History Main / CopKiller

* Happens in ''Manga/DeathNote'' when Light begins to target law enforcement officers trying to solve the deaths perpetrated by the Death Note. If Light didn't cross the MoralEventHorizon earlier by killing Lind L. Tailor because of an insult to his {{Pride}}, he definitely crossed it here, JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope and establishing himself as the VillainProtagonist of the series.

*** "[[Recap/Daredevil2015S1E6Condemned Condemned]]": Officer Sullivan, a rookie with just six months on the job, stumbles upon Matt Murdock and a wounded Vladimir Ranskahov in an abandoned building. Despite Matt's efforts to talk him into leaving, Sullivan calls in a hostage situation, forcing Matt to knock him out and handcuff him to a pole. This ends up summoning numerous cops to the scene including Christian Blake and Carl Hoffman, a pair of corrupt detectives who Matt just witnessed killing one of Vladimir's men in custody earlier that day for saying Fisk's name. Blake has become a liability to Fisk as in the time since that incident, Matt has attacked Blake, broke his right arm, and stolen his cell phone, which contained the addresses of Vladimir's stashhouses. While Blake is trying to shoo away an increasingly suspicious Ben Urich, an ESU sniper in Fisk's employ suddenly opens fire on the cops, critically wounding Blake with a bullet to the chest and killing two uniformed cops nearby[[note]]The latter two cops are established to have been shot to cover up the fact that Blake specifically was being targeted[[/note]]. The ESU team that enters the abandoned building, meanwhile, kills Officer Sullivan by cutting his throat with a knife.

*** This ends up being how [[ForcedIntoEvil Ray Nadeem]] learns Fisk's corruption of the FBI isn't limited to Dex. He and OPR Agent Winn visit his SAC, Tammy Hattley, at her house, and Nadeem breaks his suspicions about Dex. Too late for him, Hattley is also working for Fisk and proceeds to kill Winn with Nadeem's gun. Fisk's fixer [[EvilBrit Felix Manning]] then enters the room, pockets Nadeem's gun and the tape recording of the interview, and promptly blackmails Nadeem into working for Fisk as well.
*** In "[[Recap/Daredevil2015S3E11Reunion Reunion]]", Fisk beats one of his FBI bodyguards to death in the backseat of his limo [[ShootTheMessenger for informing him]] that Nadeem has gone rogue and prevented Dex from finishing off Karen Page as revenge for her murder of James Wesley. He then sends his men to Nadeem's house to get rid of Nadeem and his family, but Matt shows up in time to help Nadeem take them down. Notably, this is the only time in season 3 that Fisk personally kills someone as opposed to having someone else do it for him.

** This is the main reason why the titular protagonist just gets tied up a lot. The oft-referred-to "unwritten rules" against killing or raping a superhero means that the majority of mooks, henchmen and lower-tier villains do ''not'' want to get branded as a "cape killer" because it ''will'' drive the rest of the hero community to come after them with extreme prejudice. This is why [[spoiler:the disastrous attempt to capture Willy Pete]] at the end of Volume 5 is such a huge deal, and causes the caped community to stamp down very hard lest criminals and villains think the unwritten rules can be broken with impunity.

* ''ComicBook/FrankMillersRoboCop'', based on Miller's original script for ''Film/RoboCop2'', sees the Rehabs attack the remaining Metro West cops and kill some of them when they try to stop the Rehabs. [[spoiler:Additionally, their plan to discredit Murphy is kicked off by the assassination of Sgt. Reed.]]

* ''Film/BlackMask'': The EliteMook, Jimmy, who ambushed a hospital guarded by policemen, killing more than twenty officers during his rampage.

* In ''Film/DieHard'', NYCPD cop John [=McClane=] has a pronounced reaction when Hans Gruber's men blow up a police RV and yells at Hans that he's "made [his] point". Hans nonchalantly says he'll take letting them fall back "under consideration".
** ...and in ''Film/DieHard2'', when Colonel Stuart declares that the airport's treatment of his demands calls for a "lesson" (in this, crashing a plane), [=McClane=] asks if wiping out the five man SWAT team that were escorting Barnes to the Annex Skywalk isn't lesson enough.

* The 1990's PoliceProcedural mini-series ''Series/{{Phoenix}}'', and the LawProcedural spin-off ''Series/{{Janus}}'' are centered around the investigation of this trope. The cases are inspired by the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Street_bombing Russell St bombing]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walsh_Street_police_shootings Walsh Street shootings]] in Victoria, Australia.
* ''Series/PoliceStory1973'': Third season "The Empty Weapon" has a juvenile criminal doing this while fleeing from a mugging that he did.

* ''Series/{{Hightown}}'': In Season 3 Owen gets pulled over by a highway patrol officer, shooting him from close range when he stops. He also shoots Sarah (an undercover cop in the car with him) while she's escaping, but it's not fatal. The officer bleeds out from a neck wound before medical help can arrive.
* ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'' did this at least twice, with the same twist both times: the cop killer is himself killed shortly afterward, and the unlucky detective assigned to the case finds that nobody cares about justice for a dead cop killer.

* ''Series/DueSouth'' begins with the murder of a [[CanadaEh Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman]] in the wilderness of the Northwest Territories. The plot of the pilot episode centers around [[YouKilledMyFather his son]], Benton Fraser ([[InTheBlood also a Mountie]]), teaming up with a Chicago detective to [[AlwaysGetsHisMan track down the killer]] after he crosses the border into the [[EagleLand United States]]. It turns out the killer was hired by another [[spoiler:Mountie, a close friend of the Frasers, no less.]]

** ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect|1}}'': One of the missions on Noveria has you fight through the facility's security force to retrieve incriminating evidence on the corrupt boss of the place. On the way out, you run into the irate sergeant, herself going [[DirtyCop behind her captain's back]], who says, "You know what they did to cop killers on my world?" If [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Wrex]] is present, he retorts, "You know what we do to dirty cops '''mine'''?"

* In the first ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect|1}}'', one of the missions on Noveria has you fight through the facility's security force to retrieve incriminating evidence on the corrupt boss of the place. On the way out, you run into the irate sergeant, herself going [[DirtyCop behind her captain's back]], who says, "You know what they did to cop killers on my world?" If Wrex is present, he retorts, "You know what we do to dirty cops on my world?"
* In ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect 3}}'' [[spoiler:a large number of Citadel Security officers are killed during the attempted Cerberus coup. The assault force, aided by sleeper agents embedded in C-Sec itself, kill a large number of C-Sec officers and Shepard's squad is treated to the sight of C-Sec officers being slaughtered by Cerberus troops when they arrive to assist.]]

While this is often a villain trope, there are cases that this trope may be applied to an AntiHero or a vigilante outside of CowboyCop types (particularly if the character suffered some form of PoliceBrutality that would result in the AntiHero or vigilante hunting down cops as well). If TheBadGuysAreCops this may be one way for them to meet their fate. Still, it's very rarely condoned, even if opinions about the sanctity of cops are declining. If the anti-hero in question is a CowboyCop or a SerialKillerKiller, then DuelToTheDeath ensues during their encounter with a Cop Killer.

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':

A staple of the CriminalProcedural when the writers want to create a "This Time, ItsPersonal" episode. Pretty much ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: a criminal kills a cop and the dead officer's colleagues have to avenge him via a CopKillerManhunt. These episodes frequently end with PoliceBrutality, as cop killing is ''very'' serious business. When the cops find the cop killer, they don't treat him very well. Not to mention that they're more likely to [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident have "accidents" or be "driven to suicide" at some point between arrest, trial, and imprisonment]]. Or even just [[TakeNoPrisoners make no effort to capture the cop killer alive in the first place]]. Conversely, a cop killer will likely be [[VillainCred regarded as particularly notorious by fellow criminals]] (which may very well be [[GloryHound why the cop killer does it in the first place]]).%%Do not hotlink SeriousBusiness from here. That's misuse.

** In the backstory, Electro is mentioned as having killed cops that J. Jonah Jameson blamed on Spider-Man. In the present, Mr. Negative's attack on City Hall causes the deaths of several cops, including [[spoiler:ComicBook/MilesMorales's dad, Jefferson Davis]].

While this is often a villain trope, there are cases that this trope may be applied to an AntiHero or a vigilante outside of CowboyCop types (particularly if the character suffered some form of PoliceBrutality that would result in the AntiHero or vigilante hunting down cops as well). If TheBadGuysAreCops this may be one way for them to meet their fate. Still, it's very rarely condoned, even if opinions about the sanctity of cops are declining. If the anti-hero in question is a CowboyCop, then DuelToTheDeath ensues during their encounter with a Cop Killer.

While this is often a villain trope, there are cases that this trope may be applied to an AntiHero or a vigilante outside of CowboyCop types (particularly if the character suffered some form of PoliceBrutality that would result in the AntiHero or vigilante hunting down cops as well). If TheBadGuysAreCops this may be one way for them to meet their fate. Still, it's very rarely condoned, even if opinions about the sanctity of cops are declining. If the anti-hero in question is a CowboyCop, then DuelToTheDeath ensues.

While this is often a villain trope, there are cases that this trope may be applied to an AntiHero or a vigilante outside of CowboyCop types (particularly if the character suffered some form of PoliceBrutality that would result in the AntiHero or vigilante hunting down cops as well). If TheBadGuysAreCops this may be one way for them to meet their fate. Still, it's very rarely condoned, even if opinions about the sanctity of cops are declining.

* On ''Series/CHiPS'' a patrolman is killed in an auto accident by a motorist who was trying pull off an insurance scam. The accident happened when a delivery van got in the way of the driver and his target.
* On ''Series/{{Copper}}'' a rookie police officer is stabbed to death and the other cops tear through the Five Points neighborhood looking for the killer. When they have no success, the local ward boss, an ex-copper himself, orders the closing of all the local pubs until the killer is found. In a neighborhood populated by Irish immigrants, this is extremely SeriousBusiness. The killing was actually a gang initiation intended to make sure that the new member would never dare inform on the gang to the police.
* ''Series/{{Counterpart}}'': Baldwin kills two different German cops in her very first scene, and she goes on to kill more without hesitation.

While this is often a villain trope, there are cases that this trope may be applied to an AntiHero or a vigilante (particularly if the character suffered some form of PoliceBrutality that would result in the AntiHero or vigilante hunting down cops as well). If TheBadGuysAreCops this may be one way for them to meet their fate. Still, it's very rarely condoned, even if opinions about the sanctity of cops are declining.

* In ''Film/TheFugitive'', Richard Kimble is believed to have killed a Chicago policeman (actually it was the one-armed man). U.S. Marshal Gerard knows that he has to get to Kimble before the Chicago cops do because they will be shooting to kill.
* In ''Film/TheGodfather'', Michael Corleone has to hide out in Sicily for years to escape retribution for killing Captain [=McCluskey=], a corrupt cop in the pocket of the Tattaglia crime family.

* ''Series/GothamKnights'': In "[[Recap/GothamKnights2023S1E13NightOfTheOwls Night of the Owls]]", the Talons slaughter at least half a dozen GCPD officers while going to kill the Gotham Knights, who are now in their custody.

* ComicBook/{{Nemesis}}' main recreational activity. His main target isn't politicians or landmarks, but well-known police commissioners.