The District

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

In the 2000-2004 TV series The District, the solution to Washington DC's high crime rate to hire former New York Police Department Chief Jack Mannion, played by Craig T Nelson, to head and reorganize the Metro Police Department.

The series is inspired by former NYPD Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple and his book The Crime Fighter (co-written with Chris Mitchel), which discusses his work in reorganizing the NYPD. Maple is given creator credits, but his involvement with the series was limited due to his death ten months after the show first aired.


Tropes used in The District include:
  • Awesome By Analysis: The whole point of CompStat (Comparative Statistics) is apparently so Chief Mannion can demonstrate this trope.
  • Bavarian Fire Drill: A rapist working at a shop that repaired Metro Police cars used access to official cars and a police uniform to get close enough to intended victims to capture them for the assault. This didn't do any favors for the real MPD (particularly one officer who bore a superficial resemblance to witness descriptions of their attacker), when news stories about the rapist mentioned his MO. Sergeant Brander even wound up being shot by a panicking motorist stopped for a traffic violation, though he was wearing a bulletproof vest under his uniform shirt at the time, so he wasn't harmed.
  • Bulletproof Vest: Sgt Brander is said to be wearing one in the episode described above. Unlike many shows, though, they skip the part about ripping open the outer shirt to reveal the vest, which is only mentioned after the fact in a "he would've been dead if..." comment.
  • Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Ella Farmer, on her way back from a lunch break, sees a man fall from a ladder, and when his breathing stopped, she moved him to perform CPR. The move paralyzes him, and in response the family files a lawsuit against her.
  • CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Averted in the Season Four episode "Breath of Life". Sergeant Brander performs CPR on another officer, using it the proper way to keep the victim going long enough for an ambulance to arrive and give full first aid treatment, after the victim's partner refused to do it because the victim is gay. Brander forgetting, in a tense situation, to use a mouth guard makes for a minor bit of suspense, as he waits for test results about whether he caught any disease (particularly AIDS) from the victim.
    • Similarly averted in Ella's rescue above. Her CPR attempt had her move a man with a broken neck, which paralyzed him.
  • Reckless Gun Usage: A woman gets shot with no one nearby. Turns out some punk got a hold of a World War II gun and test-fired it by shooting down the apparently-empty street.