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Dirty Cop - TV Tropes
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Dirty Cop
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"Mackey's not a cop. He's Al Capone with a badge."
Why they're in front of bars and not behind them, no one knows. The dirty cop often appears as a villain in both Cop Shows and Criminal Procedurals. This cop tampers with evidence to get an arrest, lets thugs off the hook for a bribe or discloses internals to the local mob. This cop may hand out vicious beatings or even worse to suspects or just anyone this cop doesn’t like, if not even worse. This cop makes most criminals and prisoners look like... well, saints.
Exactly how dirty a dirty cop is can range from simply taking bribes to let criminals get away with their crimes, to actively supporting the criminals, to being straight-up worse than the "regular" criminals who don't wear badges. A few non-villainous examples would instead let the hero bypass the Obstructive Bureaucracy or constraints of the law to carry out their mission, or help them to evade legal repercussions for their Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
While the Federal Bureau of Investigation is often portrayed as honest and upright, especially when directly compared to the CIA in stories, it is not unheard of for FBI agents to be portrayed as "Filthy Feds" on an individual or organizational level, in keeping with J. Edgar Hoover's controversial legacy.
All too often Truth in Television, for too many reasons to count.
See "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word, Cut Himself Shaving, Rabid Cop, Suspiciously Idle Officers (a corrupt employee is never seen doing their job), Bigot with a Badge, Prison Rape, Small-Town Tyrant, Lawman Gone Bad, etc. (especially Cowboy Cop and The Bad Guys Are Cops). If a cop outright murders people, you've got a Killer Cop. A dirty cop who gets sent to prison probably becomes a Pariah Prisoner, hated by regular inmates. A work which portrays nearly all cops as corrupt and/or incompetent is a World of Bad Cops, and a cop who isn't dirty when most of their colleagues are is a Token Good Cop. Compare Naughty Narcs where it is the Drug Enforcement Administration (or the equivalent drug squad) that is portrayed as corrupt and dirty.
If it is just a façade and the cop secretly has a heart of gold, it's Noble Bigot with a Badge.
I am shocked, SHOCKED to find Tropes going on in this establishment! Example subpages:
Other examples:
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Fan Works
- Coeur Al'Aran:
- The Eternal Crown: The Schnee Deterrence Corps are effectively Mistral's police force, and enforce the Schnee's totalitarian punitive law on the common folk. The fact that abuses of authority (including theft, violence, and sexual assault) by the SDC are ignored and tacitly encouraged is one of the main selling points for recruitment, as it attracts people resentful of their oppressed circumstances who are willing to betray their own people for a shred of power. They are essentially roving bands of thugs with the weight of a government behind their sadism.
- Remnant's Blonde Bard: Mistral has a corruption problem, and Jaune finds revealing Ms. Malachite's operation to the cops non-viable because it would require finding a clean cop with clean superiors and no moles in the department finding the report.
- Harry Potter and the Mind: Harry has a rather cynical view of law enforcement in general, as he states that other than a few starry-eyed youngsters thinking they can change the world for the better, the people who chose that career tend to be schoolyard bullies all grown-up. Lazy assholes who seek an easy job in which they can go on power trips and generally harass the population.
"There are two general kinds of person who become policemen, or aurors. One group is made up of starry-eyed young people who see opportunities, and want to change the world into a better place. Another group is made up of those who want an easy government job, and like to be able to bully and boss people around, ignore red lights, and steal an apple whenever they like.
"After the young idealists are on the force for a few years, they find out that they cannot change the world after all. So they become embittered and hardened to suffering, or leave the force. So who does that leave waking the beat? The bully. The bully is not your friend."
- Officer Macendale from Ultimate Spider-Woman is on the take from some powerful crime syndicates. However, he doesn't look the other way from crimes against mutants, because in his mind, they are as bad as he is since they justify hate with talk of protecting humanity.
- The entire Las Vegas police force in the Worm fanfic, Intrepid. Taylor's first tip-off was the fact that they responded so fast to her chase. The second is when they have someone flinging lightning around at them while the cops box them in.
