DNA results aren’t immediate
TV shows would have you believe that fingerprints are collected, analysed, and matched to a human all within the space of minutes or hours at a stretch. One show guilty of this is CSI: Law & Order where DNA evidence is dropped off at the lab by a detective only for the forensic scientist to process the evidence and come up with a perfect match that very same day. It’s just not realistic. In reality, processing this evidence can take weeks, and only cases with the strongest DNA evidence are worth processing due to prioritisation and budget issues.
Crime scene tampering
A lot of crime shows are more focused on showing the detectives being cool than accurately depicting how crime scenes should be treated. Because of this, shows like forensic comedy Bones show the detectives blatantly tampering with the crime scene. Not only do they touch objects and move them around, but they can even be seen touching the bodies of victims! Some episodes even see detectives remove an object from the crime scene before it’s time to do so.
The lack of paperwork
Cop shows need to hold the attention of people watching and so they tend to focus on the action, rather than showing characters completing hours of paperwork. This makes the shows wildly inaccurate. Brooklyn 99, for example, focuses on a new case in nearly every episode and includes chases, stakeouts, the lot. While report writing and filing is sometimes mentioned, it is hardly crucial to the plot, even though in reality police officers say that paperwork takes up the majority of their time!
The working hours
Television producers want the lives of fictional characters to seem more exciting and intense than those of ordinary people. One way of doing this is to show them working extra long hours to finish a case, which happens often in the German series Tatort. In the real life, the working hours of police are the same as they are for people in most industries: about eight hours a day, five days a week. Tasks can be passed on to other officers and are generally not as urgent as crime series’ would have you believe.
Solving cases quickly
While the working hours are not as long as these shows would have you believe, the speed at which detectives solve cases is actually much longer than you might think. Most cop shows, including comedic ones like Psych, have a new case every episode, with the process of assignment to solving all happening across a couple of days. This is so that one can start watching the show at any episode and still find it compelling, but it’s not realistic.
Violent interrogation
In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Detective Stabler beats a suspect to get information out of them. This could not be further from how interrogations at a police station actually work. If a suspect were to be beaten, a complaint would be filed immediately and the officer who perpetrated the act would be removed from the case forthwith. Interrogation is a non-violent procedure.
Use of guns
While police officers, including detectives, do all tend to be armed in the United States, that does not mean those firearms see much use. Most police procedurals will show an officer shooting a gun at some point in every episode, but the truth is that most police officers never fire a gun in the field in their entire career. That statistic really shows you how unrealistic the frequency of firearm use in police dramas is.
The appearance
The police wear a uniform, yes, but they’re not on the job to look good. The idea that detectives look like superstars is reserved for TV shows, where the producers want the audience to drool over their character of choice. People who actually work on the force are just ordinary people who look more like Brenda and Harold down the street than a swimsuit model on a billboard.
The outfits
In shows like The Mentalist everyone associated with the force is dressed exceptionally. They wear tailored designer suits and even the police officers’ uniforms look like they were made to measure. In reality, things are pretty different. Like in any other public sector role, people wear whatever they can find that is both appropriate for the workplace and fits.
The role of detectives
Watching many police procedurals can get you wondering what detectives actually do, or rather, what they don’t do. This is because television detectives often do everything under the sun! In The Wire, for example, detectives analyse evidence, interview suspects, investigate crime scenes and chase perpetrators. When it comes down to it though, detectives are just investigators who work with other experts to solve the case. They don’t do it all!
