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Basic civil rights broken in every show courtesy if creative licensing

posted 8 years ago by HARDDRlVER
6 replies | jump to latest

In nearly every show I watch detectives manhandled and rough house suspects. But to make things worse, the moment a suspect says "I want my lawyer" the cops aren't allowed to say another word. How many times do I see the line crossed. If they didn't, the show would lose its legs. So in order to keep the wheels in motion for the audience, the writers MUST allow the cops to break the law. Even when the suspect is guilty as seen by the viewer, law enforcement still manages to break the law.
Nearly every single case would be thrown out because of this.
Yet we're to believe all is kosher, bad guy goes down...on to next case.
Also, illegal search and seisure. How many times have I seen cops in these shows go digging in people's cars and homes.
How many times are the cops worse than the criminals?

[–] andy5868 8 years ago

I certainly wouldn't say they are worse than the criminals because they aren't slaughtering each other by the hundreds every year in Baltimore.

Their murder total would be over 4,600 people a year if they had NYC's population.

Being tough on crime is how the murders got cut in half in 5 years after the crime bill. I think these recent protests, riots and bad publicity has backed the police off and that is why we see these HUGE increases in murders the past year. They get more civil rights and they use it to shoot each other.

Chicago shootings are up over 46% over last year. DC had a 54% increase in murders in 2015. Baltimore had their deadliest year ever. St. Louis has a top 15 murder rate in the WORLD.

Somebody has to save them from themselves.

[–] dmcreif 8 years ago

Their murder total would be over 4,600 people a year if they had NYC's population.

The show does acknowledge that, as Rawls points out that exact thing in a Comstat hearing in season 3, when he and Burrell are relaying the Mayor's directive to the district commanders to reduce the felony rates in their district by 10%.

[–] andy5868 8 years ago

Yeah Rawls said 4,000 murders. Now there are less people in Baltimore and the murder total has gotten even worse. They need a real culture change in the Baltimore PD.

Maybe get Bunny Colvin to help. Or they could use a tough mayor like Guiliani. Too bad they can't do stop and frisk.

[–] hammerbutt 8 years ago

One of the writers was Ed Burns he was a Baltimore detective for 20 years and a teacher for 7. I'm not saying this means they didn't dramatize things but he was in those rooms he certainly knows how it really goes

[–] dmcreif 8 years ago

The basic code of The Wire is that police brutality is considered acceptable when it's inflicted on hoodlums, and anyone else who's in "the game." If it's inflicted on a "taxpayer" (a regular citizen not involved in the drug game), it's not okay. That's why no one really cares that much about Bird being subject to a beating while in the interrogation room, while Carver writes Colicchio up after Colicchio assaults a schoolteacher who was politely asking him to just move his car.

[–] samhmd-7489 8 years ago

Also, they have limits to how brutal they can be. When Prez blinded a friggin teenager just for mouthing off to him the others were all like "Whoa, what the Hell man? Never go that far!"

So even guys like Herc know that there's some stuff that's just outright wrong.