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56
Chapter 5
Crime Fighters
Chapter Objectives
After reading Chapter 5, students should:
1. know the major divisions in the media portrait of law enforcement and crime fighting
2. understand the differences between professional and civilian crime fighters
3. recognize the media portraits of lampooned police, G-men and Cops
4. appreciate the differences between media portrayed police work and real world police
work
5. appreciate the differences between the media portraits of private eyes and private citizens
with the media portraits of police officers
6. understand the link between media portraits of crime fighting and public support for
anticrime policies
Chapter Outline
I. Law Enforcement: A House Divided
a. After criminality, the media pays the most attention to fighting crime
b. In the U.S., law enforcement has high visibility coupled with low public
knowledge—the public is exposed to large amounts of crime-fighting content in
news, entertainment, and infotainment, most of it terribly distorted if not plain
wrong
i. The public generally holds an erroneous view of what the police actually
do and how they do it
ii. First problem: the media construction of law enforcement is schizophrenic
1. Media presents two competing law enforcement frames
a. In the “good cop” frame, the criminal justice system,
particularly the police, are part of a justice machine with
dedicated professionals using the latest technology to
repeatedly prove that crime does not pay
b. In the competing and more common “bad cop” frame, the
criminal justice system and its police are:
iii. Second problem: in the media, crime is fought by either professionals or
citizens
1. Both are depicted as crime-fighters fighting a never-ending battle
against evil doers
2. Professional soldier
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d. Either expertly or incompetently (depending on whether
they are within a good cop or bad cop frame) wage a war
against predatory violent crime
e. Civilians usually have a minor role, frequently serving
solely as hapless victims
3. Citizen soldier
a. The police and the criminal justice system are downplayed
and often disparaged
b. Traditional criminal justice components, especially the
police, become part of the crime problem either through
corruption or ineptitude
c. Civilian is successful where law enforcers are not
c. Two conflicting messages about law enforcement
i. The expertise to deal with crime can only be found in the criminal justice
system
1. The need to enhance the criminal justice system and unleash the
police is a core message in the media’s construction of crime
fighting
2. We are told to wait for heroes to save us
ii. The incompetence of the criminal justice system and its people requires
that individuals protect their own homes and communities and solve crime
problems themselves
1. We are told we had better save ourselves
iii. What the two messages share is that the solutions will require violence
d. Most types of crime stories are comfortable with either official or civilian heroes
i. All of the following utilize both criminal justice employees and private
citizens as heroes:
ii. Within these stories both civilian and professional crime fighters can be
good cops or bad cops
1. Good cops
a. Law-abiding role models
b. Represents the incorruptible all-American hero narrative
2. Bad cops
a. Less straight-and-narrow
i. Adventurers
58
ii. Gunfighters
iii. Loners
iv. Sometimes criminals
b. More ambiguous and individualistic
c. Self-reliant
d. Represents our admiration of the rebel
i. Rebels enjoy themselves more so they far
outnumber the law-abiding crime fighters in the
media
1. Examples:
a. Jesse James
b. Bonnie and Clyde
c. Wild Bill Hickok
d. Eliot Ness
e. Al Capone
3. Media reconstructions have habitually made folk heroes out of
criminals and heroic crime fighters out of less-than-stellar
individuals
II. Media Constructs of Professional Soldiers in the War on Crime
a. We relish the investigation, pursuit, and capture of criminals by formal agents of
the law
i. Three stereotypes of professional law enforcement
1. Lampooned police
2. G-men
3. Cops
ii. Each law enforcement stereotype contributes in its own way to the social
construction of law enforcement
b. Lampooned Police
i. Appeared soon after the birth of the film industry
1. initially introduced in the 1920s by:
a. the Keystone Kops
b. Charlie Chaplin films
ii. Television characters and films satirize law enforcement as foolish,
slapstick police officers
1. Provide escapist entertainment
a. The Barney Fifes
b. Inspector Clouseaus
c. Police Academy films
d. Super Troopers films
2. They allow serious issues of police power and crime control to be
discussed indirectly and in less threatening portraits
3. Crime that can be resolved by cartoon violence is less threatening
iii. When the satire is felt to reflect a reality of incompetence of when it
undermines the public support of police, these images raise an outcry
among law enforcement personnel
59
1. Early portrayals of the police upset the International Association of
the Chiefs of Police
a. Members passed a resolution pledging to change the
depictions
c. G-Men and Police Procedurals
i. G-Men (Government men)
1. Also known as “crime-busters”
2. Arose during the Depression
a. Result of the Hays Commission heavily criticizing pre-
