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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

They haven't needed to advance that much. Shows like Forensic Files, COPS and so forth have convinced most people that the police are far more effective than they really are. Most people have no idea that the majority of crimes, including violent ones, go unsolved. (although this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's actually been a victim of a crime)

This isn't to say that policing in its current form isn't effective at all, but the media (whether intentionally or not) have done an excellent job as the propaganda department for the police.

Why improve when everyone believes you're superman?

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Shows like Forensic Files, COPS and so forth have convinced most people that the police are far more effective than they really are.

but the media (whether intentionally or not) have done an excellent job as the propaganda department for the police.

Personally I say "no way is this anything but intentional". There's way too much pro-cop, pro-military-industrial-complex, pro-sook-agency crap on TV for it to be just accidental. Propaganda is exactly what it is.

Or, apply Occam’s razor. People like watching cop and detective shows.

Depends on what you mean by intentional.

I don't think it's an organized effort merely to promote law enforcement from a political standpoint.

Rather, I think such shows are made because they sell well to two crowds: the pro law enforcement crowd and those with a curiosity for true crime.

Simple incentives seem to explain that one without needing much of a conspiracy:

If you're buddy-buddy with the cops, they'll help promote you, talk to you about cool cases they worked, etc.. If you're instead critical of the cops, they're going to try and undermine you instead.

This means that doing a cop show that's anti-cop would be like doing a medical show without ever being able to consult a doctor. You can do it, but you're going to have to put a lot more work into research to get the same sense of verisimilitude.

Speaking of TV...

You know how people who don't work in government don't realize Parks and Rec is a documentary?

And people who don't work in a white collar office don't realize The Office is also a documentary?

Well Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a documentary too.

The primary artistic liberty these shows take is to take a decade's worth of shenanigans, compress it into one season and cut out all the drudgery in-between. Basically all the stupid "that would never happen" crap happens but spread out over 100x as long and 10x as many people.

s/pro-sook-agency/pro-spook-agency/

Funny you should mention the military industrial complex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-entertainment_complex

> In Hollywood, many movie productions are directly supervised by the Department of Defense's (DoD's) Film Liason Unit. Directors looking to borrow Army material for their movies need to apply to the DoD, and submit their movies' scripts for vetting. Ultimately, the DoD has a say in virtually every US-made movie that use military resources in their production.

The same exact thing happens with TV shows and movies depicting american policing. If your script does not toe the line, good luck getting those permits necessary to film.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/opinions/2016/10/24/how-po...

Seems to be increasingly uncommon with the rise of computer graphics. Far easier to edit a tank into the background than to have a real tank driving around.

that is sorta a myth. they often get solved but it may take a long time. Murder cases for example are never declared unsolved unless a suspect is charged or the presumed perpetrator is dead due to age or other reasons.

I presume you meant that they are never declared solved [unless...]? It seems pretty farfetched to say that murder cases are considered solved by default even when a reasonable person would consider them to be unsolved.

I think he means they are never declared unsolved on the sense that "this isn't solved and we are not going to think about it anymore, unsolved is it's final status"

the majority of murder and aggravated assault in the US get cleared (solved) but "violent crime" falls short and everything else is woeful.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r...

your local government may keep stats E.G.: https://www.cabq.gov/police/public-reports/annual-reports/un... , https://staging.policescorecard.org/ (or the extremely hard to navigate FBI's UCR page https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/ )

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