- Deconstructed in Let the Galaxy Burn. Almost all of the Goldcloaks take bribes, but they don't do so because they're "evil" or "villains", but because they are poorly funded and so underpaid that they have to take bribes, as many of them can barely afford basic necessities on the salary they're paid. In particular, Janos Slynt is brave, cares about his men and fellow officers, works hard, and loves his family, to the point that part of why he takes bribes is so he can afford to give his children the education he never got. While some of them are cowards or assholes, those officers tend to be hated by the rest.
- Subverted in Risk It All. Ren expects Detectives Renee Montoya and Harvey Bullock to press gang him into talking by dangling his underage gambling over his head, but they simply leave their contact information before letting him keep his silence. But the GCPD's reputation for being corrupt still doesn't assuage Ren's fears.
- How Morgan was falsely convicted for stalking in Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises. After her failed attempt at stopping Julian's kidnapping, he worked with moles in the force to have her arrested, framed for stalking an assault, and had her hit with a memory drug during her confession to ensure her word was as unreliable as possible.
- A prequel Craig Of The Creek fanfiction inspired by the Warrant song of the same name tells of Craig recounting an experience the previous year with two cops who were dumping two bodies down a wishing well.
- In the NUMB3RS story Blaze Of Glory, Danny Levison who is a DEA agent and a friend of Don's from high school and the academy is revealed to have been taking money from drug dealers.
- The WWE alternate universe story, The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas, depicts the LVPD as full of corruption. Among the dirty cops are:
- Detective Daniel Bryan, who steers other cops away from the prostitution ring his wife and her sister run.
- Police commissioner Eric Bischoff, who stacks a multi-jurisdiction task force with hand-selected cops who he knows are on the take.
- Deputy commissioner Mike Mizanin, who is in the pocket of crime boss Charlotte Flair. In one phone exchange, he makes it very clear to Daniel Bryan that if Charlotte decides to kill him, he'll just sweep it under the rug.
- Lieutenant Tara Victoria, who is also on Charlotte's payroll. She tried to arrange the death of Detective Bayley Martinez for getting too close to uncovering her corruption, then tricked Bayley into shooting and killing her own partner, Alexa Bliss.
- Still to be determined if new detective Ember Moon is crooked as well.
- Ruby Pair: The law enforcement on Cyberflox are all corrupt and in the pocket of local criminals.
- There's No One Like You: The story is tagged "ACAB", standing for "All Cops Are Bastards", and it's fitting. Luz runs afoul of several such officers while rescuing Amity from the Siren Hotel, who arrest her and return Amity to Odalia. They later allow Odalia to kidnap her directly out of the station.
- In an Anti-Hero variation of the trope, Carmelita from Sly Cooper and Carmelita Fox and the Thievius raccoonus is the secret "Fourth Member" of the Cooper Gang, using her connections at Interpol to help gather intel for the gang and faking her hunt for them to maintain her cover. Since the Cooper Gang are an Anti-Hero Team of Karmic Thieves, she is less corrupt or Butt-Monkeyish than other examples.
- Turnabout Communication has quite a few of these, the most notable examples being the Augustus siblings, a couple of detectives who take bribes to destroy anyone they're asked to, with their most recent victim being Tadano whom they forced to do a False Confession. It's also mentioned that the current Chief of the police allows this behavior because she's in the payroll of the Yamai family, and even minor officers like the guard in the detention center are willing to violate the prisoners' rights while allowing corrupted lawyers who pay them well to get away with anything they want.
- One of the reasons why the abuse happening in Aldera went on for so long in Turning a New Leaf is because some of local law-enforcement are either members of the Meta Liberation Army or were payed off to look the other way.
- Vow of Nudity: Played for comedic effect when Kay'la quickly turns into one after becoming a Royal Knight of Axrilas. She spends her days getting drunk in bars, running up massive tabs and then claiming all the alcohol she drank as "civil forfeiture".
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: One of the three factions of the fic's Big Bad Ensemble are Calisota City's corrupt cops, who are known to have raped and abused multiple characters in the story while they were in their custody — known victims including the Hyenas, Daffy Duck, Discord, Jessie, James and Meowth, Salem, Mike, Angel Dust, among others. They were finally discovered when they assaulted Huan Beifong, who has family on the force.
Films — Animation
- Madigan from Coonskin is a textbook case for this trope when he isn't a bigoted slob.