Depression movies for glorifying criminals and
encouraging copycat crime (see Box 5.1)
3. Early examples:
a. Dragnet
b. Dick Tracy
4. The portrait attempts to provide more realistic content
5. G-men shown as:
6. Because they were clearly not local police officers, the shift to G-
men crime-busters also marks the beginning of a long-term
denigration of local law enforcement
a. Local street police would not commonly be presented as
capable of dealing with serious crime until the 1970s
ii. Police Procedurals
1. Originated in the U.S. in the 1940s
2. The first infotainment docudramas
3. Attempt to portray the back-stage realities of police investigations
in dramatic media portraits
a. The crime fighters in these portraits normally rely heavily
on teamwork and criminalistics to solve crimes
b. A continuous response to an unending series of violent
criminal acts is needed
c. Civilians and other law enforcement personnel should not
get involved, and do so at their peril
iii. The G-men and the police procedurals portraits and the ongoing real-
world police reform movement of the first half of the twentieth century
collectively constructed criminality as a threat to middle-class lifestyles
while encouraging a faith in expert police knowledge as the crime solution
1. Aggressive proactive policing as the best policy course to address
an apparently burgeoning crime problem
d. Cops
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i. The cops frame originated in the 1970s with the return of media portraits
of professional, competent, local law enforcement heroes
1. Early examples:
a. the novel The New Centurions (1970)
b. Dirty Harry (1971)
c. the television show Police Story (1973)
ii. Cops portrayed as:
1. aggressive
2. crime-fighting
3. take-no-prisoners
4. frontline soldiers
iii. Police became paramilitary units, citizens became civilians and collateral
damage, and crime fighting became urban warfare
1. They were now the combat grunts who fought the crime war
battles
2. Local “cops” emerge in this construction as professional, gristled
soldiers engaged in preemptive law-and-order battles—combat-
hardened street solders in an unpopular war
iv. Criminality was simultaneously portrayed as the result of evil and weak
individuals making bad choices
1. the criminals were clearly enemies
2. the criminals had to be defeated
v. Within this constructed world of domestic combat, special socialization by
a veteran crime fighter was needed to change the naïve civilian police
recruit into the professional frontline crime-fighting solider
1. Police have to be initiated into the police culture and instilled with
the special knowledge and skills needed to survive in combat and
deal with rampant criminality
a. Gaining this special knowledge frequently involved a
violent unlearning of prior social conceptions picked up in
the civilian world and the police academy
i. Middle-class status, liberal attitudes, those college
criminology and criminal justice courses, official
police department procedures—all must be
forgotten
ii. As Dirty Harry says to his new partner, “Don’t go
letting that sociology degree get you killed”
vi. Cop narratives
1. Examples:
a. “Rogue” officer
i. officers who go off on their own in their pursuit of
criminals and justice
ii. they display single-mindedness in a less than legal
but usually moral crusade
b. “Corrupt cop”
61
i. officers taking the extra step and actually joining
the dark-side forces of crime and evil
c. “Honest cop”
i. trace the hardships of cops trying to do the right
thing in a corrupt police culture
d. “Buddy cop”
i. work off the conflicts and complications from
opposite personalities forced to work together
ii. mismatched racial partners are a standard
e. “Comedy” and “Action-comedy”
i. toss reality to the winds
ii. comedy portrayals incorporate harmless slapstick
violence in which bullets and punches fly but no
one gets seriously hurt
iii. action comedies liberally add in explosions and
spectacular stunts in which only the bad guys are
seriously injured
2. Recent additions
a. “Female cop”
i. have the positive, if yet unfulfilled, potential to lift
women from their stereotypical crime-and-justice
portraits as pseudomasculine or hyperfeminine
creatures to equal crime-fighting heroes
b. “Aging cop”
i. a market response to the aging of the baby boom
generation and the need to provide heroes they can
identify with
ii. a weathered but still virile (mentally, physically,
and sexually) police officer manages to be
successful on all fronts
3. Except for the woman cop story lines, successful hypermasculinity
is the common thread throughout the cop narratives
4. To solve crime, you don’t need a criminal justice system, or even a
police department
a. You don’t even need a few good men, just one good cop
will do
vii. True crime books
1. In true crime narratives journalists have to be socialized into the
ways of the street police
a. In the process they have to leave behind their journalistic
sensibilities and social values and learn that fighting the
modern predatory criminal requires a different worldview
2. The crime is usually homicide and the reader looks over the cops’
shoulders as they pursue criminals and clean up after violent messy
events
62
a. The other popular view in the true crime tradition looks
over the shoulders of criminals while they violently create
