Police Brutality: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Hibari Ginza in ''[[Speed Grapher]]'' likes to "self-defense" suspects (it's her catchphrase and she actually uses it as a verb). This means that if she arrests you and you aren't cooperative, she's likely to shoot off at least one of your extremities.

 

* ''[[Sam and Max]]'', in all their incarnations, do this a ''lot''. And if they weren't freelance police, they'd probably compensate with just plain ol' 'brutality' instead. Since they're both prime [[Heroic Sociopath]]s, all of it is, of course, [[Played for Laughs]].

* The Basin City Police Department in [[Sin City]]. When Cardinal Roark or some other [[Big Bad]] wants somebody gone and the evidence removed, they send in an out-and-out ''death squad''. And these aren't even the worst in the world... the ones working for Stalin were worse.

** The cops get back at Spider by beating the shit out of him outside his apartment. Of course, Spider being who he is, he just laughs off the brutal beating and threatens to bite their testicles off if they come near him again.

 

* ''[[Changeling (film)|Changeling]]'' has this. A mother loses her son and asks the police to get him back. They come back with the ''wrong kid'' and have her sent to the loonie bin to keep their credibility. [[Freakier Than Fiction|It was a true story.]]

* In ''[[A Clockwork Orange (film)|A Clockwork Orange]]'', the cops beat up Alex to the point where he's a quivering, bloody mess in a corner and offer to hold him down to let a visitor take a few swings at him. After he gets freed, he quickly encounters his old gang members Georgie and Dim, who have been hired as cops. [[Hilarity Ensues]].

** Of specific note is that V only meets Evey because he has to intervene to save her from a police gang rape.

 

* Standard operating procedure in [[Judge Dee]]'s 7th c. China.

* In ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]'', Dim and Billy Boy abandon their juvenile acts of mayhem and destruction to beat on criminals for a paycheck.

* ''[[Stone Butch Blues]]'' largely describes the way gays were treated in the pre-Stonewall era; [[Truth In Television]] is that police brutality against minorities was common, but the police were notorious for their inaction when these same minorities were victimised by crime.

 

* ''[[Adam-12]]'': Several episodes have addressed the subject, with one-shot officers in the role of the rouge officers and series' heroes officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed eventually washing them out.

** While Malloy was almost always able to keep his cool even with the most smug of villians, he blows it in the 1974 episode "X-Force" and is suspended without pay for four days after a suspect he had arrested complains that he was injured. Malloy had arrested a suspected child molester (the crook had raped a 6-year-old girl who lived in the neighborhood), and when the pedophile made a snide remark about how the little girl "got what she wanted," Malloy shoves him against a wall, twists his arm and puts the handcuffs on too tight. (Reed—who ironically was taught by Malloy about keeping his cool in the early seasons—shows up to calm his veteran partner down, and eventually has to make a statement backing the complainant.)

'''Cop:''' Oh. Sorry, John. I thought you was a nigger. Now, Sir, carry on.}}

 

* The song "Bad Boys" by reggae group Inner Circle if often thought to talk about cops, and when you look at the big picture about this song, its message is "When you're caught by the cops, you're pretty much dead".

* Subject of many a Gangsta Rap [[Protest Song]], most notably N.W.A.'s "Fuck Tha Police" and Ice-T/Body Count's "Cop Killer".

* The song "Take a Whack on the U.S. Side" (a [[Bob Rivers]] parody of [[Lou Reed]]'s "Take a Walk on the Wild Side") is about border patrol being caught on video beating an illegal immigrant, which leads to a profitable lawsuit.

 

* In ''Misspent Youth'' by Robert Bohl, The Authority (the group-created villain) is often The State, and is filled with images of riot cops and police brutality.

