The renegade/rogue/lone-wolf cop trope goes back a long way. Most of our ideas are rooted in Hollywood images of the lone sheriff taming the lawless town like Gary Cooper in High Noon (really an allegory against Hollywood blacklisting in the wake of Senator Joe McCarthy’s HUAC). Or the virtuous inner-city cop standing up to corruption like Frank Serpico. Obviously, there is some basis to the notion.
Unfortunately there is a lot more fiction than fact and a lot of the fiction is all-too often skewed behind social or racial biases. Hollywood LOVES Wyatt Earp. History, (documented, recorded, and corroborated) mostly, history remembers Earp as an abusive police officer who regularly pistol whipped men he suspected of committing a crime before he even charged them. It’s easy to call him a man of his time but the practice known as “Buffaloing” was reviled and Earp was fired from one office because of his excessive use of force on the townspeople who paid his salary and the cowboys who supported the town.
In Tombstone, (the town, not the movie) the Earps, Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil used their position as town marshals to exercise petty grievances. When Billy Claiborne beat up Earp-family friend Doc Holliday, Wyatt arrested Claiborne by busting the boy in the noggin with a pistol barrel. When Claiborne’s friends came to get him from jail and refused to disarm Virgil attempted to arrest them. If you’ve seen any of the half-dozen movies, you know the rest.
It’s been almost 150 years since that ugly day at the O.K. Corral. Policing has become a profession with training based in education, psychology, and criminology. There are fundamental roots in law. Very little translated to fictional depictions.
“What’s wrong with a little street justice?” -Clint Eastwood in reference to his most iconic role, (not involving an empty chair).
Dirty Harry has not aged well. A joke to younger audiences, the movie presents a two-dimensional caricature of American policemen. Harry doesn’t “solve” mysteries, he doesn’t stop crime, he just shoots everything with a ridiculously BIG gun. Far from a Freudian slip, this is an entire neurosis underwear department.
But in the wake of the Summer of Love, the anti-war protests, and the Civil Rights Movement white men felt a little scared. Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry landed like white-male-wish-fulfillment Christmas.
Unconcerned with rights or due process or the tyranny that concerned Constitution Framers enough to enshrine specific rights as amendments to the Constitution, Harry Callahan tortures suspects and kills suspects, after they’ve surrendered, even if they are unarmed. Laugh riot, right? Except cops like Harry—and you read/hear about them almost daily now—get it wrong.
In the 1980s, police in East Saint Louis got it so wrong, (means police brutality, wrongful arrests, abuse of authority, I can go on...) so often that the city ran out of money to satisfy all of he civil awards against them. As a result, the city’s credit rating was so bad they couldn’t sell municipal bonds to raise money.
At the next civil trial, the judge simply awarded city hall as a judgment. That’s right, the city had to pay rent to the victim of police brutality in order to occupy city hall.
Still, love him or hate him, Dirty Harry is the father of a lot of tough-guy cops completely unencumbered by policies/procedures, rules, or laws. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport, and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher all owe WAY more to Harry Callahan than Sherlock Holmes. So, what’s the problem?
Loose canon isn’t a term of endearment
The funny thing is, film fiction does a better job of illustrating the failings of the renegade cop than a lot of print fiction. Case in point, Lili Fini Zanuck’s 1991 movie, Rush. Her undercover police officers use the very drugs they’re supposed to be getting “off the streets.” First, the cops (played by Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh) use drugs in order to get next to dealers and their suppliers but over time drug use becomes recreational. Hilarity does not ensue. By the end of Rush, one cop is dead and the other is on trial while dodging a murderous drug dealer.
Of the authors I cite, Only Sandford, (aka reporter John Camp) accurately depicts rogue-cop behavior. His cops beat confessions out of witnesses and torture informants. Sandford's hero, Lucas Davenport, even threatens to drown a 60-year-old woman to get her to roll on a criminal suspect. As a result the city that Davenport works for shells out a lot of actual-and-punitive damages.
Actual criminals go free—that doesn't even include the cops
Like Rush, Antoine Fuqua’s 2001 film, Training Day gives a glimpse to another consequence of the renegade cop—entrepreneurship. See, it’s a short jump from disregarding rights to break the case to outright breaking the law for personal gain. Undercover narcotics officer Alonzo Harris, (Denzel Washington) steals from dealers, bribes prosecutors, and murders other cops. Way beyond “the ends justify the means,” Harris is full-on “means as an end to themselves,” territory.
But it’s all fiction, right?
Len Davis was a decorated New Orleans police officer known for his aggressive approach to policing. Also known as “Robocop” for his brutality, Davis beat suspects, coerced confessions, and graduated to shaking down drug dealers for protection money. When Kim Groves reported Davis for beating a teen boy he suspected in a shooting, Davis was tipped off by an internal affairs cop. Davis then had Groves murdered.
Davis was sentenced to death in 2005 and remains on death row. The city of New Orleans settled a wrongful death case with Kim Groves’ three children for $1.5mm. There are police like Davis all over the country.
I believe each author has to decide for themselves how much realism and/or how much social relevance, they want in their story. I also believe that if all the birds in your story are chickens but never ravens, grackles, or vultures, you’re missing a lot of opportunity. You’re leaving a lot of drama on the sidelines, too.
The photo at the top "Tombstone" movie poster is the property of Buena Vista Pictures, et al. It is used here for educational/instructional purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.
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