messy events
i. An interest in crime fighters is only exceeded by
fascination with predator criminals
3. The cop oriented true crime memoirs contribute to the comforting
illusion of police expertise, that crime, while pervasive, is
effectively being handled by dogged, heroic police work
viii. News portrait of professional crime fighters
1. The news media rarely focus on individual crime fighters except in
police brutality cases
a. They prefer to focus on crimes and criminals
2. Law enforcement is normally referred to as generic agencies rather
than individual police officers
a. When individuals are interviewed, they are most often
administrators or media-relations specialists
b. Most individual crime-fighter portraits come not from
traditional news but from either pure entertainment content
or infotainment products
3. Reality police shows, a subset of infotainment programming, are of
special interest because these shows are promoted as delivering a
slice of unaltered crime fighting and, unlike the news, focus
heavily on individual crime fighters
e. Police as Infotainment: “Who You Gonna Call?”
i. Police reality programs first appeared in 1989
ii. Viewers are invited to share a street cop’s point of view as a partner
officer
1. Attraction of these shows is purely voyeuristic
iii. Audience is composed largely of young, white males (a demographic from
which future police officers will be recruited)
iv. Content runs the gamut from dealing with ordinary street crime to the
unusual violent predation
v. Police have editorial input on the end product
1. Scenes of police violence, malfeasance, or ineptitude are deleted
2. The final construction invariably shows the police as:
a. sensitive
b. knowledgeable
c. competent
d. never careless
e. never corrupt
f. never foul-mouthed
g. never overwhelmed
3. Violent crime is overrepresented, as well as the proportion of
crime that is solved by the police
a. Example: COPS
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i. Violent crime made up 84 percent of all the crimes
shown in one season studied
b. The media presents the opposite of crime-and-justice
reality and the distribution of violent and property crimes
on these shows are consistently opposite their real world
proportions (example of the backwards law)
vi. How realistically do these reality shows portray police work?
1. Paul Kooistra and colleagues say, “Crime fighting on these shows
is a caricature that is shaped more by the organizational demands
of television than by carefully documented representations of
reality”
a. There are no production clues, narrators, actors, scripts, or
hosts to suggest editing or formatting
i. Production techniques are borrowed from
entertainment shows
1. Time gaps are smoothed over
2. Holes in knowledge or action are filled
b. The infotainment audience does not easily realize and are
not given hints that they are receiving a heavily constructed
piece of reality
i. because the content is presented as if unaltered, the
constructed reality found in reality programming is
more misleading than the constructed reality
portrayed in the news where the editing and
production decisions are clearly visible
c. Gray Cavendar points out that realism is achieved in these
efforts by mimicking the early entertainment “police
procedural” films of the 1940s and 1950s
i. Employing low-cost production values establishes
an atmosphere of “being there” for the viewer
1. Ironically, producing reality programs
cheaply results in increasing their
believability
vii. Reality Show Demographics
1. These shows construct a reality in which the most typical police
crime-fighting events are white police battling nonwhite criminals
while protecting white victims
a. Nonwhites account for more than half of all suspects shown
b. Two-thirds of the police are white
c. More than half of the victims shown are white
2. Almost 75 percent of the crimes portrayed in these infotainment
shows are cleared by arrest, compared with the 18 percent
clearance rate for property crime and 44 percent clearance rate for
violent crime reported in the UCR statistics (another example of
the backwards law)
viii. Two claims about crime fighting
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1. The carefully chosen and edited footage encourages the claims
that:
a. Reality police shows further encourage the construction of
criminals as predatory deviant others, people who are
unlike the rest of us
i. Reality police shows further encourage the
construction of criminals as predatory deviant
others
b. The police are invariably right
i. The people they stop really are criminals
ii. Viewers never get to see the police battering down
doors to the wrong apartment or arresting the wrong
person
iii. Legal rules invariably hamper the police needlessly
and get in the way of effective law enforcement
iv. There appears to be no reason to place legal checks
on how the police do their job, and constitutional
safeguards make no sense
2. In the end, crime control is applauded and due process is
disparaged
3. Individual causes of crime, assumed guilt of suspects, and an “us
versus them” portrait dominates these constructions
4. The police emerge as our best defense, but they need help
a. In this constructed world, the audience, the police, and
television must work together to fight crime
ix. What is the effect of these shows?
