Cops Vs. Cops

You see cops all over the TV now days, but the cops shows on TV give people that watch them the wrong images about real cops that see all day long. All people think they are, are no good people that don't give a care what people think and are mean people, and also the people that watch cops also suspect, what they see on TV is what really goes on in the real life, but that's wrong.

Like for instance people think that just because on TV all crimes are ultimately solved and perpetrators brought to justice but really Most crimes are never solved (around 80 percent of murders are solved, but less than 20 percent of burglaries). The chances of being sent to prison for committing one crime are 1 out of 100.

In American mass media, police work is a major topic. News, talk shows, prime-time crime dramas, and movies, all feature police as major figures. But, what kinds of images of policing does the media portray? How close or far from reality are these images? What is absent from media portrayals of police work may be just as important as the things the media tends to exaggerate.

Overall, it would have to be said that the attitude of the media towards the police is an ambivalent one. News depictions of the police as truly heroic figures, who selflessly give of themselves to protect the public are rare, but cop movies rely on such characterizations. Police work is frequently glamorized by all forms of media, and made to appear much more exciting than it actually is. Depictions of police doing paperwork (handing out tickets, filling out reports, accident forms, insurance verification documents, etc.) are few and far between. Rarely shown are traffic duties, crowd control, and the social work functions largely performed by regular patrol officers (calming angry spouses, transporting drunks, allaying the fears of frightened citizens). We learn little of the real nature of day-to-day police work from media accounts.

1) For a significant proportion of the public, TV cop shows are assumed to depict reality. In particular, people believe that their favorite shows are credible.

2) On the other hand, the police concluded the shows to be inaccurate, and rarely depict real-life police work.

3) The public, however, claims that TV police shows have little impact on their image of the police, stating that they get their information mostly from news.

4) The police believe the public gets its information mostly from TV cop shows, not news.

5) The police believe TV cop shows hurt their image with the public, rather than improve it.

6) Police object most strongly to the way TV shows depict them as driving irresponsibly, violating the Constitutional rights of suspects, and not using their weapons responsibly.

7) 40 % of the public believe police shows offer accurate portrayals of police work v. only 14% of the police interviewed.

8) Do TV police dramas hurt the image of the police? 46% of the public said they had no effect, while 48% of police said such programming hurt their image.

9) On the issue of violations of Constitutional rights of citizens by police, the most surprising slip occurred. It is on this issue that the public are probably most effected by TV. The result of the constant violation of such rights by TV cops is that a significant portion of the public has come to expect it as standard operating procedure

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