Why Don’t TV Cop Shows Have More Police Brutality Storylines? Blame ‘Dragnet’

“The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Every episode of “Dragnet,” the godfather of TV police procedurals that ran in the 1950s, began with these words. They were a promise that what viewers were about to see was a faithful re-creation of how police detectives investigate crime and how police as a whole conduct themselves in their jobs to protect and serve. It is a tradition that has continued in modern times with shows like “Hill Street Blues,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Law & Order,” “SWAT” and hundreds of crime shows that have become part of the backbone of network primetime programming. But as millions around the world protest and demand accountability from police, a larger examination of the police procedural as a genre may be coming. Procedurals aren’t necessarily aimed at addressing systemic problems in law enforcement. While problems within a police department may be the basis for an episode, each show often ends with the case closed in a self-contained narrative. “What we have seen evolve over the decades is an entire television genre that police see as basically a giant public relations arm,” Rashid Shabazz, spokesperson for civil...

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