The commissioner that replaced Gordon was so dumb.
a. let's distract batman while the Joker is in public
b. let's prioritize catching Batman instead of the Joker
c. let's shoot live rounds at a teenage girl hanging on to a helicopter
d. and the worst one of all: "If its not a cop... shoot it!"
I mean... really?
I think your opinion is colored by your understanding of the characters. WE know that the Joker is an extreamly dangerous lunatic but the people of this piece haven't subject to the Joker in decades. To them he is an old man, a cursorily and even a bit of a joke. The Joker states openly that he plans to kill everyone in the audience of the show he's on and the host only says, "Really...now that's just rude!"
The Batman, on the other hand, has actually terrified the city with his antics up to that point up to (and including) releasing Scarecrow gas onto the police stationed on the Gotham Twin Towers during the Two Face attack.
Vigilantes has always been particularly despised by the police even in the real world because taking the law into your own hands is considered more dangerous than being a criminal. That's just the way it is and you have to remember that in this story the public is against Batman...he is a super and supers have been outlawed to the point where even mentioning Superman's name on camera will get your show preempted.
All those things add up for some really jacked up cops to start shooting at anything that resembles Batman or his accomplices. After all, how many times to you hear about unarmed kids getting shot by a cop because the cop panics in sudden crisis.
The real issue here is that we know and love Batman and so, by default, anyone that gets in Batman's way is a villain. But, from the police's point of view, Batman is a dangerous lunatic who cripples their friends for doing their job.
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There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who get binary and those who don't.
Very true.
But you left out a couple reasons:
- OLD cops are shown as supporting Batman (those who actually saw or even interacted with him in the past). It's the new guys who never did who are easily put against him.
- The public is in fact SPLIT on the subject (same reason as above). Some support him (those saved by his actions), some do not (those who have not experienced real crime). No one in the story ever ponders whether Batman will one day turn on the citizens and start hurting/killing innocents (main reason why he never kills even the worst of the worst, to ensure he never loses public support without which he cannot operate).
- The government (Reagan) wants him out most than anyone else because he's a normal human being (not an alien), who can especially inspire people to rise (he's human, if he can so can they) and (they fear) take on the government itself. Nothing more dangerous than a population willing to rise against the government.
- Local politicians however don't really care since they have to deal with the crime wave firsthand (unlike Reagan) and thus can benefit from Batman's actions and their inaction on the subject.
If u watch carefully, Batman cripples the bad guys. He disarms the cops and knocks them down but never injured them permanently. The cops that got injured were from friendly fire from bad aiming.
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