Police procedural dramas on TV are very exciting, well-scripted and acted thrillers. The Law and Order franchise, The Closer and its follow up series Major Crimes, the old Columbo series featuring everyone’s favourite rumpled, brilliant detective – these are very entertaining programmes. They are also examples of the ubiquitous phenomenon known as copaganda – unrealistically positive and heroised versions of police officers on TV.

The TV networks are saturated with police dramas. They feature a range of characters and intricate storylines. Whether they are semi-comical goofy characters, or hard-nosed ethically upright partisans of the law, police and detective portrayals on TV and in film are a ubiquitous feature of our pop culture. They are very entertaining, but also misleading us in the way the police and justice system works.

The job of policing can be dangerous and stressful. Catching violent offenders is a perilous business; solving gruesome homicides can be traumatic for the officers involved. The killings of police officers at Wieambilla, Queensland, by vicious and fanatical ultrarightist survivalists was very saddening. Police dramas on TV however, are more about public relations and promoting a positive view of police forces in general.

Why raise the topic of copaganda? Adam Johnson, writing in AlterNet magazine, explains it this way:

Media critics spend a lot of time discussing how our military industry manipulates the press into war and bloated defense budgets. Far less time, however, is spent discussing how our local police departments plays the media to suit their ends. The reason for this mostly has to do with the fragmented nature of localized propaganda, combined with a prejudice that police aren’t very savvy.

Increasing funding for the police is easily achieved when a population is hooked on the appealing diet of copaganda. If the corporate media, fed by stories from the police PR departments, that street crime is on the rise, surely the solution is more police and prisons? This distracts us from two observations; first, that police funding has increased exponentially over the years, and second, that the problem street crime is wildly exaggerated, while corporate malfeasance and tax evasion reach unprecedented levels.

Corporate crime, while involving billions of dollars and tainting our financial institutions, makes for boring TV. Police procedural programmes are soap opera dramas, full of excitement, car chases, shootouts, forensic investigations featuring dedicated coroners, handsome David Caruso clashing with his fellow officers regarding some crucial piece of DNA evidence; what drama is there in tax evasion, which robs workers of their wages?

An Australian Senate Committee, in 2019/20, investigated the sustained, systematic and shocking magnitude of wage theft in Australia. The ABC summarised the findings of these investigations, and stated that billions of dollars in unpaid wages and superannuation was uncovered. Hospitality, universities and cleaning were just some of the industries where wage theft was rife.

Uncovering and prosecuting such systematic malfeasance takes persistence, poring through financial records, analysing the application of fiduciary obligations and identifying the areas of accounting deception – all very necessary, but hardly corresponding to the image of the heroic detectives waging a relentless war on crime we see on TV and in film. No car chases, no gunfights, no serial killers – but there are serial offenders in business suits.

Enforcing environmental regulations is necessary to protect human and animal life. Water pollution by large corporations leads to the deaths of people from various diseases and medical conditions, including cancer. Lives lost and marred by pollutants is a huge criminal problem, requiring the enforcement of clean air and water regulations. This requires the cooperation of victims, medical personnel, as well as police and law enforcement. Companies which pollute the environment hardly make the headlines.

Air pollution, while a serious and criminal cause of death and disease for thousands of Australians each year, barely registers headlines in the evening news. Where are the CSI teams of detectives, performing forensic analyses of air quality, determining the impact of pollutants on human health, and tracking down the culprits who caused the resultant deaths?

By emphasising the role that police play in taking down individual felons and street crime, particularly targeting people of colour and from ethnic minorities, copaganda builds upon a stereotype of ethnic crime. Racialised opinion pieces in the corporate media promote a vision of ethnic groups as abysmal swamps of crime. This skews our perception of police conduct, in particular, the violence of militarised police against ethnic communities.

Breonna Taylor, an African American emergency medical technician, was shot dead by police in her home while she slept. She was 26 years old in 2020. Police entered her home under the no-knock policy implemented by officers in Louisville, Kentucky. That means they were not required to identify themselves as police officers. Plain clothes officers used a battering ram to forcibly enter her premises.

Claiming that they were under fire from occupants in the house, the officers fired off multiple rounds, killing Taylor in her sleep. Kenneth Walker, her boyfriend who was present at the shooting, is a licensed firearms holder. He believed he was confronting home invaders. He survived the incident, and gave his account to the police.

None of the officers involved in the Taylor homicide were charged with murder. Her case is not unusual; there has been a spate of police killings in the US, targeting the African American community. Police departments and their vast arsenal of PR have swung into action, promoting images of officers taking a knee, holding black children for safety and solidarity. Once the cameras are gone, protesters and black communities have borne the brunt of police violence. Kneeling with anti-police brutality protesters one minute, beating the crap out of them the next.

But surely there are just a few bad apples? You know, a few rotten fruit must not be allowed to spoil the entire barrel? I understand the sentiment, because it originates with our culturally pervasive, heavily fictionalised background portrayal of police as essentially positive upstanding stars doing a difficult job in stressful circumstances. That argument of a ‘few bad apples’ is irrelevant. Airline pilots, surgeons, construction workers, paramedics, firefighters – all have difficult and stressful jobs. Any corruption or incompetence on their part would be met with the full force of the law, no excuses.

The esteemed Sir Stephen House, formerly the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police in Britain, admitted that the problems of corruption and abuse of power by UK police is not a question of just a few ‘bad apples’. He dismissed such folksy, simple slogans and demanded concrete solutions. Be that as it may, the argument of ‘bad apples’ frames the conversation about police on the basis of our fictionalised copaganda stereotype.

If you want to enjoy police procedural dramas on TV and in film, please do so. Just be mindful that the cheery, Heartbeat-style officer you see on the TV screen has more to do with copaganda than reality. Let’s be more aware of how pervasive copaganda influences our conversations around law enforcement.