History Main / GoodPolicingEvilPolicing

* ''Series/BrooklynNineNine'': While every cop in District Nine-Nine is a BunnyEarsLawyer who constantly pranks their fellow officers, they are still law-abiding and try to close their cases fast and properly (and Captain Holt, for all of the gags about him being one of the most humorless human beings alive, is [[BenevolentBoss an effective leader]]), while Deputy Chief Wuntch and "The Vulture" (to name but two examples) are obsessed [[GloryHound with getting the glory of closing the cases]] and utilize their power as higher-ups in the NYPD's command structure to [[BadBoss make the cops of the Nine-Nine live a living hell]] [[EvilIsPetty out of sheer petty hatred]].

* ''Film/{{Tank}}'': The climactic scene has the corrupt sheriff see that the folks of a neighboring county are helping to pull Sergeant Major Zack Carey and his son Billy out of a mud flat. Not wanting to lose his fugitives, the sheriff orders his men to "fire into the crowd!" The neighboring deputies are honest, and won't stomach their unarmed citizens coming under fire. The honest deputies level their firearms at the sheriff's forces, and advise "I wouldn't do that if I were you." Zack and Billy make it over the county line into the custody of non-corrupt law enforcement.

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': One episode has the police looking into a murder of an informant working for the SEC. It brings up a conflict between Captain Gates and her sister, running the SEC investigation. Captain Gates had once spiked one of her sister's investigations by revealing a witness was dirty. It turns out that the killer was the aide working for Gates' sister, having pressed the informant into duty by planting drugs on him. The target of the investigation caught wise and paid the informant a hefty sun to bail and return to South America. The aide learned he was fleeing the country, and killed him hoping it would be tied to the CEO they were investigating.

* ''ComicBook/{{SHIELD}}'' is a complex example because it's one of the more visible law enforcement factions in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse (other than the [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCityCops the NYPD]]) and it stands on both sides of this trope DependingOnTheWriter. For the most part, they are trying to maintain law and order in a universe full of super-powered crooks and succeeding, but more often than not (big examples being ''ComicBook/CivilWar'', ''ComicBook/{{Outlawed}}'' and ''ComicBook/OriginalSin'') they are there to cause the mess that the superheroes need to clean up and/or are jackbooted thugs enforcing the evil law ''du jour'' and employing tactics that are [[{{Hypocrite}} plainly illegal]] because whoever is the agency's leader at the time thinks that [[TautologicalTemplar being in command and given the responsibility to "make the hard choices" means their choices are always indisputably "good"]].

** The entire Tokyo police department is shown to be in the pocket of Shido, being extremely corrupt, willing to beat the shit out of Joker and frame him for assault for no reason beyond Shido told them too. In contrast, Akechi is a teenage detective who is devoted to maintaining justice, and the sole member of the police force against the plan to use the Phantom Thieves as scapegoats when they are unable to catch the one behind the murders, preferring to actually arrest the criminal. Subverted since it turns out he's Shido's hitman and the true killer. During his VillainousBreakdown, Akechi rants that he doesn't give a rat's ass about justice.

* ''VideoGame/HeavyRain'': FBIAgent Norman Jayden is a calm, capable investigator who uses offender profiling, advanced technology, and forensic evidence to hunt down the Origami Killer while making sure that no one (especially not grieving father Ethan Mars) gets wrongfully accused. His assigned partner, police lieutenant Carter Blake, is a violent, abrasive thug with a badge whose idea of detective work is beating up anybody who looks remotely suspicious and throwing expertise to the wind (all while the rest of the department turns a blind eye to his brutality). Three guesses as to who has the option to catch the Origami Killer single-handedly.

SuperTrope to CIAEvilFBIGood.

* ''Film/ManOnFire'': Of the members of the Mexico City police that appear on screen, Detective Manzano is the only good cop who appears (and even then he's a DirtyOldMan, he is [[CopsNeedTheVigilante perfectly okay with letting John Creasy go]] on his RoaringRampageOfRevenge and [[spoiler:he [[VigilanteExecution executes]] [[BigBad the Voice]] in a police raid in the film's epilogue]]) while all of the other cops are members of a secret DirtyCop fellowship who have [[WouldHurtAChild no problem endangering a kidnapped little girl]] to line up their pockets by ambushing a RansomDrop. [[PayEvilUntoEvil Unsurprisingly]], the latter all become victims of Creasy's rampage.