Basic Trope: A cop who regularly commits unwarranted violence against suspects.
- Straight: Bob is a cop who brutalizes suspects, and sometimes shoots unarmed ones.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is more vicious and dangerous than the criminals he chases.
- Bob is an Internal Affairs officer who terrifies even the toughest cops in precinct.
- Bob has strong-armed (or even slaughtered) so many criminals to keep the rest out of doing stuff like peddle drugs to kids that he is, by all means and purposes, the local crime boss.
- Killer Cop
- Downplayed:
- Officer Bob has anger management issues, and has to be reminded to take his meds to avoid violent mood swings.
- Officer Bob, as the leader of the local SWAT Team, is the man who spends his first scene offering the option of a no-holds-barred assault or a sniper takedown in a Hostage Situation, but he otherwise makes use of the appropriate amount of force to disable a threat.
- Justified:
- Bob used to be one of the finest officers on the force, but the job and the horrible people he's had to deal with for years have driven him over the edge.
- Bob's beat is the local Urban Hellscape and the only way to keep any amount of law within its limits is to fight fire with fire.
- The victim was Bob's son, and he's lost his shit and is two steps away from a full-blown Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Bob is the captain in charge of the local SWAT Team. His job, thus, entails him having to prepare to bring overwhelming firepower and force to deal with a criminal threat if - or when - things go wrong.
- Inverted: Bob is too light on crime, he lets criminals go free at the slightest excuse.
- Implied: Saying that Bob is in charge of the case has all of the people in the room rushing to strap on bulletproof vests and run for the hills, and criminals to scream that they want a lawyer in absolute terror (or immediately start to confess... or try to commit suicide), while Da Chief reaches for some aspirin.
- Subverted:
- Turns out Bob's brutality was just propaganda by an Amoral Attorney representing criminals Bob had to get violent to stop.
- Bob plays himself up as this trope to intimidate criminals, but he's actually a By-the-Book Cop.
- Double Subverted:
- But it turns out the attorney guessed right, Bob is prone to excessive violence.
- Eventually Bob ends up Becoming the Mask.
- Parodied:
- Bob routinely uses excessive force against litterers and jaywalkers.
- Officer Bob shots and kills Charlie, and is accused of being a murderer, even though Charlie just gunned down a crowd of people with a huge machine gun.
- Officer Bob is a Hot-Blooded anthropomorphic leporid.
- Zig Zagged: In some episodes, Officer Bob is brutal and kills criminals out of hand. In others, he uses normal, sane police procedures. This is initially Depending on the Writer, but eventually made into a plot point.
- Averted: Even though Bob's been pushed to the edge, he never goes over.
- Enforced:
- The film is a condemnation of police brutality and Bob is the character meant to show its worst excesses.
- The film is a highly exaggerated balls-to-the-wall action flick and your standard-issue Cowboy Cop just isn't "gonzo" enough.
- Lampshaded: The Chief is all like "Dammit Bob! Why are you still here!?"
- Invoked:
- A dystopian Police State likes hiring these kind of cops for the evulz.
- Bob becomes this trope in an attempt to Scare 'Em Straight.
- Exploited:
- Mob boss Alice, knowing that Officer Bob uses excessive force, sets up a no longer trusted gang member for Suicide by Cop.
- Alice provokes Bob to garner sympathy for herself and hamper investigation into her illegal activities.
- Defied: Bob ends up getting as far as one abuse before he gets thrown off the force and held liable for civil rights violations.
- Discussed: The Chief tells Bob "I can't have a loose cannon like you on our streets!"
- Conversed: "I love it when Bob starts Chewing the Scenery!"
- Deconstructed: Bob ends up alienating the community utterly with his ways. Bob ends up getting shot in the street in front of many witnesses. The crowd cheers as he bleeds out in the street and no one identifies the completely known shooter.
- Reconstructed: Bob's death makes all of the criminals come out of the woodwork, a spree of murders, rapes and wannabe terrorists that turn the town into an Urban Hellscape overnight. They don't love Bob one little bit, and will always fear the worse, but these kind of criminals are the reason the term "fight fire with fire" was created... so when Bob's former By-the-Book Cop sidekick Alice finally reaches her Rage Breaking Point and runs over the local chapter of the Hell's Angels with an eighteen-wheeler, they know things will soon get back to normal.
- Played For Laughs: Bob has a very small charge but it doesn't stops him from being the angriest cop in the district, handing out parking tickets by punching his hand with them right through the windshield and helping kids cross the road by means of pointing his Hand Cannon to the face of incoming drivers.
- Played For Drama: Bob being on the police force greatly decreases the number of people with any interest in joining. This leaves Bob as one of the only police officers and causes many people not to trust the police force at all. Even various seasons after he leaves, a constant plot thread is the criminal-creating Irrational Hatred that the locals have for the police thanks to the brutality he (and others like him) used.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob is a Serial-Killer Killer who uses the police's resources to terrorize the city's underground, and occasionally the regular citizenry. Every day, the city awakens to the streets bathed in blood and criminal cadavers strung everywhere.
- Harry is an African-American man surrounded by an Intimidating White Presence and when Bob comes in it's not a question of if Harry will be gunned down for the crime of existing, but how fast is Bob going to reach for that gun.
- Plotted a Good Waste: Bob is the Deliberately Bad Example to Cowboy Cop Harry, who gets fired in twenty minutes because he uses excessive force on all criminals (or whoever he thinks he can get away with labeling a criminal) while Harry only annihilates crooks in "clean" (read: justifiable under law enforcement rules of engagement, and with them trying to kill him and/or someone else, it's unquestionable they are criminals) shootings.
You're gonna head back to Rabid Cop to tell me where your gangs are, you got that?!
