Cops - class traitors?

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Are cops the private security guards of the capitalist system? Is there such a thing as a good cop?

Ironically, detective novels and cop shows are a genre favoured by many left-leaning authors such as the late Henning Mankell, and favoured by many left-leaning readers. The same can be said of TV shows like The Wire or, back in the day, Hill Street Bues. Is that a contradiction?

I suppose the turning point was Raymond Chandler, who turned the figure of the private detective from a dodgy corporate mercenary and enemy of the working class (the first known detective ageny was called "Le Bureau des Renseignements Universels pour le commerce et l'Industrie" and employed ex-cons) to a skeptic witness of capitalist corruption.

Are cop shows/novels the new Western? The default genre to speak of other things without necessarily taking sides?

[Gangster Octopus]

Cops - class traitors?

If you're going to do that, you should write it without any paragraph breaks...

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Cops - class traitors?

Is that a yes then?

[Ginger Yellow]

Cops - class traitors?

I think cop shows are just the default genre full-stop, at least in the US. Looking at the US TV schedules it boggles my mind how many are police/FBI/made-up-agency procedurals (sometimes with a twist!), and for that matter how popular hoary old shows like NCIS and the infinity CSI spin-offs are. I

[Amor de Cosmos]

Cops - class traitors?

I suppose the turning point was Raymond Chandler, who turned the figure of the private detective from a dodgy corporate mercenary and enemy of the working class (the first known detective ageny was called "Le Bureau des Renseignements Universels pour le commerce et l'Industrie" and employed ex-cons) to a skeptic witness of capitalist corruption.

Dashiel Hammett is a better candidate. Not only because he preceded Chandler by a decade or so, but also because his writing pretty much defined the genre for the next half-century.

He was also consistently very left wing throughout his life. An activist before WW2 and, both blacklisted after the HUAC hearings and imprisoned under the Smith Act, afterwards.

[NickSTFU]

Cops - class traitors?

Albóndigas wrote: Are cops the private security guards of the capitalist system? Is there such a thing as a good cop?

I dunno. I'll ask a couple of my mates and brother who are cops what they think.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Cops - class traitors?

Albóndigas wrote: Are cops the private security guards of the capitalist system? Is there such a thing as a good cop?

Are there some cops who in their day-to-day lives are decent people? Who approach their job with honesty and integrity and fairness? Yeah, probably.

But the rules of the game are rigged to favour one set of players and the cops are there to ensure we have to play by those rules.

ergo ACAB

(the fact that the institution of the police protects those who are incompetent, bigoted or dangerously violent - often all three -is sort of besides the point).

[Amor de Cosmos]

Cops - class traitors?

In the Hammett/Chandler/Macdonald era, the cops were almost always the foil for the hero/PI. Reliably dim, easily bought off, and — ultimately — an inconsequential obstacle to solving the crime. They did serve the system, but did so ineffectually.

Things changed in the 70s, when the independent PI became the free-thinking/operating cop. Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan (the most significant character to mark the shift) had all the attributes of Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, or (especially) Mike Hammer but operated from within the system. Naturally, no police officer would be actually given the laissez-faire of Dirty Harry. But that didn't matter, his actions validated the role of the police at a time when their public image in the US was at a particularly low ebb (kinda like now.) No longer thick-skulled, violent, dimwits just following orders, they were suddenly cool, smart-talking, men of action.

Personally I preferred the earlier version.

[Cesar Rodriguez]

Cops - class traitors?

US cops are, according to my friend from French Guiana, the modern day plantation overseers.

I must admit I have much sympathy for his point of view, there is a reason why their work is described as law enforcement rather than upholding the law. There is no implied consent in the term enforcement, it is simply do as I say or face the consequences and that is the way they approach their work.

[Ginger Yellow]

Cops - class traitors?

That said, Serpico. Also, while I'm in no way endorsing its politics, even within Dirty Harry, Magnum Force had him pitted against vigilante cops.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Cops - class traitors?

