it’s kind of strange to me that even right now, people can uphold b99 as the ideal example show about “good cops” when people say “the only good cops are fictional”.
because…they’re not?
really, what makes the b99 characters “good cops”? is it that they’re feminist? anti-racist? because the characters perform a veneer of progressiveness that the show does not uphold?
because if you examine the character’s actions fully, it becomes obvious that they constantly violate prisoner’s rights, defy systemic regulations, act with impunity, and abuse their systemic power. what part of jake calling ICE on someone makes him a “good cop”? what part of arresting a black man on “suspicion” and interrogating him ~~~quirkily~~~ for hours on suspect charges makes him a good cop? does Rosa’s temper flare ups that leads to physical abuse of prisoners make her different from the NYPD literally doing the same thing right now? does jake sneaking into a psychiatrist’s office “on a hunch” without a warrant and violating several privacy laws make him a “good example” of policing? does Hitchcock’s constant sexual harassment of his colleagues make him a “good cop”?
Brooklyn 99 loves doing “special episodes” on homophobia, misogyny and racism within the police force but without actually confronting the actual consequences of those prejudices – that is, how much institutional power the police holds, and how that prejudice actually plays out on its interactions with civilians. it has only shown its “good cop” protagonists as being the victims of systemic prejudice, all at the same showing those very same protagonists enforcing the exact procedures that allowed the real police to enact state violence upon lgbt and minority communities.
Adamantly lauding the show as the “one true bastion of good cops” ignores that a) this isn’t true b) the show exists because people are lulled into trusting a violent system, and hoping that its violence will never touch them. It is built on the audience’s prolonged need for order and authority, but mostly it is built on the social contract that law enforcement exists protect you, instead as a means to protect the status quo of power. It is built on the assumption that a majority of its viewers (i.e. those who are not Black or not American) will never face police violence in person and that the system is worthy of being upheld rather than abolished. The show relies on the idea that policing is inherently good and bad policing is caused by bad individuals, rather than a rotten institution that corrupts good people, and allows bad cops enact state violence without consequence.
It similarly excuses rule-breaking from the protagonists because it relies on the audience good faith that the protagonists are going after breaking those rules to pursue “bad people”. The reality is that the more b99 justifies rogue policing tactics as a justified response, the more we are indoctrinated to believe that the system works.
we can talk about how “fiction is fiction” and it’s not supposed to represent reality, but that just raises the question: whose reality? because as more and more people fall victim to police brutality, the ability to separate fictionalised police brutality from reality become all the more fragile. by this point, over a dozen countries have seen political uprisings and violent police action from 2019. more and more people are unable to separate the line between Cool Quirky Cops using military weapons against civilians from their own traumatic experiences of brutal police crackdown.