* Fittingly for a cyberpunk game, the setting of ''[[Shadowrun]]'' pretty much assumes police brutality as the norm. The ''least'' brutal police organization (Lone Star Security Services, basically a law enforcement PMC that held the municipal police service contract for several major cities) is still infamous for rules of engagement that basically top out at '*BANG BANG BANG* "Halt or we fire!"' and a well-practiced ability to 'tune up' recalcitrant suspects in interrogation rooms without leaving any incriminating marks. But at least 'municipal contract' cops like Lone Star and Knight Errant have to ''pretend'' to obey things like civil rights legislation and Miranda warnings. If you get caught by megacorporate security forces... well, since megacorps get to write as well as enforce the laws on megacorporate territory, they can do ''anything they feel like'' to you. Some standouts include Shiawase (where they'll use you in the brainwashing labs if you have useful skills, or as testing fodder in the medical labs if you don't), Aztechnology (where the savage beating is just to tenderize you for the upcoming ritual blood sacrifice), and Mitsuhama Computer Technologies (which essentially has no SOP for dealing with prisoners ''because they almost never take any'').

** A Shadowrun 4e supplement mentions offhandedly that a gang of heavily-armed shadowrunners once tried to hijack some cargo at an MCT loading dock at a relatively expensive but not in any way unique wholesale merchandise warehouse. The after-action report read 'we're not sure if the auto-targeting miniguns or the bound elemental spirits got to them first, but one of the remains could only be identified by the serial number on her muscle augmentation implant'.

 

* In ''The Time of Your Life'', Blick, a bully with a badge, tends to beat up anybody who gets angry with him for intimidating other people.

 

* Agent Robert Nightingale in ''[[Alan Wake]]'', who at first tries to arrest Alan for the disappearance of Carl Stucky (whom Alan is forced to kill in self-defense). Nightingale is trigger-happy (twice shooting at Alan while a civilian is standing right next to him), a drunkard, and repeatedly blames Alan for various things that he has no control over, such as during the chase where he's ranting about how it's Alan's fault that the Dark Presence is attacking the police searching the woods for him. This behavior made him a stark contrast with Sarah Breaker, the Bright Falls' sheriff who repeatedly calls Nightingale out on his actions and even helps Alan throughout the story.

* One of the patients in ''Amateur Surgeon'' is a police officer ''named'' Officer Brutality... though, apart from his name, not a whole lot implies that he's particularly tough on criminals. After all, he did go to back alley surgeon Alan Probe for treatment.

* In one level of [[Super Scribblenauts]], Maxwell takes on the role of a police officer, and is eventually tasked with dispersing a peaceful hippie crowd without killing anyone.And "killing" is the center word.Sure, he can just type "megaphone" and make them disperse...or throw tear gas and flashbangs at them.Or sic a guard dog.Being a game where you can use any word, the [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]] is pretty much unlimited.

 

* The Pun Police skit in ''[[The KAMics]]'' is about the officers who attacks people for making puns.

* The Podunkton police force in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' like to [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/060925 indulge in this] (continued [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/060927 here]). Their chief officer is actually a former mafia enforcer. "[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/061002 What's with this town?]"

 

* Pepper Spray Cop: an incident of Police Brutality during an Occupy protest at UC Davis underwent [[Memetic Mutation]].

* [[The Nostalgia Critic]] has learned that the police are evil, though it isn't clearly explained why.

 

* ''[[Family Guy]]'' mocks this to hell and back. In one episode, Peter finds out that he has black ancestors, and everybody starts treating him differently. When a cop pulls him over for speeding, Peter is perfectly polite, and the cop doesn't act unusually until he remembers that particular little tidbit.

{{quote|'''Officer:''' Are you that white guy who's actually a black guy?

** Humorously parodied in "Doing Time", where officers Nancy and Malley appear to be beating a suspect, when in reality they were fixing a parking meter.

 

* As mentioned before, police in the Soviet Union, especially the Stalin administration.

{{quote|"In America, you break the law. [[In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You|In Soviet Russia, the law breaks you!]]"}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Help Help This Index Is Being Repressed]]

[[Category:Useful Notes/The United States]]

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]