Hammett was such a great prose stylist, I love the little I've read by him.

Police aren't all one thing or all another, but you do need them just as much as you need a government or an army of some description. One ex-cop I spoke to said you get two types in the police: those who like people and those who like power. That sounds about right to me.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Cops - class traitors?

Amor de Cosmos wrote: I suppose the turning point was Raymond Chandler, who turned the figure of the private detective from a dodgy corporate mercenary and enemy of the working class (the first known detective ageny was called "Le Bureau des Renseignements Universels pour le commerce et l'Industrie" and employed ex-cons) to a skeptic witness of capitalist corruption.

Dashiel Hammett is a better candidate. Not only because he preceded Chandler by a decade or so, but also because his writing pretty much defined the genre for the next half-century.

He was also consistently very left wing throughout his life. An activist before WW2 and, both blacklisted after the HUAC hearings and imprisoned under the Smith Act, afterwards.

I actually had Hammett in mind when I wrote Chandler, especially considering his own political views.

I guess the genre could be split in several subgenres:

Good vs Evil: Dirty Harry, Hawaii Five-0. Vaguely superhuman cops fight scumbags. Scumbags bite the dust. 'Go ahead, punk, make my day'. 'Book him, Danno'.

Gentle Cop: Columbo, Scandinavian detective fiction. The main character is an utterly nice guy who cleanly solves whodunnits.

Procedurals: Hill Street Blues, NCIS, The Bill. More ore less realistic, matter-of-fact representation of police work.

Critical: Show corruption within the force (Serpico. Magnum Force). In Magnum Force, Harry Callahan fought police vigilantes. This was a response to accusations of apology of vigilantism addressed to Dirty Harry.

For a show that was pretty much straight explotation, Miami Vice had a surprisingly critical edge. The show depicts small-time crooks as victims trying to get by and was especially sympathetic to prostitutes. There are dirty cops. The permanent moral of the show seems to be that the rich and powerful (literally) get away with murder and the weak and vulnerable always lose. Remarkably for a mainstream 80s show it questioned the 'war on drugs' and highlighted how US involvement in Latin America served corporate interests. Tubbs and Crockett frequently question the point of their job and they actually quit the force in the end.

Back in the real world, one of the most depressing scenifications of the sense of entitlement was NYPD literally turning their backs on mayor Di Blasio, elected by the people they're supposed to serve. This scenified the caste mentality within police forces, no doubt intensified by the fact that families tend to perpetuate themselves to a point that they lose contact with the society they're supposed to serve, leading to a culture of entitlement which expects the mayor to serve the police rather than the people.

[Sam]

Cops - class traitors?

Anyone fancy recommending a Hammett or two to read? I've seen the film of The Maltese Falcon, which is magnificent, but haven't read any of his writing.

[beak]

Cops - class traitors?

Albóndigas wrote: Are cops the private security guards of the capitalist system?

Of course.

Is there such a thing as a good cop?

Harder to say.

Don't know enough about fictional policing to weigh in on that front, tho my girlfriend used to watch a lot of the modern stuff that I found ideologically horrific.

[ursus arctos]

Cops - class traitors?

Sam, Falcon is quite good, and I'm also quite partial to Red Harvest, which features a protagonist called The Continental Op. Unlike the Sam Spade stories, it is possible to read the Op tales without thinking about Humphrey Bogart all the time.

The Op, and Hammett's other creations, may be best seen in the stories he wrote for the pulps, which are collected here.

The Library of America also has a volume with all five novels, including The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest

[Sam]

Cops - class traitors?

Thanks ursus, that gives me something to refine my searches with. I know he was influential, but searching for him on Amazon UK's Kindle store doesn't half bring up a lot of results which are books written by people who are/were not Dashiel Hammett.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Cops - class traitors?

Yes.

[Guy Profumo]

Cops - class traitors?

Given the "cops" unambiguously mobilised to defend the Blackshirts in 1936, and aligned themselves with the scabs in the 80s.