1. Aaron Doyle reports that most viewers see the shows as realistic
and think of them as informational rather than entertainment, as
more similar to local news than to fictional storytelling
a. Society is seen to be in decline and in a constant state of
crisis because of spiraling crime, particularly violent street
crimes committed by lower-class offenders, and aggressive
law enforcement is shown as the last hope
2. Another concern: There is anecdotal evidence of police tailoring
their behavior for the cameras, behaving not as they actually do but
as they believe the audience expects them to
3. The solution proffered in police infotainment programming is
drawn from the faulty system frame: Crime is out of control
because the criminal justice system is misaligned
a. Society needs tougher crime control: due process and civil
rights are part of the problem, and more unfettered police
are needed
b. The real world must be altered to better match the media-
constructed one
65
x. Recent media portrayals of forensic science and its capabilities is another
area that has been credited with constructing unrealistic expectations in the
real world
f. The CSI Effect: Forensic Science and Solving Crimes (see Box 5.2)
i. The most recent iteration and a revival of the police procedural is found in
the spate of forensic science based shows led by CSI and its derivatives
ii. The history of a “CSI effect” begins in the early 21st century
1. First appeared around 2002 - 2003 as a characterization of the
perceived impact of forensic crime programming on juror verdicts
and was generated from anecdotal reports from attorneys and
judges
2. Was considered a “potential nuisance” in 2002
3. Quickly evolved to a “huge problem” by 2006
4. By 2007, a mini-moral panic had been generated
a. It had become the subject of numerous news stories in
which it was usually described negatively
iii. The new law enforcement crime fighting hero is a forensic scientist
iv. “Howdunnit” rather than “Whodunit” shows
v. Depict police agencies with:
1. limitless resources
2. small caseloads
3. unrealistic scientific testing procedures
4. impossible forensic test time frames
5. inaccurate depictions of what crime scene investigators really do
vi. Give the impression that trials are mere formalities
1. Crimes are solved in labs not resolved in courtrooms
vii. A CSI effect has been credited with influencing juror expectations and
assessment of evidence
1. Criminal justice professionals have altered their courtroom
behavior accordingly and have changed:
a. their voir dire questioning and juror selection practices
b. the content of their juror instructions
c. their willingness to include forensic related witnesses
d. their presentation of evidence
2. It is felt that lack of forensic evidence is interpreted by jurors to
indicate sloppy police work and the discounting of eyewitness
testimony
3. Police, prosecutors, and judges have reported that they have had to
explain the lack of relevant forensic evidence or employ expert
witnesses to accommodate juror media-driven expectations
viii. Anecdotal CSI effects have also been reported for offenders
1. Examples:
a. A car thief dumping an ash tray in stolen cars in hopes of
generating a pool of alternative suspects
b. A rapist using condoms and forcing victims to shower to
avoid leaving DNA evidence
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ix. There is a concern with these shows reifying forensic evidence when it is
presented in a trial to a level where its validity and accuracy is
unquestioned by jurors
1. A dual CSI effect has been hypothesized
a. If no forensic evidence is presented, an increase in
acquittals has been posited
b. If forensic evidence is available, convictions are expected
to increase
x. Not all credit these shows with a substantively important CSI effect
1. In one study that surveyed jurors, there is evidence of nearly half
expecting scientific evidence in every criminal case; however, the
expectation of forensic evidence did not translate into more
acquittals when it was absent and significantly, viewers of the CSI
shows were more likely to convict without scientific evidence than
non viewers except for rape cases
2. There is no empirical study that has shown a CSI effect on jury
decisions
3. In another study, the majority of a California community were
found to be unaware of a possible CSI effect and those who
watched CSI-type programs shows were more likely to see such an
effect as educational rather than negative and biasing
4. There may be a CSI effect on attorneys and judges who report that
