Good Policing, Evil Policing

Sometimes, police departments take a villainous role in the story. Sometimes, they are the heroes. Sometimes, they are morally flexible.

What happens when you have two law-enforcement agencies or officials on morally opposing sides, potentially involving Jurisdiction Friction and Interservice Rivalry? The "Good Policing, Evil Policing" contrast is what happens when you have cops as both heroes and villains.

Perhaps one law-enforcement agency is colluding with criminals, while the other is opposing them. Perhaps the agency is not colluding with criminals, but its methods are too extreme for their heroic counterparts. Perhaps the laws and regulations the agencies are supposed to enforce are depicted as evil or unjust, and one is willing to bend or act outside of them while the other rigidly follows them. Perhaps there is a conspiracy, and one agency is involved while the other opposes the conspiracy. In any case, this trope presents one agency or official as the Evil Counterpart to the other.

Super-Trope to CIA Evil, FBI Good. Sub-Trope of Artistic License – Law Enforcement.

Due to the frequency of reveals regarding this trope, this page is Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ghost in the Shell: Many of the villains are corrupt government and law enforcement, weaving the conspiracies that the overall anti-heroic, but honest, Section 9 have to investigate.

Comic Books

• Gotham Central: The main focus is the Gotham City Police, which tries to enforce law and order in the DC Universe's main example of the term "Wretched Hive" and was dirty in every single level until Batman and The Commissioner Gordon came along (and even then, the series just loves to show why it's still classified by the FBI as the second most corrupt police force in America). The plot is not lacking in examples for both sides of this Trope, with Commissioner Gordon himself and the members of the Major Crimes Unit like Renee Montoya trying to be a By-the-Book Cop and others like Harvey Bullock being a lawful Cowboy Cop, while one of the big examples of crooked cops is Jim Corrigan, who murders Detective Crispus Allen and gets away with it.
• S.H.I.E.L.D. is a complex example because it's one of the more visible law enforcement factions in the Marvel Universe (other than the the NYPD) and it stands on both sides of this trope Depending on the Writer. 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 Civil War (2006), Outlawed and Original Sin) 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 plainly illegal because whoever is the agency's leader at the time thinks that being in command and given the responsibility to "make the hard choices" means their choices are always indisputably "good".

Film — Live-Action

• The Dark Knight Trilogy shows a morally grey approach to moral contrasts regarding police.
  • In the first film, James Gordon is clearly showcased as the only truly clean officer in the Gotham City Police (as he ruefully tells his Dirty Cop partner "I'm no rat! In a town this bent, who's there to rat to anyway?").
  • In the second film, the efforts of Batman and Gordon have managed to make the city better, but the police is overall still so corrupt that Gordon is forced to have a few crooked cops in his task force in order to have some personnel (which directly leads to the perdition of Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes when one of said crooked cops sells them out to the Joker). For the most part, there may be more heroic cops in the department, but the Joker's unrelenting terror eventually either kills them or makes them bow to the clown.
  • In the final film the efforts of the Gotham City Police has effectively cleaned up the town, but the cops have become complacent and Deputy Commissioner Peter Foley is a Glory Hound who prioritizes a manhunt for Batman over the terrorists who attacked the Gotham Stock Exchange, which leads to Bane advancing his plans. Contrasting everybody, even Gordon (who is still haunted by the decision to put the blame of all of Dent's murders on Batman in order to build the Dent Act, which is what helped with said cleaning up of the city) is Detective Blake, who for all of his conflicting emotions (especially after discovering Gordon's secret) still does his work and tries to save people as Bane turns Gotham into an anarchic hellhole.
• Die Hard: The two FBI agents are jerkasses who care nothing for the lives of the hostages and are only concerned with killing the terrorists. In contrast, while the Deputy Chief of the LAPD is obstructive and belligerent, he cares about the hostages, while his subordinate Sgt. Al Powell works with John McClane to try and solve the hostage crisis.
• Even Lambs Have Teeth: The local sheriff's department is in league with a Human Trafficking operation, while the "FBI Detectives" oppose them.
• The Gauntlet: Detective Ben Shockley has been sent to Las Vegas to collect "a nothing witness to a nothing trail," according to his Chief. It turns out that the Chief, the District Attorney, and some others on the force are actually mob Double Agents. Mob assassins try to waste Shockley and the witness Gus Mally, and when they fail, the corrupt Chief gets the regular patrolmen to form a death squad to stop them. Fortunately, the patrolmen are still honest, and abide by arrest protocol, so that Gus Mally can finger the Chief as The Mole.
• Hot Fuzz: Sgt. Nicolas Angel finds himself opposing Inspector Frank Butterman, the Chief of the Sandford police, who covers up several murders by making them look like accidents to protect Sandford's pristine reputation.
• Man on Fire: 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 Dirty Old Man, he is perfectly okay with letting John Creasy go on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge and he executes the Voice in a police raid in the film's epilogue) while all of the other cops are members of a secret Dirty Cop fellowship who have no problem endangering a kidnapped little girl to line up their pockets by ambushing a Ransom Drop. Unsurprisingly, the latter all become victims of Creasy's rampage.
• Mississippi Burning: The local sheriff's department is in bed with The Klan, while the FBI is trying to bring the racist murderers to justice.
• Magnum Force: Detective Harry Callahan is known for shooting large holes in criminals, but only those that present an immediate danger to himself or other citizens. Callahan grouses about incorrigible criminals that weasel through the justice system, but he never goes so far as to play God. However, three uniform officers on the force are playing God: summarily executing perps that they deem incorrigible. This corruption turns out to go all the way up to Lieutenant Briggs. As Callahan puts it: "A man's got to know his limitations."
• The Other Guys: Hoitz and Gamble, for all of their bumbling and Hoitz's cavalierness, perform a thorough investigation and try to stick to the rules. In contrast—in terms of morality and competence—the Cowboy Cop duo of Danson and Highsmith are reckless in their pursuit of criminals to the point of causing property damage and eventually getting themselves killed, while Martin and Fosse dismiss possible leads to just get a collar ASAP and make the news. At one point, Captain Mauch even dismisses the late Danson and Highsmith as inefficient idiots not worth remembering, let alone imitating.
• Serpico: One of the classic examples of moral contrasts within law enforcement, and Based on a True Story, to boot. The plot takes great pains to show that the New York Police in the late Sixties and early Seventies was crooked beyond belief and Frank Serpico eventually couldn't take it anymore and became a whistleblower, an act that nearly got him killed.
• 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.
• Trust No 1: Small-Town Detective Doug Bradley comes into conflict with a conspiracy by the NSA and FBI involving false imprisonment and murder. Doug tries to save the former prisoners before they are killed.
• Walking Tall (1973): Bufford Pusser catches the dealers cheating at a casino called The Lucky Spot, and the proprietors cut him up with a knife and leave him for dead. After he complains to the Sheriff, and nothing is done, he learns of the rampant corruption in his hometown, which, eventually, prompts Pusser to run for Sheriff, himself. His opponent dies trying to run Pusser off the road.
• Walking Tall (2004): Chris Vaughn becomes a Cowboy Cop after being voted as town sheriff, beating up his way up the ladder of drug dealers in his town towards the Big Bad and the one time he does the "corrupt cop" thing (smashing the big bad's Porsche's tail light after giving him a warning for said tail light) it's Played for Laughs. In contrast, the entirety of the sheriff's department was in the big bad's pocket and they not only didn't investigate Vaughn's near-death at the hands of the big bad's casino enforcers but they also try to assassinate Vaughn and his family in the final act.

