Dirty Cops: Making All Cops Look Bad?

"The Shield" is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. It is about a police division in LA and a unit within that division called the "Strike Team". This team is an anti-gang unit which is composed of 4 members, with Vic Mackey being the leader. While the Strike Team is very effective, they use very unlawful and at time unethical means of getting their jobs done.

This TV series actually addressees many cultural issues throughout its 7 season run. Some of these include power, identity, sex, homosexuality, religion and race. These cops are more or less "dirty" as they do whatever it takes to get results. This sometimes included excess violence, planting evidence, and giving drug dealers "free passes" in return for information about a bigger dealer. The Strike Team cannot help but get mixed up with the money that can come of all the drug trades. They offer such "free passes" or protection services in return for profits from the drug trades. The Strike Team even robbed the Armenian mob of a lot of money. What does this say about power issues? Essentially, The Strike Team feels power over everyone else they deal with in the show. They feel that although they are the law, they are above the law and can get away with just about anything. They feel a sense of power over these drug dealers and even more power when they get away with their unethical methods. What does this say to our society about cops? I feel that it may to some extent make it seems like cops cant be trusted because you never know which ones are going to be dirty. "The Shield" does a good job of masking this a little bit by showing the soft sides of each of these cops. Instead of Vic Mackey being the leader of a terrible dirty cop scheme, he is also a loving father with a family that he cares a lot about. On the other hand, the show also bring on themes of the public being outraged at the police and retaliating against them.

The show goes into further issues in culture such as homosexuality and religion through a cop who is very religious and also homosexual and is having a difficult time coping with both. Additionally, the former police captain gets sexually assaulted and has to deal with that traumatic experience throughout the whole show. An almost constant theme in this show is race.

It is actually surprising to me now to look back and see that this show actually covered almost every cultural theme we have studied in class and they did a good job of addressing it all.