- In "Duck Pimples", a belligerent Officer O'Hara-type threatens Donald Duck and accuses him of stealing a pearl necklace, then turns around and steals the bracelets off the Femme Fatale's arm. He also turns out to be the one who stole the woman's pearls, or at least that is what the author who wrote the story in Donald's imagination decided.
Music
Mythology & Religion
- Robin Hood's foe the Sheriff of Nottingham might just be the Ur-Example. The position of "Sheriff" in Norman England had a lot of power, because it gave the bearer responsibility for maintaining the law throughout the parish, and had proxy authority from the king himself. Later depictions just make him a typical robber-baron, but in the early examples of the legend, he really was a corrupt police chief. More than one sheriff ran his parish as a criminal syndicate, including in Nottingham, which is quite likely the inspiration.
Pinball
- In Safecracker, you can bribe the bank guard with points to get past him... but he'll arrest you if your bribe isn't generous enough.
- "Payoff Panic" in Capcom's unreleased Kingpin requires hitting enough targets to pay off a Dirty Cop.
- Heist!: The police of Ocean City unlawfully serve two separate parties.
- In the backstory, the cops have been paid off by Mr. Big and are effectively tools he uses to enforce his control of the town.
- The protagonists (who are all criminals) can exploit their corruption by bribing them with donuts to get out of an arrest.
Podcasts
- Are You Afraid Of The Dark Universe:
- In their version of The Invisible Man, Sheriff Dudley Hall and his whole department is one. They scam Chicago residents by having Jack steal from them, and then frame people they don't like to take the fall while they look like heroes. He becomes worse after becoming a vampire.
- Gabbi Utterson from Jekyll x Hyde used to be one, specifically inserted into Black Lives Matter protests by her superiors to rile people up and give the police a "justification" for their brutality afterwards. Eventually she couldn't take it and quit, trying to atone by becoming a private investigator.
Professional Wrestling
- The Big Boss Man played it straight as a heel, handcuffing his opponents and beating them with his nightstick.
- Later, The Mountie (a.k.a. Jacques Rougeau) played the heel cop, using cheap, dirty methods to beat his opponents. Then he would handcuff them and zap them with his shock stick.
Radio
- The BBC Radio 4 Out of the Blue is about a police conspiracy to create a riot at a peaceful demonstration, with the intent of increasing police powers and overthrowing the government. The heroic copper spreads the word to the protestors, who are ready to make citizens' arrests of the agents provocateur as soon as they start causing trouble. Meanwhile, he arrests the deep undercover officer whose been inciting an environmental group, in full view of the man's "comrades".
- The BBC Radio 4 drama G.F. Newman's The Corrupted, set in 60s London, features a succession of police officers who basically run a protection racket in partnership with local gangsters.
Roleplay
- In The Gamer's Alliance, George Bush is a dirty officer in the Maar Sul's SAVAGE who accepts bribes and looks the other way when the Totenkopfs act and does his best to help the cult's evil cause whenever he can.
- Equestria Chronicles: The royal guard is corrupt and abusive, although its officers try to keep things safe and reasonable.
Tabletop Games
- Blades in the Dark: The Bluecoats, who are the beat cops in Duskwall, are institutionally corrupt, and essentially no more than a gang that runs a city-wide protection racket. Pay-offs from private citizens are not only their unofficial source of income, but their entire budget comes from "donations" from the city's elite, who use them to suppress worker riots and keep people like the player characters out of their homes. The Inspectors, the Shattered Isles' equivalent to the FBI, defy the trope. The Inspectors are paid well enough that they have no need to take bribes, thoroughly vetted for loyalty to the Empire, and constantly rotated to new duty stations so they have no time to form ties to any locals.
- Clue: One of the game pieces added to later editions is Sergeant Gray, a police detective who is himself a suspect in the murder of Black/Boddy. Supplemental materials give him other skeletons in his closet as well.
- Dark Heresy: The Radical's Handbook background package "Justice, Not Law" concerns arbitrators who engage in unsanctioned activities such as bribery (both giving and receiving), illegal executions, and torture, which can be enticing to an inquisitor unconcerned with the finer points of Imperial law. Arbitrators of this type begin the game with the deceive and intimidate skills, along with the "Peer (Underworld)" talent to represent criminal connections.
