My favorite thing about it is this the more you watch cop shows and cop movies the more you notice a pattern. The biggest villain for all of those shows, the most consistent threat? Internal affairs. It’s like every single movie and every single series it has shown up at least once. Those God damn Internal Affairs people stopping good cops from doing what they need to do. It’s maybe the single strongest trend throughout all of these shows and movies.
Hell it was even a plot point in Psych. The show about fake psychic detectives had a bad guy Internal Affairs officer.
This is why I say the Wire is the best cop show out there still, espevially growing up with a cop. It raises up the parts of police work that deserve praise; eg. the individuals that get in for the right reasons or have appropriate respect for the job once there, the opportunity police have to make a positive impact on outliers in our society, etc. It also gives a pretty realistic look at how these things go wrong or become ineffective at an institutional level (and 100% don’t shy away from idiot/aggressive cops, narratively equating them to gang members). As far as I can remember there is never a “big, bad internal affairs” plot line. When it does come up it’s in reference to a character’s problematic behavior and treated as a fair consequence of their actions.
Watch the Wire if you havent and you like crime-drama. It’s as good as it gets.
If only Stabler could have freely roughed up every single suspect, they might have caught a couple of the rapists sooner. Probably would have got some coerced confessions out of some creeps who were destined to rape in future too.
I’ve recently realized that this is true even for Russia.
The demonization of KGB and FSB, popular at some point, is … not really against the regime, the regime is fine with it. Of course these organizations fulfilled their clearly stated function. But they are not the pinnacle of evil. Cause, well, evil likes uncertainty, and being an organization with rules is not that. KGB had whole universities, most of people from those work in tech, not in FSB.
And FSB is not only doing what public perception says about it. They are doing a lot of usual security stuff, say, phishing and phony ATMs and public systems’ security audits are all their job. Actually those people I’ve met likely to have professional contacts with that service are … one can say very intelligent and perfectly understanding of good and evil.
While thousands of cops, anti-riot units, internal troops and such are the real foundation of the regime. People kinda dumb, not well-paid, heavily dependent upon that state and also led by pack instinct.
With that in place, the evil itself doesn’t need FSB to do whatever it wants, drug trade, murdering those they don’t like, undocumented prisons, kidnappings, whatever.
My favorite thing about it is this the more you watch cop shows and cop movies the more you notice a pattern. The biggest villain for all of those shows, the most consistent threat? Internal affairs. It’s like every single movie and every single series it has shown up at least once. Those God damn Internal Affairs people stopping good cops from doing what they need to do. It’s maybe the single strongest trend throughout all of these shows and movies.
Hell it was even a plot point in Psych. The show about fake psychic detectives had a bad guy Internal Affairs officer.
On top of that, if IA was as powerful and menacing as they are in the shows cops might actually be held accountable.
IA feels like HR at any mega Corp, there to protect the institution not actually solve anything or ensure things are fair.
This is why I say the Wire is the best cop show out there still, espevially growing up with a cop. It raises up the parts of police work that deserve praise; eg. the individuals that get in for the right reasons or have appropriate respect for the job once there, the opportunity police have to make a positive impact on outliers in our society, etc. It also gives a pretty realistic look at how these things go wrong or become ineffective at an institutional level (and 100% don’t shy away from idiot/aggressive cops, narratively equating them to gang members). As far as I can remember there is never a “big, bad internal affairs” plot line. When it does come up it’s in reference to a character’s problematic behavior and treated as a fair consequence of their actions.
Watch the Wire if you havent and you like crime-drama. It’s as good as it gets.
If only Stabler could have freely roughed up every single suspect, they might have caught a couple of the rapists sooner. Probably would have got some coerced confessions out of some creeps who were destined to rape in future too.
It’s called pre-crime and Tom Cruise said it’s illegal in his documentary, “Minority Report”
I’ve recently realized that this is true even for Russia.
The demonization of KGB and FSB, popular at some point, is … not really against the regime, the regime is fine with it. Of course these organizations fulfilled their clearly stated function. But they are not the pinnacle of evil. Cause, well, evil likes uncertainty, and being an organization with rules is not that. KGB had whole universities, most of people from those work in tech, not in FSB.
And FSB is not only doing what public perception says about it. They are doing a lot of usual security stuff, say, phishing and phony ATMs and public systems’ security audits are all their job. Actually those people I’ve met likely to have professional contacts with that service are … one can say very intelligent and perfectly understanding of good and evil.
While thousands of cops, anti-riot units, internal troops and such are the real foundation of the regime. People kinda dumb, not well-paid, heavily dependent upon that state and also led by pack instinct.
With that in place, the evil itself doesn’t need FSB to do whatever it wants, drug trade, murdering those they don’t like, undocumented prisons, kidnappings, whatever.
Reminds me of that one cop show from the BBC that covers an internal affairs and anti-corruption team. It’s called Line of Duty.