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Every police show aggressively pushes the "civil rights bad" angle. Maybe once a season they will graciously consider "maybe civil rights good?" for part of an episode before concluding "no, civil rights bad."



It seems to be a hallmark of Dick Wolf's shows.

His son is getting into the act, but seems to be more interested in depicting "the right way."

His show is an Amazon show, named On Call: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14582876/

I enjoyed it.


I noticed the difference in this show as well, and I hope it continues.

Besides any conscious philosophy of the producers & writers, perhaps making the show more character driven as opposed to procedural has an impact on the stories. Maybe it's easier to understand when a suspect's rights are being violated (and to not be banal about it) when you're writing a deeper portrayal of the person who wields the power.


I always wanted to see a "pop up video" take on a cop show, where they have expository information and trivia from actual legal experts.

"Officer Jones just blew the entire chain of custody around the bloody knife"

"Flabbodell vs Borkweather says they have to give you access to counsel within X hours and they just ran out the clock"

"This type of traffic stop is explicitly forbidden in 17 states, including the one this show is nominally set in"


The sad thing about all those observations is, all these things surely happen anyway, and lots of people end up in jail anyway, because they don't have good representation to point out how they've been railroaded and they've got a plea bargain dangling in front of them.


People at least know "Nobody read me my rights", "I want to plead the Fifth", and "I want my lawyer" from seeing it on TV. If your arrestee-- or your jury pool-- has a higher level of awareness of common legal gotchas, they'd be able to demand a better deal. "I know you screwed up, the plea deal isn't good enough."


s/show/department/




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