Basic Trope: The police abusing their power or using excessive force to deal with a situation.
- Straight:
- A police officer or other person employed in law enforcement beats a suspect while arresting him or her.
- A Trigger-Happy police officer shoots at someone who is not a dangerous felony suspect, or shoots and kills even someone who is with no proof of his or her life being in danger.
- A police officer roughly handles and threatens someone who was not even committing a crime at all.
- Exaggerated:
- The police officer espouses every kind of bigotry and prejudice possible and some that aren't even possible (e.g. he/she even hates inanimate objects and plants, and believes aliens from other planets exist and hates them too), hating everyone and everything except himself or herself, and acts out Judge Dredd style on these beliefs as judge, jury, and executioner.
- The police officer threatens to beat up or shoot old people, toddlers, doctors, and other people that are so obviously nonthreatening and non-criminal it is obvious he or she has a problem with anger.
- Everyone in the police department is a Killer Cop with a Right-Hand Attack Dog that puts Western Terrorists to shame, and it is even part of official training.
- As soon as Bob's interrogation starts, he spills his guts and reveals everything, knowing that keeping silent will get him roughed up. The policeman ignores his confession entirely, tells him "so you don't want to talk", and then mauls him with his police dog anyway.
- Downplayed:
- The police department or other agencies overseeing it actually maintain a fairly good effort to constrain brutality and fire or jail the worst offenders. Too bad they are so busy with this and other duties that they can't get rid of all bad eggs in time.
- The officer uses brutality only when they need to.
- Justified:
- It's a horrific Crapsack World where no-one respects law enforcement unless it threatens violence; or, it's a ruthless dictatorship where violence and intimidation is deemed necessary to instill fear into the population.
- The police believe the only way to counter the scare tactics criminals employ is using scare tactics of their own.
- The police catch the Cop Killer, Serial Killer, or Serial Rapist red-handed assaulting his or her next victim and fly into a very understandable rage that ends poorly for the perp. The evidence against the perp is so clear and crimes so heinous that no one short of the Lawful Stupid Principles Zealot has good reason to object to some Pay Evil unto Evil.
- Inverted:
- Officer Friendly doesn't hurt anyone for any reason, even people who are physically attacking them and threatening their own life, against even their official training — he or she is an Actual Pacifist and would rather die or be injured himself or herself than hurt someone else.
- Some (rare) cases of Police Are Useless, though most Real Life cases of Police Are Useless are combined with Police Brutality.
- Subverted:
- Police Brutality Gambit
- A few cops beat up a person in the back alley... turns out these were mafia thugs putting on the uniforms to dispatch of a witness of their crimes and frame the police for it.
- The case looks like this at first, but further investigation reveals that the suspect was not just violent to the point of being a genuine threat, but also roided up well past the point where merciful takedown methods would have sufficed. Beating him down severely was genuinely the only way to make sure he stayed down.
- Double Subverted:
- The suspect pulled the Police Brutality Gambit before the officers threw him into the cell, because he knew the officers were civil enough themselves, but tolerated Prison Rape in the jail - so he pulled the Police Brutality Gambit not to smear the officers but to save himself from Police Brutality by proxy, in a hope of going to the hospital and then being bailed out instead of going to jail.
- When the actual cops show up, they're little, if at all, better than the gangsters.
- It is also revealed that many cops in the district take the exact same steroids (and maybe even buy them from the same dealer), so when they need to beat down someone said beating will be harder.
- Parodied:
- The misanthropic to the degree of omnicidal bigot depicted above under exaggerated, except Played for Laughs in Black Comedy or similar.
- Police Brutality is prevented by arming brutal officers with squirt guns and similar Joke Weapons, and the suspects end up having to try to calm them down anyway.
- Zig Zagged: After an altercation between an officer and a suspect, several different accounts from several police and civilian witnesses, each with their own personal reasons for bias, recount what happened. Our heroes have to sift through the statements and decide whether or not the police officer's actions were out of line or not.
- Averted:
- There are no police or law enforcement agencies. (May or may not be Anarchy Is Chaos.)
