Stereotypes In Law Enforcement

Through the Publics Eyes: Law Enforcement

“Stop, police!” A common phrase found in many people’s homes, coming from their television, nearly every night of the week. It seems that included in many people’s repertoire of television shows, cop shows are most definitely included. These television shows about law enforcement reinforce the public’s positive view of reality, but also create can stereotypes that result in strong but mostly uninformed opinions. But do these stereotypes in these shows carry over into reality or just the public’s view of reality? Do geographical differences come into play with how law enforcement is perceived by the public? How exactly do these shows almost work as propaganda for law enforcement? Also, how can movies …show more content…
This premise has been presented through television shows, but more often than not these more extreme images come from movies. The superman image can be rarer, since the public does like to romanticize the criminal character, but newest Robocop seems to fit the bill for this stereotype. In Robocop a critically injured police officer is outfitted with a new super suit body. He tries to return to his family but the software in his body keeps taking over, and finally in the end the human side of him beats out the mechanical side. Quite on the opposite of the spectrum is North by Northwest and The Amazing Spiderman both show stereotypical near doughnut shop cop, the representations are not spot on but they are pretty close. Now North by Northwest is not exactly about the local cop, the story is actually about a man mistaken for a fictional spy accused of murder and in the end he kind of ends up a spy. But it is safe to say what local cops were involved did not really do much and when they did they did not seem to look too deep into the problem. The Amazing Spiderman on the other hand is pretty focused on police. After the police tried and failed, looking very stupid, to capture Spiderman they basically decide that they are incapable of policing and “let’s just let Spiderman do the heavy lifting”. These are not exact representations of an extreme doughnut shop cop but they do come pretty close. The movie The Amazing Spiderman, of course about how Spiderman aka Peter Parker saves the day over coming some obstacle, also throws into light the matter of the vigilante. There is no doubt that nearly everyone loves a good movie about a vigilante, perhaps that is because most superheroes are vigilantes, regardless they do. But what does this image that one man (or woman) can do the police’s job better than they can? Sure some of them have superpowers, but Batman