Basic Trope: A police officer who abuses their power for personal gain.
- Straight:
- Officer Jason sells drugs stolen from the evidence room.
- Officer Jason takes a bribe to "lose" the evidence needed to prosecute a local crime boss.
- Exaggerated:
- Jason's entire precinct is corrupt.
- The very concept of the police has a not-so-healthy dose of corruption within it.
- All the crime bosses in the city are Jason's pawns.
- Jason is the city's sole crime boss.
- Jason kills innocent people For the Evulz.
- Downplayed:
- Jason may be crooked, but he'll do the right thing when push comes to shove.
- Jason supports a gang because if they go down, they might be replaced by even worse gangsters. They may even be Friendly Neighborhood Gangsters.
- Justified:
- Jason, despite being a cop, has a massive authority problem, and/or wants to take the precinct down from the inside.
- Jason is greedy and/or power-hungry and sees the position of police officer as a perfect way to get money and power.
- Jason's official salary is so small he can't afford to leave free money on the table; need, not greed, is his motivation.
- Inverted:
- Jason is a paragon of incorruptibility.
- Jason is the only honest police officer on a squad of Dirty Cops.
- Jason is kidnapped by a gang member. He offers to exonerate him if he lets him go free.
- Jason is an honest and honorable criminal.
- Subverted:
- Jason appears to be a rough diamond at best, so his coworkers think he is a corrupt cop because of this, but deep inside, he's a By-the-Book Cop.
- Jason isn't a cop at all, only impersonating one.
- Double Subverted:
- ...But when absolutely no one else is watching, he breaks the rules with impunity.
- Jason used to be a cop, but he was fired for abusing his position.
- Parodied:
- Cowboy Cop Jason is violating serious laws by doing things like going around open-shirted on the job and filling out paperwork in maroon ink.
- A car drives through a puddle and splashes a nearby Jason with mud, making him literally a Dirty Cop.
- Zig-Zagged: Jason accepts bribes — while wearing a wire to convict the prosecutor of corruption. However, he only does this at the behest of his client. He later sends Kent into dangerous situations. When that fails and it sets up one of them to gain power, he shoots Kent himself with a criminal's gun. The whole series consists of Jason engaging in dodgy disposal of crooked cops one way or another. His feelings on his own actions are mixed.
- Averted: He takes some liberties with the law, but nothing too extreme.
- Enforced: "I'm writing this story about cops, but I myself hate authority. How can I express that?"
- Lampshaded: "Well, it's a shame I had to find you out here alone selling drugs. Tell you what, you give me half your take and none of this happened..."
- Invoked: Jason is dissatisfied with his salary and/or working conditions.
- Exploited: Several high-ranking drug dealers bribe the police in the hopes that they can buy the force.
- Defied: "What do you think I am, crazy? I don't want to lose my job. In addition to your drug trafficking charges, I'm booking you on a count of attempting to bribe an officer."
- Discussed: Jason tells fellow officers Alice and Bob about his experiences with corruption in the form of "I Have This Friend"
- Conversed: "For all the moral ambiguity this show is trying to put up, Jason's not as bad a Dirty Cop as I've seen roaming around in my hometown."
- Deconstructed: Jason's refusal to obey the rules ends up allowing several criminals to go free.
- Reconstructed: After which he's fired, and the entire precinct is investigated for wrongdoing.
- Played for Horror: Jason engages in Police Brutality so bad it gives every witness nightmares for the rest of their lives.
- Played for Laughs: Everyone on the force is a Dirty Cop; they routinely compete to see how much bribe money they can bring in, beat suspects bloody, and basically break every rule known to humanity.
- Played for Drama: The work investigates a police force during a period of high crime, in which one or more police officers are corrupt. The clash between honest and crooked cops is shown in full detail.
- Implied: Jason is filing a report after a bust, but he doesn't submit the Briefcase Full of Money he found at the scene to evidence.
I'll let the charges drop. You just gotta do me a favor, head back to Dirty Cop, capisce?