I can't even see where there's a debate.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Cops - class traitors?

Sam wrote: Anyone fancy recommending a Hammett or two to read? I've seen the film of The Maltese Falcon, which is magnificent, but haven't read any of his writing.

There are only five novels, those mentioned by ursus, plus The Dain Curse, The Glass Key and The Thin Man. They're all worth reading. There are also scads of short stories, some of which form the basis of the novels.

The first two novels also feature the 'Continental Op.' But the latter is quite different. The 'tecs are Nick and Nora Charles (very loosely based on Hammett himself and long-time partner Lillian Hellman.) The setting is upper class NY society, and there's a good deal more banter (and drinking!) than in the other books. It was immensely popular in it's day, as were the series of "Thin Man" films that followed. The income from them basically allowed Hammett to survive the years of blacklist and jail.

[ursus arctos]

Cops - class traitors?

Of course, the Thin Man films feature Myrna Loy, who discerning film buffs would pay to see buying groceries.

The Op and Spade are different, though more similar with each other than they are with Nick and Nora, who inhabit a completely different world.

The ability to create such memorable characters in different registers is to me one sign of Hammett's quality as a writer.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Cops - class traitors?

Something that should be remembered when watching US cop shows, is back in the 1930's the Italian dominated 'commission', convinced New York's leading Gangster, Oweny Madden to go into retirement, and hand over the city on the grounds that the Irish controlled every branch of organized crime, from the judiciary down to the firemen, and they were being greedy.

At what point did the police stop being the biggest and most dangerous gang in any city? Or is that a naieve question?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Cops - class traitors?

Good vs Evil: Dirty Harry, Hawaii Five-0. Vaguely superhuman cops fight scumbags. Scumbags bite the dust. 'Go ahead, punk, make my day'. 'Book him, Danno'.

Gentle Cop: Columbo, Scandinavian detective fiction. The main character is an utterly nice guy who cleanly solves whodunnits.

Procedurals: Hill Street Blues, NCIS, The Bill. More ore less realistic, matter-of-fact representation of police work.

Critical: Show corruption within the force (Serpico. Magnum Force). In Magnum Force, Harry Callahan fought police vigilantes. This was a response to accusations of apology of vigilantism addressed to Dirty Harry.

I don't think it categorises quite that neatly when you move away from the USA.

Traditionally the police in British detective fiction, for example, tend to be more sympathetic and likely to assist — while remaining subservient to — the protagonist. This goes back to Holmes and Lestrade, but is consistent through 'Golden Age' cosies from Christie through Sayers. In the 70s the Brit 'tec also became a policeman (P.D. James, Rendell, Hill etc.) but, unlike their American counterparts, they never became vigilantes. They always worked within the system, and usually collaboratively.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Cops - class traitors?

Sam wrote: Anyone fancy recommending a Hammett or two to read? I've seen the film of The Maltese Falcon, which is magnificent, but haven't read any of his writing.

I like this one (the jacket design for this Penguin crime series is all this good, by the way):

[Borracho]

Cops - class traitors?

I know two serving gardai and one retired one.

Of the active ones, one likes his job and the other (aged in late 50s) is seriously disillusioned. The latter once told me: "Never trust a guard."

The retired one clocked out early, having brought a court case against his superiors after being constructively dismissed over a number of years due to him solving a case too quickly (it had been earmarked for a much higher-ranking officer's pet prodigy). They took his gun and his car off him before he quit and launched legal action.

I've seen the antics of gardai down the country, in particular, strolling into pubs and chippers and being served pints and snack boxes before walking out and not paying for them. When that kind of stuff filters down to the privates and corporals, it's because it's coming from the very top. That's before we get anywhere near the serious stuff which has resulted in tribunals and so forth.

There are decent gardai, but the peer pressure is monumental.

[ursus arctos]

Cops - class traitors?

One of my partners was a NYPD cop for almost 20 years before becoming a lawyer.

He would echo much of what Calx just said.