Literature

• The Fifth Horseman: Angelo Rocchia is the NYPD officer who likes to do human contact with the public and use brutal methods if needed while his associate the FBI agent Mike Rand is a By-the-Book Cop.
• Jack Reacher: There often are morally bankrupt law enforcement officials who get in the way of the titular Jack Reacher, and upstanding law enforcement officials who try to act by the book. Notably, when Reacher himself is in the Military Police in The Enemy, he tries to properly investigate the series of murders, while his replacement superior officer tries to have them covered up.
• Snuff: Commander Vimes, the good cop, finds himself up against the police force of the Shires he's visiting in the form of Constable Feeney. Feeney seems to believe a policeman's first loyalty is to the people who hired him, ie the Magisters of the Shires, and follows their orders even as they try to cover up a serious crime and the horrendous actions they condoned to pull it off. Vimes points out that a policeman's first loyalty is to the Law, which means even the Magisters are subject to his authority and admonishes Feeney for thinking they somehow made the law themselves.
• Vasquez Private Eye: Downplayed. Rachel's investigation implicates protagonist Detective Johnson Vasquez (who is conducting his own investigation) as the killer, and while she does turn out to be an Alpha Bitch Social Climber, the real killer sought to frame Johnson for the murders as revenge for accidentally enabling a Karma Houdini moment years earlier.

