The guy in the interrogation room is picking his nose while the cops grill him. That seems real.
An angry cop and a defiant suspect use the N-word up close at each other. That seems real too.
There are cops who drink too much because they are lonely and bad guys who lie as though they were telling the truth. That’s real.
And the detective that Dennis Franz plays–Andy Sipowicz on “NYPD Blue”–with his worn-out eyes, slight paunch, bad tie and a growl, is the essence of the Chicago Area 4 burglary dick. He seems very real.
Realism seems to be the trademark of the current TV cop programs, and there are a slew of them. Which contributes to their popularity these days, with ABC’s “NYPD Blue” and NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” starting their fourth seasons this fall and Fox’s “New York Undercover” into its third.
It’s supposed to be “just like real life,” David Milch, a writer for “NYPD,” told a reporter in 1993 about his show. But even “real life” can be a relative term. What looks like the real thing to an average viewer appears, more often than not, absurd to a police officer.
“The show `Homicide’ is ridiculous,” says Dan Godsel, who is on a West Side tactical unit. “Every cop on it is an emotional wreck. They should all be in for counseling. The first episode was good. I watched it. But after that it became politically correct and it was trash. The woman sergeant on the show, with the loose hair and no makeup–someone like her doesn’t belong on the street. She is deranged and belongs in a psycho ward.”
In one “Homicide” scene last season, a detective leaned into the face of a skinhead and with curled lip threatened: “Our bosses don’t care who is guilty. They just want the case closed. . . . We are going to twist the facts and taint the evidence until you are guilty. You think cops are capable of anything, don’t you? We are going to execute you and we are not going to think about it when we kiss our loved ones goodnight.”
“The cops on these shows do things we’d get indicted for,” says youth officer Kim Anderson. “The writers may call these shows real but that’s their word, not ours. I think it was on `NYPD Blue’ that two detectives were in a squadroom and wanted to get a suspect to confess, but he was a junkie and wanted his methadone. So the two detectives went over to his house, got his methadone, gave it to him and he confessed.
“Get real! We can’t dispense medicine or pills. We’d be liable for whatever they take. If they need medicine, you take them to the hospital. That is Hollywood reality, not cop reality.”
Some have wondered whether these programs are giving away the cops’ secrets of dealing with suspects.
“Tactically these shows give away nothing,” says Lt. Phil Cline, commander of detectives at Grand and Central. “Technologically, they show a few things we’d rather not have become common knowledge–like hiding a wire in a beeper.”
“I don’t know what secrets there are to give away,” says officer Jim Hennigan. “But you now keep running into people who think they know what you do because they watch these programs. . . . There is an endless fixation for cops. I don’t know why we are so exotic . . . there’s 12,000 of us in Chicago.”
“I think the worst thing these programs do is influence juries. They’ve seen the programs and think what they see is reality,” says one gang crimes officer. “They see the cops on these shows saying, `Let’s put up a wire,’ and bang! in five minutes they got a wire and tape the bad guy. It doesn’t work like that. You seldom get a wire because it takes weeks for permission to do that. So these people see that and think it is done all the time then they get on a jury and you put a case before them and they sit and wonder, `Gee, if they really had something on the guy, they would have taped him. They would have had a wire.’ That’s not reality. But they don’t know that.”
“On these cop shows they shoot someone and then go home or go out drinking. It doesn’t work that way,” says officer Charlie Toussas, who is with the Chicago Police Department’s public housing unit. “If you even fire one bullet, you got 20 hours of paperwork and you get grilled by your superiors like you were the suspect.
“On these programs the cops never get outsmarted, the justice system never beats them, the police computers always work–what a joke, when they look for a suspect they find him right at his house, and when they shoot they never have to reload.
“Every murder suspect seems to live in a house with a vacuumed rug and a coffee pot on the stove. They don’t show what it is really like. Apartments with rat holes and roaches all over the tables and walls. A bunch of babies screaming with no diapers on and girlfriends of the bad guy screaming at you and a toilet that has never been flushed. Show me reality and maybe I’ll start watching those programs. I watch them now just to laugh.
“All the murders have a good plot–a complicated reason for killing someone,” says Toussas. “You know why people are killing each other? Cause mama’s food stamps are missing or someone dissed your girlfriend or stole your nickel bag of dope or wore the wrong color hat. That’s the stupid reasons people kill each other.”
“They do an awful lot of case solving with no paperwork and no court,” says Area 1 detective Al McGuire. “They don’t get into that. You can make a murder arrest that takes four years to go to trial. They don’t get into that either. I really don’t watch those cop programs much. You get enough of that stuff all day. I’d rather be watching `The Sound of Music.’ “
“The best show ever about cops was `Barney Miller,’ ” says Sgt. Buzzy Eichler of the 10th district tactical unit. “If you ever sat on a district desk on a Friday or Saturday night and watch what walks in, that’s `Barney Miller.’ That’s the closest I’ve seen to being real.”
Though romantic on the screen, few if any policemen describe their jobs that way. The reality officers see is what few other citizens would care to see for even one day. They would be shocked.
“If the average American saw what we see,’ says Toussas, “the way people live and treat their kids and kill each other–I mean in person, not on the tube–they would probably rise up in revolution because they couldn’t believe it.”
Officer Mary Jensen probably typifies most cops.
“When I am home and all the lights are out and I’m lying on the couch, relaxing and watching TV, I’m not watching `NYPD Blue’ or `Homicide.’ I’m watching Nick at Nite–`I Love Lucy’ or `Mary Tyler Moore’ and all those classics.
“And if I am real lucky, there’ll be a rerun of `Barney Miller.’ “