they prepare and conduct their cases differently because of
anticipated juror expectations but no additional CSI effect
g. Police and the Media
i. In the 1990s there was a transition to community policing in the real
police world and a media fixation on criminal profiling in the media
constructed one
1. The police are sought, quoted, and catered to on one hand,
marginalized and criticized on the other
a. Media cops hardly compare to their real-world counterparts
(See Table 4.1)
i. When the real police don’t act like their media
portraits, the unrealistic public expectations
generate real-world public dissatisfaction with law
enforcement
ii. Factual and fictional cop narratives remain popular and, as shown by the
development of women and aging cop portraits, are flexible enough to
evolve and to respond to changing politics, demographics and market
needs
1. In addition to female lead crime fighters, the emergence and
acceptance of minority actors as lead heroic cops is another healthy
trend
2. This world is largely constructed in the entertainment and
infotainment segments of the media
67
a. The traditional news media do not normally focus on crime
fighters except when they become criminals or victims
i. This lack of traditional news media attention is also
true for their counterparts, the citizen soldiers in the
war on crime
III. Media Constructs of Citizen Soldiers in the War on Crime
a. When portrayed, “citizen soldiers” in the war on crime often save the day for
bungling police officers; other times they battle the corrupt forces of government
and official law enforcement
b. Private Investigators
i. Occupy the boundary between civilians and police officers
1. They are the independent contractors of law enforcement
ii. Private investigators were popularized in film noir movies in the 1940s
iii. Historical characteristics of the PI
1. male
2. sexual
3. debonair
4. hard-boiled
5. smart
6. lives on the borderline between criminality and the law-abiding,
solving crimes with inside knowledge combined with the freedom
to act outside the restraints of agency policies and due process
rules
c. Private Citizens
i. Private citizens have been successful media crime fighters for at least 600
years (predates PIs)
1. Examples:
a. Citizen crime fighters are usually adult, white males:
i. Robin Hood
b. Citizen crime fighters in the media include a diverse group:
i. elderly female novelists (Angela Lansbury in
Murder She Wrote)
ii. teenagers (the Bobbsey Twins and Hardy Boys)
iii. children (Tom Sawyer)
iv. cartoon dogs (Scooby-Doo)
ii. Unfettered by red official red tape and due process considerations, the
heroic outsider can cut to the heart of the crime problem and quickly and
usually violently deal with it
iii. Avengers and vigilantes are related to the victim crime-fighter narrative
1. In these portrayals, the citizen crime fighter has a personal interest
or has been personally wronged by a criminal
2. At the extreme are tales where the citizen hero has been unjustly
criminalized by the official criminal justice system
iv. A more recent citizen crime-fighter narrative is the superhero, which
originated in Depression era comic books and today is found in action
films (escapism)
68
1. Superheroes:
a. are mutants, aliens, ninjas, or just “regular” people who
apparently are impossible to kill or defeat
b. overcome massive odds to prevail
c. defend “truth, justice, and the American way”
v. Robert and Linda Lichter found that private citizens and private
investigators solved many of the crimes shown in prime time television
programming
1. Crime fighters of every other type failed to capture the criminal
more often than they succeeded
a. Cops are bound by rules and cannot possibly be as effective
as private investigators
b. Penned in the 1840s by Edgar Allan Poe, the very first
detective stories had the French police fumble and fail
while citizen-hero, outsider American detective Dupin
solved the crimes
c. The cumulative media message clearly is that it is outsiders
who save the day and that ordinary law enforcers are
unequal to the task of fighting crime
2. Collectively, the citizen soldier crime fighters reveal the media
tendency to present crime not as a social problem but as an
individual contest
a. In these portraits private citizens supplant the entire
criminal justice system
b. Crime fighting becomes a private issue of good versus evil
between autonomous individuals
c. The larger society, and particularly its formal institutions, is
little involved if not a direct obstacle to successful crime
fighting.
