Radley Balko looks at the latest television travesty in the “reality” genre:
“There’s always a good time to use a Taser.”
So says Andrea, attractive single mom and one of the four stars of the new TLC reality show, The Police Women of Broward County. The trailer with the Taser quip then cuts to the show’s stars tackling suspects, putting knees into various backs, and pointing guns. Browse other clips on the TLC website, and it seems the network can’t make up its mind whether these women are sexpots with handcuffs or girls who want to be taken seriously for kicking just as much ass as the boys. A smug poster ad campaign for the show takes the the show’s identity problem to yet crasser heights. One ad reads, “Taser Time.” Another, “Cavity Search, Anyone?”
Of course, there isn’t “always a good time to use a Taser,” as the multitude of viral web videos depicting taserings of grandmothers, pregnant women, and children will attest. TLC’s ad campaign is offensive, though merely the latest iteration of a genre of television that trivializes the state’s use of force and makes a mockery of the criminal justice system.
I’ll take Radley’s word for it that the original Cops show was not as sensationalist and exploitative as the many successors that have aired since then. Even saying that, I had my doubts that “reality” TV was an improvement over the more traditional “cop” or “investigator” shows on regular network TV.
Fox then plumbed new depths of depravity last year with Smile . . . You’re Under Arrest!, featuring Maricopa County, Arizona’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America,” Joe Arpaio. In a premise that evokes the old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Running Man or Mike Judge’s dystopian parody Idiocracy, Sheriff Joe teams up with a crew of comedy writers and improv actors to create elaborate scenarios where “unaware criminal suspects with outstanding warrants are lured out of hiding in this high-energy prank show.”
Showing my cultural ignorance, I’d never heard of this show, but just on the basis of this description, I can imagine lots of ways it might go horribly wrong. If it hasn’t yet, I’m sure it’s got all the potential to do so in the future (assuming that it’s still on the air).
As for the SWAT programs, America has unfortunately grown comfortable with, or at least accustomed to, the idea of using SWAT teams to kick down doors and conduct volatile, confrontational raids for consensual, nonviolent crimes. We’ve seen a massive increase in these raids, from about 3,000 per year in the early 1980s to some 50,000 per year by the early 2000s. The popularity of SWAT shows didn’t cause the problem, but their popularity is sympomatic of it, and they can only further ingrain the troubling notion that there’s nothing wrong with sending a unit of cops dressed like soldiers into private homes to arrest nonviolent drug offenders. And of course, we’re never going to see the wrong-door raids, or police mistakes that result in fatalities.
Cop reality shows glamorize all the wrong aspects of police work. Their trailers depict lots of gun pointing, door-busting, perp-chasing, and handcuffing. Forget the baton-twirling Officer Friendly. To the extent that the shows aid in the recruiting of new police officers, they’re almost certainly pulling people attracted to the wrong parts of the job./p>
That last part is probably true. There are no other jobs open to the general public that provide so many opportunities to “go wrong” yet not face the realistic risk of punishment (the blue wall of silence will protect a fellow officer until — and sometimes well beyond — that officer being proven guilty of serious criminal activity). Any criticism of the police seems to be taken as a criticism of all police, and the “civilian” is always assumed to be wrong.
