Barney Miller, Beretta, C.H.I.P.s, Dragnet, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, N.Y.P.D Blue, Hunter, Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey. Is television spreading pro-cop propaganda? Are there insidious forces at work here besides simply the alleged Œrepeat success' of cop shows? Is it that these television shows' producers and actors get some other benefits, that we don't know of, by glorifying the long arm of the law; traffic tickets pardoned, murder evidence Œlost'? Or is it that we identify with cops, maybe even want to be cops, to command people, to kick the shit out of people ('interrogate a suspect') on a bad day, to make life miserable for segments of the population we personally dislike. That's power---the same power that possessing large sums of money grants you, or that political success affords you, or that physical strength entitles you to---an inflated sense of self worth and an illusion of manifest destiny.

In essence, SELF CONFIDENCE. If imagining people naked is supposed to help cure feelings of low esteem, then imagining yourself raping people with a nightstick must do absolute wonders. Wearing the uniform is like holding a safety blanket, it cures anxiety and legitimizes actions, be they right or wrong. Thus when not wearing their uniforms, cops appear deflated and nobody likes them, including themselves. Also, nobody wants to be in a relationship with cops, unless they are in some way deficient, or cops themselves. Also, cops drink heavily, because doubt itches at them beneath their silver-blue skins, making them lose control over themselves when interrogating a suspect so that their partner has to pull them aside, "Hey! HEY!!! You're losing it!" Oh, and also this is why they hate it when punks say to them, "Hey, cop, why donít you quit hiding behind that uniform!"

A Man in Uniform (Canada 1995) is the tale of bank teller-cum-actor Henry Adler, who scores a role on the popular cop show 'Crimewave', playing an Irish cop named Flanagan. Soon Adler, inebriated with the power he feels while in his ersatz uniform, begins taking walks around the city in guise. What begins as impersonation turns into something more, as Adler slowly becomes infected with Flanagan, reading his lines to whomever he crosses, absorbing the ideology and affectations of his alter-ego. It's a fantasy that offers him a sense of control over his environment, and he quickly becomes addicted. Dark alleyways litter every scene and enhance the sensation of passage, into secret worlds and between levels of reality. The film's best moments occur when he encounters other cops on duty, as his fear of being found out competes with his yearning to act the part. You get the feeling the cops know he's faking it but don't care, as if what unifies them isn't some police training but an inherent madness in the role. As if any of us, deciding to be cops, could walk into an interrogation room, begin kicking a suspect, and thus enter the fraternity. You are a cop after you've become a cop, whatever the hell I mean by that.

The characters, especially his 'Crimewave' co-star, who plays the requisite hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold-named-Maria, are all world-weary, cynical, anonymous, urban stereotypes, which enhances the themes of fact vs. fiction and real vs. role. The director, David Wellington, clearly had Taxi Driver in mind when he made this film, and there's even a scene where Henry goes through a succession of dissolves on a city street just like Travis Bickle. Portrayed by Tom McCamus, who resembles a youngish William H. Macy, Adler is an interesting character who sometimes seems a bit too familiar, especially if you, too, are prone to flights of fancy inspired by fiction.

El Patrullero [Highway Patrolman] (USA/Mexico 1991) takes us south of the border, where when you plan a road trip you make sure you have 'Cop money' in addition to 'Gas money.' Directed by Alex Cox, (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, etd.) it features a tremendous performance by a young Mexican actor named Roberto Sosa, who plays the part of Pedro Rojas, a newly graduated Highway Patrolman on a desolate stretch of road somewhere in Mexico. Rojas' downfall from the get-go is his conscience, as heís initially unable to take bribes and follow the Police forceís motto of ìtheyíve always broken the law---first you stop them, then you figure out what they've done."

To be a Highway patrolman you must be one hundred per cent corrupt to be able to follow procedure consistently. In this desert world filled with drug-dealing Gringos this inability can kill you, and Rojas seems very much like an animal that won't survive his environment for most of the film. Stumbling from mistake to mistake, Rojas' good intentions wreak havoc all around him, bringing shame and death on department and friends, and crippling him. Rojasí career problems also spill over into his love life, as he marries one woman and then falls in love with another, a hooker with a drug habit. This film, in my opinion, more than any of his others, captures Cox's unique vision of the humorously fantastical. While El Patrullero seems to take place in another, more mixed up and hallucinated dimension, which serves as a mirror for bona-fide reality, you are left feeling that maybe it's not that far off. The cinematography is spectacular, the pacing and story structure are unconventional, the shots last for minutes, and it's an altogether singular movie experience.