d. The message is that if you have a crime problem the regular
police are unlikely to be helpful, and you had best deal with
it on your own
IV. Professional Versus Citizen Crime Fighters
a. If one combines the citizen crime fighter with the rogue, special-unit, maverick
law enforcers, criminal justice system outsiders and marginalized employees are
far more common and more successful in the media constructed world of crime
fighting than traditional mainstream criminal justice system personnel
b. Successful crime fighters are usually portrayed as antisocial, unattached loners
even when they are members of an established law enforcement agency
i. Example: Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry
c. Whether an outsider or not, the successful crime fighter is usually:
i. heroic
ii. male
iii. a man of action
d. Media crime fighters are portrayed as very effective in solving crimes and
apprehending criminals but not at all effective in preventing crime
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i. They are better agents of punishment than deterrence
ii. Similar to the manner in which crime is covered in the news, media crime
fighters are reactive and incident driven rather than proactive and
community problem oriented
1. Crime is not a social problem to be solved at the community level;
instead, it is an invading social evil that must be confronted and
destroyed
2. The social construction of law enforcement repeatedly points out
that a crime “war” is being waged, and society needs crime
“fighters,” not “peace officers” or legal due process protections,
social services, or community-based rehabilitation programs—all
of which come across as blatantly naïve and wrong-headed
a. Due process constraints and rehabilitation mandates make
the criminal justice system unable to cope with crime
3. The media world of crime and terrorism is not a world for standard
operating procedures and community-oriented police officers, or
for the unarmed, the hesitant, or the faint-hearted
a. “Legitimized corruption”: solving crimes and preventing
terrorism requires breaking the rules
e. In the twentieth century the entertainment media came to portray both crime
fighters and criminals as more violent and aggressive and to show this violence
more graphically
i. Ultraviolence—which entails slow motion injuries, detonating blood
capsules, and multiple camera views—has become common entertainment
media content (since the 1906s)
ii. In today’s media, the distinction between the crime fighter and the
criminal has all but disappeared in regard to who initiates violence and
how much force is used
f. The increasing emphasis on graphic violence has resulted in a kind of media
weapons cult
i. Weapons have become increasingly more technical and sophisticated but
less realistic
ii. Guns are shown as useful problem solvers and necessary crime-fighting
tools in modern America
1. People who get their way, both heroes and villains, are the ones
that have guns
iii. Weapons—especially handguns—tend to be portrayed in two ways:
1. ridiculously benign: misses are common and wounds minor and
painless when the crime fighter is the target
2. ridiculously deadly: shots from handguns accurately hit moving,
distant people, killing them quickly and without extensive
suffering when the crime fighter is shooting
iv. People in crime-and-justice media who use guns seldom suffer
psychological, social, or legal repercussions
v. In general, the media play up the violence and play down the pain and
suffering associated with criminal violence and gunplay
70
g. The construction of law enforcement as a criminal justice endeavor dominates
over the courts and corrections and is portrayed as a glamorous, action-filled
process of detection and pursuit that glorifies violence
i. Dealing with crime is a battle of good versus evil that historically was
invariably won by the good guys
ii. Today:
1. an increasing number of evil criminals escape
2. corrupt, brutal police officers are more common
3. crime control goals are heavily advanced over due process
protections
4. civil liberties are ignored and degraded as mushy-headed
hindrances that result in a less safe, more violent society
5. Professional crime fighters compete with citizen crime fighters for
attention and effectiveness
a. individual loners tend to be the most successful.
iii. In the end, the media’s social construction of crime fighting shows crime
not as a social problem at all but as an individual concern to be solved by
force and technology by either a core of beleaguered frontline cops,
special tactic federal officers, or well-armed individual civilians
Chapter Key Terms
true crime [107] ultraviolence [120]
Helpful and Interesting Internet Sites
The following sites are interesting sources for this chapter. Please review them before
recommending them to your students.
Check under “Keystone Kops” and “famous fictional police officers” at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