- Police are carefully psychologically screened to weed out sadistic and sociopathic individuals while promoting those with less aggression and hostility, and are trained to do their best to avoid escalating violence and to introduce calm and reason to situations whenever possible.
- It's a small town with no or very little internal serious crime at all, and everyone knows everyone else.
- An officer is about to commit Police Brutality when he sees someone with a camera, and backs down realizing he is on video.
- A suspect has a lawyer with them from the very first interaction, and the officer is not such a Rabid Cop to dare attack someone in front of a very reliable witness.
- All takedowns are within the rules and use reasonable force.
- Enforced:
- In some settings in fiction, especially those depicting Real Life police departments with major brutality or corruption problems
- A documentary or Real Life In-Universe Camera showing Police Brutality.
- To some degree, pretty much any Cop Show or Police Procedural that wishes to maintain versimilitude after around The '60s.
- Lampshaded:
- "Everyone who ever even looks at a cop around here falls down the stairs!"
- "I thought the police are supposed to be the good guys."
- The police department itself has a tally sheet of brutality incidents... which is longer than anything else.
- "I was speeding, and these cops pulled me out of my car for no reason and almost killed me!" "My god, the cops there are crazy - they punched me in the gut a couple years ago because I stepped on a flowerbed in the park."
- Invoked: Da Chief tells his officers to go rough on suspects, promising to work out any legal problems they encounter.
- Exploited:
- To show how brutal the cops are.
- To bring up an anarchist view of "why do we need police anyway?"
- Alternately, to make people view the Police Brutality as a Necessary Evil and support police brutality and torture.
- Defied:
- An honest police officer reports his brutal colleagues to the Internal Affairs or to the media, even when they know it will result in the end of their own career, or maybe worse.
- The person about to be beaten by the cops fights back.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "It's funny how the police in this series aren't any different from the criminals they're supposed to be fighting against."
- Implied:
- Someone leaves a police encounter battered, bruised, in an ambulance, or dead.
- Officers regularly talk about the suspects they beat up, and brag about how they got away with it.
- A police officer makes an intimidating threat of brutality to someone entirely undeserving or to someone for whom it would be Disproportionate Retribution.
- Deconstructed:
- Internal Affairs or a higher law enforcement agency is not useless for once, the brutal officers are themselves arrested and jailed as well as fired, and measures are put in to deal with systemic issues.
- The brutal cops only make the Cycle of Revenge worse, everyone loses any respect for even the most brutal authorities possible, leading to lawbreaking on a mass scale and possibly even to the formation of La Résistance against the Police State resulting from the Serial Escalation that started with brutal cops.
- The brutal cops get successfully sued by their victims, causing the governments that employ them to have to spend money that could go to other things paying lawsuit judgments and medical costs and the like - if the cops were not brutal, or brutal cops were monitored more closely and fired immediately, there wouldn't be such bad financial losses.
- A brutal cop is severely injured or killed when their victim fights back or an Angry Mob forms and proceeds to administer some street justice to them.
- Reconstructed:
- The brutal cops maintain enough of a monopoly of violence and enough good PR that the Cycle of Revenge ends with them for the most part. Their opposition basically has a choice between an exile, going into hiding, or a grisly death at the cops' hands.
- The brutal cops are, in some sick, sad way, better than their alternative in a Crapsack World.
- The brutal cops are the Karma Houdini: they don't get sued, or the laws or good lawyers somehow protect them from having to pay out the tort judgments they or their departments normally would have to pay.
- The brutal cops respond to the Cop Killers' actions with bloodshed and repercussions that leave dozens, if not hundreds, dead, hundreds more injured and, most importantly, thousands scared away from ever trying anything funny on a cop again.
- Played For Laughs: Black Comedy, Kafka Comedy, Comedic Sociopathy, Crossing the Line Twice.
- Played For Drama: Several innocent people end up severely injured or killed, and the perpetrator use their badges to receive no comeuppance.
- Played For Horror: It's standard procedure to massacre criminals and suspected civilians.
Fall back down the stairs to Police Brutality.
