Sometimes, it feels like every other TV show or streaming series exists to elevate law enforcement or features a quirky outsider working with the cops. The police system as a whole is usually painted as a positive force, with any issues reduced to one-off, rogue cop incidents. This depiction of law enforcement may not seem like a big deal, but it definitely has an impact on the way the public perceives the police. When the police are constantly shown as heroes with a few bad apples, it leads people to believe that all of the issues with the police are just a few isolated incidents. While people who are more politically aware or have had negative experiences with the police might be able to see past this propaganda, recent months have shown that people are willing to ignore and explain away even the most obvious of bigoted acts. 

This type of media portrayal is commonly referred to as “copaganda,” which civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis defines as “creating a gap between what police actually do and what people think they do.” Everything from depicting law enforcement as infallible to blurring the lines between what cops legally can and cannot do falls under the copaganda umbrella. 

There’s a whole genre of TV show dedicated to police and other law enforcement, including the subgenre of private detectives and consultants who assist them. Shows like Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Psych all contain copaganda, and so do most other cop shows you can think of, albeit to varying degrees. It’s important to note, however, that these shows shouldn’t necessarily be avoided just because they contain harmful ideas. It’s okay to like shows with copaganda, but they should be approached critically. 

Even portrayals that try to challenge some of the issues with police tend to fall into promoting the idea that they are all the fault of “a few bad apples.” Such portrayals divert all blame away from the system, leading the viewer to think negatively of the offending individual cop, without deeper consideration of the root causes of, say, police brutality. Copaganda aims to give the idea that the police as a whole are good-hearted people who only want to help, and every problematic cop is just an anomaly that has managed to slip through the cracks. 

When so many shows present this idea of police abuse being the fault of only a few bad cops, with the main characters all being one of “the good ones,” the majority of people are going to assume that that’s the case. It’s an idea that is reinforced over and over by multiple different shows, which makes it even more pervasive and even more likely to be believed. 

The problems aren’t simply in the way that the system is portrayed, but also the things that are shown as acceptable cop behavior. In SVU, police characters scream at and physically assault suspects on multiple occasions, and they get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Elliot Stabler, a main character of SVU up until season twelve and Law & Order: Organized Crime, is shown to have used excessive force on multiple suspects, including an occasion where he chased down a teenage suspect and beat him to death. 

While he may not be a dirty cop per say, he’s certainly an abusive one. Stabler also doesn’t face many long term consequences for his behavior, which is made clear when he is hired for the Organized Crime unit despite his history of being overly aggressive with suspects and being in over a dozen officer-involved shootings. He’s only suspended once or twice despite his laundry list of arrestable offenses.

Even the generally progressive shows that are more than willing to confront issues of gender, race, and sexuality tend to avoid confronting the issues with the police system at large. The show 9-1-1, which follows a group of first responders, has an LAPD sergeant named Athena Grant as its only main cop character. Athena’s storyline is full of instances of her abusing her power to threaten people. Athena faces no consequences for her actions, and she actually excuses multiple cases of other cops abusing their power. Athena is a Black woman, a cop, and a mother, but she always seems to put being a cop first. 

A season three episode features Athena’s family being pulled over in a racially-motivated traffic stop, where her son Harry is almost shot. The cops only relent and change their tune when her ex husband name-drops Athena. When Athena’s family gets home and tells her what happened, her response is to tell her family that they’ll file a complaint. When Michael and May, Athena’s ex-husband and teenage daughter, point out that it’s likely nothing will happen to the cops, Athena’s first reaction is to explain away the behavior of the cops. She says that they were “afraid” and “overreacted,” and considers the situation from the perspective of a cop who’s done traffic stops instead of the perspective of a woman whose family just went through a traumatic situation at the hands of the police.

Athena is so blindly loyal to being a cop that she refuses to see that the problem isn’t localized to these two cops, but to the system that allows them to do things like this traffic stop and then face minimal consequences. For the same reason, she tells her daughter that “the good [cops] outnumber the bad” when May asks how she can be a cop considering the way they treat Black people. This is the message that the show wants the viewer to take away: the police force is almost entirely good cops, but the bad ones are just talked about more. 

In the end, Athena pulls over the cop who did the traffic stop for drunk driving and gives him a field sobriety test. He says that he has had “a few beers,” but whether or not Athena was right to pull him over doesn’t matter when her motivations are taken into account. Viewers are supposed to see this as a satisfying moment of revenge for Athena, but it just comes off as a petty, useless act, where Athena abuses her power in order to punish another cop for doing the same thing. Her actions make her no different from this cop: someone who is more than willing to exploit her position and push the boundaries of the law to get the outcome she wants. The man deserves to have to feel the fear that May, Harry, and Michael felt, but Athena’s actions do nothing to fix the actual problem with the system or even with the cop. 

The cop is annoyed and inconvenienced, but he isn’t going to change his behavior. He doesn’t even seem to realize that he’s wrong because he’s a power-drunk racist; he only apologizes because the victims of his actions are the family of an LAFD sergeant. Next time, the people he pulls over might not be as lucky. The cop faces no further consequences, although the police chief, Athena’s boss, tells her that she’ll push for a suspension, but it’s unlikely it’ll happen despite his documented history of abusing his power and mistreating numerous Black and Brown people. This comment gives the impression that the police chief has no control over the consequences that cops face, and that it’s instead under the control of some unnamed force. And the cop who pulled his gun faces no consequences whatsoever, even from Athena. 

There are no good cops when the system functions the way it does, because there are either bad cops or there are blind cops. No one is changing the system from the inside; they’re perpetuating it. Nothing about the system changes, because they are not trying to change it. 

ACAB, or All Cops Are B*stards, is a common protest chant for a reason. But the people who are politically aware enough to be going to protests are oftentimes the people who are likely to think more critically about the messages that a police show wants to impart on its viewers. 

Throughout history, law enforcement has abused its power—disproportionately so against Black and Brown people—and few cops have faced any real consequences. The police system is rigged, and people are tired of having to accept a system that constantly prioritizes its own members over the community that they are supposed to serve and protect. 

Don’t just blindly accept the way that law enforcement is portrayed on TV, but instead consider: what does the show want you, the viewer, to take away about what is and isn’t okay for the cops to do?