Unlike the first two films I reviewed, which were character studies of those who wish to serve and protect, the next two deal with the 'served and protected', and as such rate a bit higher on the 'Does this film make you want to be a cop killer?' scale. Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine [Hate] (France 1995), for instance, which pits the youth of the French slums against a racist police force. The beating of a local teenage Arab boy by the police ignites a riot in the overpopulated projects. The film is set in the riotís aftermath, as the boy lays comatose, on the verge of life and death. The film follows three of his friends, each a time bomb ticking away, as they wade around in the slowly boiling water, as if on a collision course with the apocalypse. Vinz, a Jewish skinhead who's the most bloodthirsty of the bunch, is the central character, and his viewpoint fuels the film.

Having found a pistol lost by the police in the riots, Vinz swears that if their friend dies he will kill a cop. Only his friends Said, a drug dealing Arabic youth, and Hubert, a Black amateur boxer, can contain him, as his trigger finger itches violently throughout the film, threatening everyone around him. Hubert's level-headedness contrasts sharply with Vinz's desperate self-destruction, and their friendship is like a powder keg as they constantly bicker. There's a great deal of racial tension, as well, with Blacks, Whites, Arabs and Jews all thrown together, one on top of the other, but Kassovitz also draws from this tension a sense of communal beauty, in his elegies to impromptu breakdancing and record-spinning. Shot in Black and White this film is a poem to youthful vitality, rebellion, hooliganism, and justice. Somewhat resembling Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing and Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets but with a dash of je-nes-se-quoi entirely it's own, La Haine is breathtaking.

And then there's the ultimate anti-cop statement, a documentary by the name of The Thin Blue Line (U.S.A 1988), directed by Errol Morris. Morris originally travelled to Texas to tell the story of Doctor Death, a psychiatrist used by the Dallas police force to secure the death penalty for killers and/or jaywalkers by testifying they would kill and/or jaywalk again. When Morris arrived in Dallas he was contacted by Randall Adams, who was serving a life sentence for a murder he did not commit, and took interest in his story. The film opens Randall Adams' ironic description of the good feeling he felt coming into Dallas. David Harris, whose tremendous capacity for evil is overshadowed by the police's, follows with his own interview. By then the story has already begun to take shape. A cop is killed, the police want revenge, and will get it by any means necessary.

Morris is a magical interviewer, able to squeeze from his subjects things they would otherwise take with them to their graves. The story's ghost-story-like atmosphere is punctuated by Philip Glass' otherwordly score. This is not your classic documentary: purists have said TTBL is a clear manipulation of reality, a big documentary no-no. But Morris's cinema is not about humans but about human mythology. There are ogres, and werewolves, and witches, here, and lowlifes, and cops, and judges. Like a surgeon Morris disects this miscarriage of justice, revealing in the process that the animal our justice department truly is is far from what it pretends to be. He juxtaposes his interviews with inappropriately frivolous images, and calls attention to the story-telling process, a manipulation on his part which emphasizes the manipulation of facts on everyone's parts. And to top it all off, The Thin Blue Line ends with the most bone-chilling final minutes in recent memory, the impact of which is directly related to the story-telling style which percedes it. This is more than a movie. It eventually freed Randall Adams from jail. It's an event, a reminder of human folly, a testament to truth and justice, and, at the very least, a deterrent to tourists planning on travelling through Texas.

Let's face it. Cops are pigs. The system doesn't work. Our only hope is that, after the system collpases and is replaced by corporations, who will start making laws, using robots that shoot first and ask questions later to enforce them, leaving people slumped all over the street with big red splotches behind their heads, that a ragtag band of rebels will rise up, to combat these corporo-cops, led by peace-loving, righteous men and women. They will win the war with the Corporocops, and outlaw self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing uses of authority, and, yeah, life will be good. Until their children will grow to be adults, and, wanting a little bit of self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement, they will destroy this 'overly righteous and fair' regime, declaring that no one can tell another person what to do with their power. The age of videotape will be long gone by then, but I bet there'll still be television.