Post by LOCIfan on Apr 8, 2005 23:49:15 GMT -5
Stephanie,
I know where you're coming from. When I was in law school, EVERY legal inconsistency on a tv show would piss me off, but after a while it just sort of wasn't worth it. I kept reminding myself that it was fiction and wasn't meant to be 100% accurate, I mellowed.
But it does bother me some when I realize that some viewers of shows like CSI or L&O or whatever, take what's presented as fact or "real". It's as though someone were to say PERRY MASON was an accurate representation of a trial. Ugh.
Also, it's one of the reason that plot holes or story points that don't make sense bug me so much on LOCI. And why I get irritated when the show is inaccurate or lazy or whatever in how they present the psychological aspects of the show -- which they're almost always dead on correct about.
Patcat,
I wanted to add something to my response about cops and ADAs working together earlier, but didn't have the time. The way in which all the L&Os portray the cop/ADA relationship is one of the fundamental ways in which they distort the actual process.
Cops/detectives don't really work with ADAs in the manner in which L&O suggests. Yes, they're all part of the same process, but they have separate functions and the only reason they interact at all is because ADAs need the testimony of cops in order to make a case at trial. ADAs interact with cops in much the same way they interact with ANY OTHER witness in any given trial -- except for the fact that cops (and I use the term "cops" to mean both officers and detectives) are professional witnesses and belong to a city bureaucracy that has an ongoing relationship with the DA's office.
ADAs and cops do not hang out together in the pre-arrest phase of a trial discussing all the ins and outs of an investigation. That's the cops' job. ADAs come in to prosecute AFTER an arrest is made. Pre-arrest search and arrest warrants don't require an ADA's involvement, the cops go straight to a judge -- and the frequency of the necessity for any kind of warrant is greatly exaggerated on L&O.
In that sense, the system is efficient. Cops investigate and arrest. ADAs prosecute.
Additionally, although the L&O's make it seem as though cops and ADAs are one big team -- or else, at worst, that ADA's can be like a weary or disapproving Captain Deakinses -- they're not. Generally speaking, the relationship between the ADA's office and the NYPD is bad. ADAs view cops as the people who screw up their cases (by conducting illegal searches, contradicting each other in testimony, violating civil rights in general). And cops view ADAs as the egg-head Monday morning quarterbacks who let their perps walk on "technicalities".
Because all the L&Os place such a big (fictional) emphasis on the "teamwork" between cops and ADAs, it fails to show the true institutional working relationships that are most important to each sector's day-to-day functioning.
ADA's work most closely with the social workers in their offices, judges, and Legal Aid attorneys (the public defenders who represent indigent defendants).
Cops work most closely, on a day-to-day basis, with perps (suspects, informants, etc...), and witnesses -- and the truth about witnesses in NYC is that the difference between victim and defendant is often just a matter of time and circumstance. Often, the defendant in one case will have been the victim/complainant in another, recent case.
The differences and friction between the DA's Office and the NYPD is not just bureaucratic, it's also about class conflict. ADAs are relatively highly educated and, although they don't make a lot of money, they're basically from middle to upper-middle to upper-upper class backgrounds. Cops in the NYPD don't have to have a college education, and generally come from working class or below backgrounds.
I know I'm making sweeping generalizations here. But I'm talking in generalities, because it's those generalities which create the overriding cultures of the two offices. There will always be Ed Conlons on the NYPD (Harvard educated cop) and there will always be the former gang-bangers who've gone to law school in the ADA's Office. They may get the publicity, but they represent the exception rather than the rule in both offices.
On L&O, there is little or no apparent difference in educational and/or class backgrounds between the cops and ADAs. And, even when there IS a difference in the backgrounds of the characters, there is little/no difference in the intellect and ability to communicate that intellect between the characters. That homogenization removes from the equation one of the fundamental and most pervasive conflicts between the two bureaucracies, and makes it impossible for me to watch the shows as anything other than romanticized fiction. Even knowing the system as I do, there's something comforting in the intellectual, clean, upper-middle class depiction of crime and crime-fighting portrayed on the L&Os.
And that's just ONE of the ways in which LOCI and the other L&O shows distort the criminal justice system as it really exists in New York City...
