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| Jesse L. Martin and Dennis Farina on TV's Law and Order. TELEVISION CITY, USA—Law & Order, Cold Case, CSI: Miami, and similar television dramas present policing as a series of adventures and struggles between good and evil. Good cops (and sometimes bad cops) pursue malevolence and misbehavior relentlessly until decency and morality triumph. But is this what policing is really all about? Are the escapades of Detective Joe Fontana of TV's Law & Order or the dangerous edge and blind allegiance to justice of CSI: Miami's Horatio Caine typical in contemporary policing? And then there are Cops, the FOX television series World's Scariest Police Chases, and a host of others. Are these images of police on the prowl accurate depictions of what happens every day to America's police officers and detectives? Consider the views of a veteran big-city police sergeant: "I guess what our job really boils down to is not letting the assholes take over the city. Now I'm not talking about your regular crooks . . . they're bound to wind up in the joint anyway. What I'm talking about are those shitheads out to prove that they can push everybody around. Those are the assholes we gotta deal with and take care of on patrol. They're the ones that make it tough on the decent people out there. You take the majority of what we do and it's nothing more than asshole control."1 Is this the basic fabric of American policing? 1. Quoted in John Van Maanen, "The Asshole," in Policing: A View from the Street, edited by Peter K. Manning and John Van Maanen (Santa Monica: Goodyear, 1978), 221. Within the context of these questions, this chapter examines the character and structure of police work and offers some perspectives on the complexities and frustrations of attempting to enforce the law and maintain order in a democratic society. It seeks to answer questions such as these: What do police do? What do citizens ask them to do? What do they decide to do on their own initiative? And what influences their decisions to do what they do? What is the peacekeeping role of the police? |