- Planescape: Despite the fact that the Harmonium is supposed to be most appealing to Lawful Good types, there are so many Lawful Evil members walking the beat who use their power as Sigil's police force as an excuse to extort, beat, threaten and otherwise harass anyone they don't like that every Sigil native presumes they're all dirty. Especially because the Faction is the game's poster boy for Order Is Not Good and the rot goes all the way up to the top, meaning that even good Harmonium members will close ranks to protect their corrupt members, under the justification that solving such problems is a matter for internal affairs.
- Shadowrun: Pretty much universal among the privatized police forces. Lone Star and Knight Errant's privatized police are nearly all on the take; investigating crimes doesn't pay much in this world, and taking criminals in means a lot more paperwork than either shaking them down for bribes or arranging an accident.
- Transhuman Space: One of the vignettes in Toxic Memes concerns a pack of feral dogs that turn out to be led by uplifted dogs working for a local cartel. The ultimate leader is revealed to be a police dog who faked his own death during a raid on the cartel.
Theatre
- Played with in the case of Assistant Commissioner Davison in Great Britain. While his ambition to get promoted is one of his more negative traits and he cooperates with Free Press much more than he should, he is ultimately a Well-Intentioned Extremist that seeks to combat more serious forms of crime. He also has some morals, as shown by his horror when the sting operation goes horribly wrong and an innocent man dies as a result. The rest of the police are more blatantly corrupt, trying to cover up the Accidental Murder of a black man that they mistakenly shot in a Lidl supermarket, believing him to be armed when he actually was carrying carrots.
Toys
- Beast Wars: Uprising: A large number of the Maximal Command Security Force are said to be corrupt, for several reasons: The pay's not so great, they're treated shabbily, and many recruits only signed on because it comes with an exemption from The Games. Not helping is that some of the laws they enforce are ludicrously stupid and petty (for example, they're allowed to arrest people who look at their reflection for too long), so actually working out who's corrupt and who's not is difficult.
Visual Novels
- Exploited by Mortelli and Saul in Daughter for Dessert to get the protagonist acquitted. Mortelli “loses” and taints all evidence against him.
- In Kirisawa's route of Metro PD: Close to You, the 2nd Unit's investigation into a drug ring becomes much more complicated when they come across indications that the Chief of the Detective Bureau is involved in the drug ring in some way. He is indeed dirty, and has been for a long time, including acting as a mole for the mafia back when he was serving under the command of Kirisawa's father.
- Ace Attorney: The series focuses heavily on law enforcement, so it's natural that our lawyer protagonists are going to find some bad eggs.
- Played With in the case of Detective Tyrell Badd from Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. He's the third 'leg' of the thief Yatagarasu, but the Yatagarasu are a group who only "steal the truth," meaning they work to expose corruption in society through means outside of the law. Badd himself is at worst an Anti-Villain and a Knight in Sour Armour, and once his role is exposed he turns himself in.
- And then there's Damon Gant in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney who is a dirty police chief, and was strongly implied to be forging evidence before he killed anyone. There's something seriously broken about the Ace Attorney legal system.
- Valerie Hawthorne from Trials and Tribulations, who helped fake a kidnapping and lied on the stand to frame her accomplice for her stepsister's (faked) death. Ironically, once she decides to come out with the truth, she's murdered by said stepsister.
- Apollo Justice introduces us to Daryan Crescend, who is an international affairs agent who smuggles cocoons into the country (for good reasons) and kills Interpol agents (not for good reasons).
- Dual Destinies deals with the fallout of having so many corrupt members of law enforcement and the legal system: the public has zero faith in the legal system, and as a result, the majority of the legal profession has no qualms about being dirty, as long as it gets a victory.
- Dual Destinies also brings us a dirty bomb squad member in Ted Tonate, who sells the bombs he dismantles in the black market and offed a detective who caught him stealing one.
- And finally, Dual Destinies gives us a played-with example in Bobby Fulbright, a cheery and justice-loving detective who's probably the morally cleanest police officer in the games... but we never meet Bobby Fulbright; by the time the game begins the Big Bad has killed and replaced him. The fake Bobby Fulbright was only there to destroy some important evidence that could have uncovered his identity, although his help was completely genuine in cases that weren't involved with his mission.
