People gain their understanding of law enforcement from news outlets and prime time network television. The job of local and national news is to inform while network television entertains. The writers of both the news and entertainment have the ability to distort the final product to reflect their own ideological viewpoints without challenge.
The issue of concern with network police shows is that the writers infuse just enough reality to make them believable and a large segment of the public believe that what they see in these shows is actually done in real-world policing. Take the example of the CBS show CSI. In this show the crime scene is investigated by forensic scientists, who then take the evidence to a laboratory and process it. They then conduct interviews of victims and suspects and make arrests. In reality, the sole job of the crime scene technician is to “bag and tag” evidence and deliver it to a crime lab. There a forensic scientist will process it and deliver a report to the investigators working the case. The absurdity of this “reality” was demonstrated when a Congressional committee called William Peterson, whose forensic science resume’ consisted of being the star of the original CSI and reading a script. The writers of the show hired a former Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department crime scene technician who had an unlimited budget to buy actual equipment used in analysis. The cost of one device was one million dollars and is not being used by any crime lab in the United States except the FBI’s facility in Quantico, Va. That is because no agency can afford to buy it. Terms like “CODIS” (DNA analysis) and “AFIS” (fingerprint) have become household terms.
The number one show on primetime television is CBS’s NCIS. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is an actual civilian federal law enforcement agency under the Secretary of the Navy. It investigates crimes which occur on naval bases and ships. It has, contrary to the show, no jurisdiction on the streets of Washington, D.C., New Orleans or Los Angeles. NCIS has no forensic scientist, crime lab or pathologist, but the public is made to believe that it is a powerful force in federal law enforcement.
In an effort to be more creative and “real”, CBS created a show called Hunted where nine teams of two attempt to avoid capture from a group of experts for twenty-eight days. This show was taken from a cable show titled Manhunters which was based on the U. S. Marshals service Fugitive Task Force. The show leaves the perception that suspects could be captured if police really wanted to catch them. It uses real technology such as license plate readers, facial recognition and pen registers to track cell phone calls. People begin to question why these technologies do not capture all wanted people. What is does not explain to the viewer is that there are thirty-two experiences subject matter experts working full time on nine teams of two people. There is not the manpower or resources to focus attention on anything but the worst of the worst.
Fox Television has also gotten into the act with a new series called Shots Fired, which focuses attention on police shootings. In the early part of its premiere episode, the characters mention actual incidents in Ferguson, Mo., Chicago, Ill. Cleveland, Ohio and North Charleston, S.C. as the Department of Justice is called in to investigate a police use of deadly force. The D.O.J. is called in to provide an independent investigation of the incident by the Governor of the State. This “fictional” story clearly exhibits a political agenda. It exploits stereotypes of 1950s southern racism, “hick town” cops and religious ministers with personal agendas. It depicts the police department as corrupt to its core, promoting a perception that has never been based in fact.
The one primetime show that actually looks at real issues facing law enforcement is the CBS show Blue Bloods. Broken into three segments each episode, the show addresses issues that patrol, investigation and management face.
Sadly, the result of all this is an unrealistic expectation of what motivates law enforcement and what it can and cannot accomplish. It is widely reported that Mark Harmon, the star of NCIS, earns a salary of fifteen million dollars per year. That is more than the annual budget of seventy-five percent of the police departments in the United States.