Live-Action TV

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: While every cop in District Nine-Nine is a Bunny-Ears Lawyer 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 an effective leader), while Deputy Chief Wuntch and "The Vulture" (to name but two examples) are obsessed with getting the glory of closing the cases and utilize their power as higher-ups in the NYPD's command structure to make the cops of the Nine-Nine live a living hell out of sheer petty hatred. And that's not even taking the actual criminal cops, such as the ones dealing drugs or wiretapping houses, into account...
• 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.
• Daredevil (2015): In the season 1 finale, it's the FBI who are responsible for bringing down Wilson Fisk's criminal empire, since the NYPD are in Fisk's pocket. Though the roles are reversed by season 3, where the FBI are the ones doing Fisk's dirty work for him and the NYPD are the ones who are clean.
• Homicide: Life on the Street has a more morally gray take on morally contrasted law enforcement. The upper echelons of the Baltimore Police Department are petty bureaucrats who care more about good publicity and settling grudges than they do about good police work. Lower-level officers receive a more sympathetic portrayal and are generally well-intentioned people who do the job as best they can, but the series does not shy away from showing how most of the officers are heavily flawed and damaged people, biases often heavily influence investigations, and corruption and police brutality are always covered up. Other law enforcement agencies are not depicted positively either. The FBI constantly and often unnecessarily butts heads with the police over jurisdiction issues, and the Secret Service covers up a political assassination to avoid an international incident.
• Law & Order: Main characters in the franchise are usually portrayed as honest and competent. However, when the main characters have to work with other cops or other law enforcement agencies they usually turn out to be incompetent and/or corrupt. Higher ups are usually portrayed as Obstructive Bureaucrats at best.
  • The mothership series sometimes had the detectives resort to unconstitutional methods (usually for sympathetic reasons) for the purpose of having the second half of the episode show that doing so only benefits the defense case. In the next episode, the detectives are back to being honest and competent.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit suffers from an extreme case of Protagonist-Centered Morality. The main characters are meant to be seen the same way as the other heroes of the franchise, but an objective analysis of their actions shows that they are both incompetent and corrupt, and never suffer any consequences.
• Person of Interest: Joss Carter is the epitome of good police. Other good cops include Cal Beecher, Bill Szymanski, and Dani Silva. While the NYPD is generally portrayed as a force for good, for the first three seasons, the corrupt cops of HR are hiding in plain sight, making it impossible for Team Machine to trust any cops except for Carter and Fusco.

Video Games

• Hidden City has the Security Service, which is led by Mr. Black, going against the Octopus Division, which is led by Violet. The Octopus Division used to be a special branch of the Security Service whose task is to "eliminate unwanted situations", but at some point, Violet and the rest of the Octopus Division decide to betray the law and join the evil Shadow Cult in their bid for more power. The two sides haven't engaged in an open conflict yet, since the citizens are unaware of the Octopus Division's Face–Heel Turn, but the two sides would use other methods to try and dismantle the other's influence over the City.
• Metroid: A plot thread of later games is that there's a corrupt faction within the Galactic Federation (who Samus works with, and was once a member of). Contrasted with Samus herself (an unambiguously heroic bounty hunter^note Which is canonically a title for people who freelance for the GF), and the more reasonable troopers and officials Samus works with or for. The English dub of some games muddied this a little by not making it clear that it was only one branch, and gave the impression the entire organisation was corrupt.
• Persona 5 and spinoffs:
  • 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 to. 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 Villainous Breakdown, Akechi rants that he doesn't give a rat's ass about justice.
  • Played straight in Persona 5 Strikers, with Zenkichi, who is a good man just trying to go by the rules. He is trying to help his commissioner so she can be trusted by the country enough to help him take down a politician part of Shido's corruption. He starts off blackmailing, but accepts that going after the true villains is more important, and becomes a Phantom Thief himself and helps put an end to the remnants of the Shido movement.
• Heavy Rain: FBI Agent 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 (especially grieving father Ethan Mars) 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.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • The Springfield Police (of which Chief Clancy Wiggum is the most regular member to appear) is constantly portrayed as buffoonish at absolute best and actively malicious and corrupt at worst, occasionally showing shades of Lethally Stupid. When any other character tries to police the streets of Springfield (Marge in "The Springfield Connection" and Homer in "Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge", to give examples), they actually do a good job at being proper enforcers of law and order at first but are inevitably ground down by the corruption that permeates the entire town and throw the towel, letting Wiggum retake his role.
  • In "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment", Wiggum is kicked out of the police service for his inability to enforce dry law and replaced by Federal agent Rex Banner, who is comparatively more competent at doing this assignment but is also a Rabid Cop who hurts a lot of people as collateral damage and only cares to enforce the dry law, allowing Fat Tony to keep dealing other drugs.
  • In "Homer the Vigilante", Wiggum and the Springfield Police show their customary levels of idiocy when trying to investigate the robbing spree of a Gentleman Thief but in the climax, Wiggum, in a rare moment of competence, points out that as Affably Evil as the thief was, he still stole things and he needs to be arrested (which he then does), while the Vigilante Militia led by Homer does anything but enforce the law, beating up people at random and letting the thief rob a museum while they're having a kegger. Notably, neither side actually figures out where the thief is until Grandpa Simpson points out that one of the tenants in the Springfield retirement home acts very odd and has a lot of loot in his room.
• In the episode "Cop Out" from The Powerpuff Girls (1998), Mike Brikowski is depicted as the worst cop in the department, who prefers to eat donuts all day and sleep in his car complaining about the Powerpuff girls taking the spotlight from them instead of fighting crime, turning quickly into villainy and antagonizing the girls after being fired for sleeping during a bank robbery. The rest of the police department, including Mike's former partner Perez, however, is depicted as competent, quickly figuring out Mike's true nature and petty revenge against the girls.
• On occasion, South Park contrasts the more average town cop Officer Barbrady (who is incompetent but generally good natured) with the formal Park County Police Force (also incompetent but flat out evil). Most recent seasons pretend Barbrady doesn't exist, however.

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