- The Great Ace Attorney has Inspector Tobias Gregson, who at first seems like a By-the-Book Cop, turns out to have a serious case of My Country, Right or Wrong mentality. First, he tried to covertly get back classified information containing national secrets from a murder culprit in exchange for giving said murderer info on the case for his cover story. Secondly, Gregson turns out to have been part of a conspiracy in London in where he took the role of a Secret Police strategist as part of the Big Bad's goal to create a crime-free British Empire.
Class of '09
- The
Mall Cop
is...overzealous to say the least. He fires five bullets at an unarmed
Nicole
for stealing a cheap CD.
Web Animation
- The Debbie and Carrie Show: At one point, the majority of the police officers in the Town were dirty cops, including the police chief, who was the son of the Town's mayor. The son and his partner even tried to burn down a local restaurant owned by their enemies, and their getting caught led to the downfall of the mayor himself.
- MoniRobo: Yabu terrorized the area he was assigned to, such as going through people's things for no reason, yelling at kids. One day, he tried to molest Mio under the pretense of doing a body search for anything that she "stole" from the store. However, Mr. Nakashima, the former police commissioner stopped him and called the chief of police resulting in the force arresting and dismissing Yabu for molesting Mio.
- Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination): Police officer Audrey always gets serious when a crime is committed, arresting people for using counterfeit money, prank calls and attempted murder there are many who have participated and locked up the prisoners, plus the characters who are arrested always have an angry expression every time they end up in jail since they hate that Audrey arrests them involuntarily.
Webcomics
- Paradigm Shift has vampires working for the FBI.
- In the "Phoenix Rising" Story Arc from Sluggy Freelance, Officer Tod is actually a former mob enforcer. He's found a pretty sweet gig where, as long as he covers up the local Vigilante Woman's numerous murders, he can just sit back, do nothing, and collect a fat paycheck from the government.
- Girl Genius: While Beausoleil does do his duty to thwart various schemes against the Master he also embezzles from Voltaire's private cheese stock. He is also a key figure in a nearly successful rather murderous plot to usurp the Master himself, having given his loyalty to a new and presumably better-paying boss.
- One Polandball strip has Poland volunteer to participate in a Good Cop/Bad Cop interrogation by Germany since he has a lot of experience with it. So when he and America are alone, he leans in and... tells him he'll get rid of the evidence for a price.
- Sonichu has an entire faction of evil, brainwashed stormtroopers modeled after police known as The Jerkops. They're fan-favorites, so much that the author brought them back despite almost liquidating the group for good.
- Unholy Blood: Large portions of the Korean police are secretly minions of the Big Bad God and are helping him with his illegal activities.
- In El Goonish Shive, this is both Conversed and Discussed. Elliot is ignorant of the prevalence of this in Real Life and thinks it's mostly a fictional trope. Liz enlightens him by telling him to search for news about police misconduct.
- Dumbing of Age: Sal has had bad experiences with law enforcement in general, and warns that there's little point in reporting Joyce's assault because they have no evidence except for the crimes they committed (in self-defense, but still) while at a party full of underage drinkers. She describes cops as just "bullies on a power trip," and flashbacks to as young as kindergarten show her already being screwed over by the system that automatically takes the side of the white bully over her. Later, when cops get involved in the second kidnapping, they for the most part do good and save everyone... except for the part where a cop on the take for the Korean mob shoots Blaine so that there's no chance he can turn on them. His coworkers mock the entire concept of him being possibly punished.
- Sheriff Ludo from Serix, which surprises the other characters since "the last crooked cop died three centuries ago in the Cop Wars."
- Unsounded: The constabulary in Ethelmik is on Stockyard's payroll and is actively supporting his criminal enterprises in town.
Web Videos
"Your lampshades, Monsieur."
"Oh... thank you very much."
Officer Thomas Is Arrested.
Eddie's partner, Maya Thomas, is revealed to be a dirty cop, and gets arrested by IAB.
Alternative Title(s): Corrupt Cop, Corrupt Cops, Dirty Cops, Filthy Feds, Crooked Cop
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