I know where you're coming from. When I was in law school, EVERY legal inconsistency on a tv show would piss me off, but after a while it just sort of wasn't worth it. I kept reminding myself that it was fiction and wasn't meant to be 100% accurate, I mellowed.
But it does bother me some when I realize that some viewers of shows like CSI or L&O or whatever, take what's presented as fact or "real". It's as though someone were to say PERRY MASON was an accurate representation of a trial. Ugh.
Also, it's one of the reason that plot holes or story points that don't make sense bug me so much on LOCI. And why I get irritated when the show is inaccurate or lazy or whatever in how they present the psychological aspects of the show -- which they're almost always dead on correct about.
Patcat,
I wanted to add something to my response about cops and ADAs working together earlier, but didn't have the time. The way in which all the L&Os portray the cop/ADA relationship is one of the fundamental ways in which they distort the actual process.
Cops/detectives don't really work with ADAs in the manner in which L&O suggests. Yes, they're all part of the same process, but they have separate functions and the only reason they interact at all is because ADAs need the testimony of cops in order to make a case at trial. ADAs interact with cops in much the same way they interact with ANY OTHER witness in any given trial -- except for the fact that cops (and I use the term "cops" to mean both officers and detectives) are professional witnesses and belong to a city bureaucracy that has an ongoing relationship with the DA's office.
ADAs and cops do not hang out together in the pre-arrest phase of a trial discussing all the ins and outs of an investigation. That's the cops' job. ADAs come in to prosecute AFTER an arrest is made. Pre-arrest search and arrest warrants don't require an ADA's involvement, the cops go straight to a judge -- and the frequency of the necessity for any kind of warrant is greatly exaggerated on L&O.
In that sense, the system is efficient. Cops investigate and arrest. ADAs prosecute.
Additionally, although the L&O's make it seem as though cops and ADAs are one big team -- or else, at worst, that ADA's can be like a weary or disapproving Captain Deakinses -- they're not. Generally speaking, the relationship between the ADA's office and the NYPD is bad. ADAs view cops as the people who screw up their cases (by conducting illegal searches, contradicting each other in testimony, violating civil rights in general). And cops view ADAs as the egg-head Monday morning quarterbacks who let their perps walk on "technicalities".
Because all the L&Os place such a big (fictional) emphasis on the "teamwork" between cops and ADAs, it fails to show the true institutional working relationships that are most important to each sector's day-to-day functioning.
ADA's work most closely with the social workers in their offices, judges, and Legal Aid attorneys (the public defenders who represent indigent defendants).
Cops work most closely, on a day-to-day basis, with perps (suspects, informants, etc...), and witnesses -- and the truth about witnesses in NYC is that the difference between victim and defendant is often just a matter of time and circumstance. Often, the defendant in one case will have been the victim/complainant in another, recent case.
The differences and friction between the DA's Office and the NYPD is not just bureaucratic, it's also about class conflict. ADAs are relatively highly educated and, although they don't make a lot of money, they're basically from middle to upper-middle to upper-upper class backgrounds. Cops in the NYPD don't have to have a college education, and generally come from working class or below backgrounds.
I know I'm making sweeping generalizations here. But I'm talking in generalities, because it's those generalities which create the overriding cultures of the two offices. There will always be Ed Conlons on the NYPD (Harvard educated cop) and there will always be the former gang-bangers who've gone to law school in the ADA's Office. They may get the publicity, but they represent the exception rather than the rule in both offices.
On L&O, there is little or no apparent difference in educational and/or class backgrounds between the cops and ADAs. And, even when there IS a difference in the backgrounds of the characters, there is little/no difference in the intellect and ability to communicate that intellect between the characters. That homogenization removes from the equation one of the fundamental and most pervasive conflicts between the two bureaucracies, and makes it impossible for me to watch the shows as anything other than romanticized fiction. Even knowing the system as I do, there's something comforting in the intellectual, clean, upper-middle class depiction of crime and crime-fighting portrayed on the L&Os.
And that's just ONE of the ways in which LOCI and the other L&O shows distort the criminal justice system as it really exists in New York City...