Southland

Straying a bit from legal shows but staying close to the genre, I also try to catch Southland. This “cop” show is well acted and goes through several different plotlines each week covering both uniformed patrol officers and plainclothes detectives.


I was a little disturbed, however, by some issues that were raised in the last episode. One of the patrol officers, a rookie who is a main character and clearly supposed to be a viewer’s favorite, violated all sorts of procedures by contriving a traffic stop to harass and threaten a man who he believed (mistakenly, it turns out) had sexually molested his mother. When the man files a complaint with the precinct commander, the commander obligingly covers up for the patrolman and tells him not to do such a thing again.

In the same episode, the patrolman and his partner respond to a robbery at an Asian food carry-out in which the owner’s daughter was apparently punched. While there, our hero sees an illegal weapon in the owner’s desk drawer. The officer is about to take the gun (but not charge the owner), when the owner begs him to let him keep the gun – until he can get a fully licensed one – for protection against robbery in the interim.

The officer complies, but orders him to get a legal gun within two weeks. Sure enough, by the end of the episode, a young man whom several witnesses claim was merely asking to use the bathroom in the carryout is shot dead by the owner who claimed he was a robber. Our hero’s partner says to the hero,” it’s too bad we didn’t see that gun when we were in here before.” Our hero looks chagrined.

Meanwhile, another of the main characters, a detective applies for a security job, despite the fact that he has applied for full disability from his police job. This is forbidden and, if he is really disabled, he could not perform the job. He is told he is lucky, receiving only a notation in his file with no action being taken against him.

One has to wonder if these shows and others (a recent episode of Hawaii 5-0 comes to mind wherein our heroes stole $10 million to save a colleague from being killed) are attempting to set a different moral standard for law enforcement officers than for the rest of society.

Each of the instances specified above are at least civil wrongs, derelictions of duty or crimes, yet the shows manipulate us to root for the bad guys - who are really the good guys – who are fighting the bad guys.

Is this really the message the TV industry wants to send? Is this really how we want our police to act?