Is it just me, or does crime documentaries have a biased "pro-cop" vibe to it?

Those videos have actually shown me how often police investigations are an absolute clown show actually

This isn't surprising at all, it seems like a type of selection bias. Most people prefer to see the conclusion of a story, so crime stories where the criminals are caught make better stories. You know what else makes for a better story? Having a cop that was involved give a firsthand account. Bad bumbling cops naturally don't make it onto these kinds of shows.

Yeah.

If they are actually doing documentary work, they have to suck up to the cops so that the cops will cooperate with them. If they're too critical, they'll stop getting help.

If they're just rehashing Wikipedia or doing reaction content then they're adding nothing anyway

My partner and I quit watching these after I pointed out that they usually cover small town murders, and almost every time the crime is eventually solved, it's because the local police suck it up and finally ask for help from the state or FBI who actually know what they're doing. Similarly, the videos of cold cases that aren't yet solved rarely mention any involvement of more competent higher levels of police in the investigation.

I was overhearing a crime video my grandma was watching and holy shit the narrator could not be verbally sucking cop dick harder

There has been a fair amount of analysis of the social role of 'true crime' as a genre. To boil it way, way down, it's about creating a representation of human evil to let people feel essentially righteous. It is peak centrism, uplifting the status quo by placing it as opposition to the unquestionedly heinous, and with it, current structures, like cops as law enforcement.

We sometimes watch stuff like this and I will point out when they are coming out with something bullshit.

Like a police officer saying how dangerous escooters are because someone was killed a few months ago by one. Cars kill multiple people a day.

People like to feel that there is justice and that bad guys get caught. Serial killers and the source of info (mostly police departments) makes for low hanging fruit. To get less biased info would take more work. It is possibly different outside the US.

So do the fictional detective shows that are constantly popular for decades now. Propaganda.

im just not a fan of the true crime industry. it makes me feel ill

What do you expect, do you want a crime documentary to sympathize with the criminals?

JCS criminal psychology is 100% copaganda. It presents cop interrogation techniques as a kind of science, as if the Reid technique wasn’t all about deliberately misunderstanding body language and coercing innocent people to confess.

Skip Intro has a good series on Copaganda. Talks about TV shows/fiction, but a lot of the messaging is the same.

Cops exist to protect property, not you.

If you want a good non-copaganda documentary though, Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line is a worthwhile classic.

I mean it depends which ones are you watching.

True crime series usually deal with crimes where the perpetrator is undeniably guilty, and typically of very heinous crimes. It shows cases where the police is correctly doing what should be their job.

If there are any videos that show "we assaulted a random person on the street" type of police work in a positive way, I haven't seen it yet.

Copaganda is real

They are high-key copaganda. It’s overt and blatant.

What portion of these documentaries talk about false convictions, for instance?

I mean these tend to focus on actual crimes and not like police coverups or misbehavior. I bet though police misbehavior documentaries would get good traffic though. I can tell you there are some good subjects of topic from chicago.

John Oliver does a great segment on the TV show 'Law and Order' and this exact phenomenon. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DNy6F7ZwX8I

If you like true crime and also someone not afraid to call out when the cops fuck up, I recommend Bailey Sarian. Love her "Honey let me TELL YOU" vibe, but that'll be a turn off for some people so YMMV.

I don't recall cops coming up much in Barely Sociable but he's great too though he hasn't posted in a while, and his stuff is less true crime and more mysterious stuff in general.

There’s a YT video by Fern that goes over a story about some german cops burning a drunken black man alive and covering it up. Non-copaganda crime documentaries exist, although they’re rare. I love crime media, but I always take it with a grain of salt since the genre is generally pretty biased.

Netflix had a few really good ones that showed how the cops lied or bungled things.

They might just rely on police reports Because they don't have the resources to do actual investigation.

Listen to some about MMIW from Indigenous perspectives, like the Stolen podcast. It depends on who you're listening to but cops drop the ball a lot when it comes to finding indigenous women and reporters that are worth their shit don't tip toe around that. Many unsolved cases have less of a bias towards cops in general I think.

I also think that Casefile is actually pretty unbiased, though I haven't listened in a while, but I remember hearing a lot about how cops fuck up on those.

I've been watching The Blacklist with my wife. I've remarked that it's very honest in it's portrayal of law enforcement, in that they are all dishonest, corrupt, and criminal.

Not really a fan of the show, but I love James Spader's portrayal of Raymond Reddington. I lose interest when he's not in the scene. Just wanting to watch him has gotten me through to season 9.

Yeah. They definitely are biased towards the cops, probably because that's where they get most of their information from when writing the scripts.

I watch them anyways, but with a healthy dose of skepticism. I really wish there was an explicitly anti-cop true crime channel.

Ironically I usually end up leaving those videos still irritated at police for failing to do even the most basic detective work. But I also used to watch COPS as a kid because even back then I was like "what the fuck are these pigs doing, what a bunch of monsters" but then I later found out that it was supposed to make cops look good? Like really?!? 😆

No, not just you. I saw someone comment on this years, and years ago, calling "Copaganda". They were right, and so is everyone else I've seen talk about it, the way these documentaries glomp all over them like a 5-year-old with a hero complex is fucking pathetic coming from adults.

Youtube varies from genuinely good content, to generic filler, to complete and utter trash, and there is much of the latter two because it's not curated by anyone (other than by algorithms).

Try "We Own This City" from David Simon, if you want a documentary on the police that isn't propaganda.

I don't watch those, but from how it sounds, my expectation is that they tell it from the cops perspective. Because surely it wouldn't be from the criminal's perspective? Perspective would bias it already

Sure, cop shows are like that as well. They are so unrealistic.

Always has been

I mean they do try to solve crimes? So if the "cops" win, it is good?

I've had the opposite with the ones I've watched on Netflix

Skip Intro has a good series about this.

I’m so tired of people opposing a “pro-cop” bias. You can be against corruption in police departments without being pro-criminal. Police are the people we should be supporting, because they enact the force of law, which is what keeps society stable. That there is corruption among the police just means we need to attack that problem directly, not get rid of police. Those who want to get rid of police are anarchist fuckwits who want crime lords to rule society, and they should be dealt with the same way we deal with criminals.

Have you ever noticed that these crime documentaries are anti-crime??

LOL