of Robert Dziekanski, an immigrant from Poland who was Tasered to death by five Mounties in Vancouver International Airport. They then sat around for 15 minutes, *not* attempting CPR (nobody did that until the paramedics arrived, 15 minutes later. By then it was too late). It probably would’ve been just another statistic if another traveller hadn’t filmed the entire incident. The RCMP confiscated his video, which contradicted their version of events, and didn’t give it back until a judge ordered it.
Frankly I’m amazed they didn’t “accidentally” erase it before they handed it over. Maybe they knew the scandal would be even worse if they did, given that the media had hold of the story by then. And the Polish-Canadian community was in an uproar. The Braidwood Inquiry (much later) suggested that an awful lot of RCMP higher-ups knew damn well that these five front line officers had made, at BEST, a horrific error in judgment. And they closed ranks behind these guys anyway. Maintaining the public image of the Mounties was considered more important than the actual behaviour of actual officers which got an actual person killed.
So, you know, there’s a reason why the fictional Walsh’s insistence that cops are “special” grates on me. It’s the mindset which leads to people closing ranks, covering for fellow officers’ misdeeds, etc. If there’s one thing the Braidwood Inquiry showed, it was that officers who had never ever been investigated for misconduct themselves were busy making allowances for and cleaning up after fellow officers with a history of misconduct. I find it difficult to believe that every single Mountie implicated in the Dziekanski cover-up was a bad apple. Seems more like there was a culture of protecting fellow officers from non-cops, even when certain fellow officers didn’t deserve to be protected.
Yes, police officers have a stressful and sometimes very dangerous job. I personally am very glad there are people out there with the temperament to handle a job like that, because I wouldn’t want to do it no matter how much you paid me. But being willing to do an icky job doesn’t mean you get a free pass when you abuse the privileges of that job. Because “Oh, it’s so hard” and “People on the outside just don’t UNDERSTAND what it’s like to be a cop.” Which is the line the Unusuals was feeding the viewers, and which would’ve aggravated me more if the show had run longer than 10 episodes before disappearing into the ether. And to be fair, there are plenty of other, more successful cop shows out there which do the same thing.
I get on dramatic grounds why TV writers write this kind of thing. For one thing, there’s a grand tradition of it, and they probably get told all about the thin blue line in Television Writing 101. Also, viewers like heroic characters and maverick characters who don’t follow the rules. Finally, on practical grounds, embracing that kind of siege mentality is a great way to build camaraderie between your characters. They’re not just co-workers who have no choice about working together, they’re a FAMILY.
There are a heck of a lot of cop shows on TV. One of these days it would be nice if there were a show called “The Rat Squad” or something similar, with Internal Affairs investigators as the protagonists. Now that’s got to be a tough job.
Edited to add:
executrix makes a good point here.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-20 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-20 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-20 11:45 pm (UTC)Cop Exceptionalism is alive and well, and I think that's why it's so dangerous to also portray it on TV without really criticizing it. I don't blame closed societies like police and military for having a somewhat Us v Them mentality. But if they won't hold one another accountable, if they won't denounce corruption and negligence and fix their mistakes, it turns the whole group septic. Society stops trusting cops, which makes policing more difficult, which makes cops more brutal. It's a vicious cycle.