Series / APB

Crime fighting gets an upgrade.

Billionaire tech genius Gideon Reeves inadvertently ends up in the middle of a convenience store armed robbery, only for his 911 call to be put on hold because the call center was understaffed. As a result of this, his best friend ends up getting shot and killed. Six weeks later, Reeves convinces the Mayor of Chicago to give him control of the police district in which the shooting happened, so he can attempt to find the killer and clean up the city by upgrading the department with state of the art technology of his own design, starting with a reporting and dispatch control system he calls APB.

A FOX show that premiered on February 6, 2017.

Cancelled after 1 season.

Not to be confused with the video games APB: All Points Bulletin or the arcade game of the same name.

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• Armor-Piercing Question: During Reeves' introductory presentation to the 13th District, Murphy points out that the district averages ten unsolved homicides a month, so why hadn't he tried to do anything about that before one of them was somebody connected to him? Reeves admits that it's a fair question.
• Artificial Limbs: In an almost literal Pet the Dog moment, at the end of "Personal Matters", Gideon arranges for a police dog who had been crippled in the line of duty to receive an artificial leg (Reeves Biomedical was using animal limbs for the proof of concept prototypes for their prosthetics designs).
• Attack Drone: Retrofitted from a surveillance drone.
  • The prototype version seen in the pilot looks like it was modified from a DJI Inspire.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Some of the toys that Gideon provides to the CPD are things they're only able to acquire because he's footing the bill for them, such as a two million dollar sports jacket that contains an undetectable concealed wire. Very useful for sting jobs, but since each jacket costs more than District 13's precinct building, it's unlikely that the CPD will be able to afford any more of them than the prototype Gideon commissioned on his own dime. Then again, most of Gideon's toys are either quickly developed on the spot to solve a particular problem or tech for high end customers like NASA designed for other applications that were repurposed, none of it built with getting the costs down to a level a police department would be able to afford in mind.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: In "Risky Business", Goss ends up mentioning that she's gay. At the end of the episode, her partner says "I never knew... that you could go so long without eating^note They'd spent the entire episode chasing after a potentially suicidal kid and never got lunch, it was now late at night.." He then suggests that they go out and get some food, and her being homosexual doesn't get brought up at all.
• The Cameo: Sanjay Gupta shows up in "Hate of Comrades" as Gideon's acquaintance.
• Cliffhanger: In the first season finale, Reeves and Murphy succeed in taking down the cyberterrorist, but not before he sets up a gun turret that assassinates the mayor - in the middle of a speech denouncing Reeves' control of District 13. And the attack could have been prevented had the mayor taken a moment to listen to what Gideon was trying to say when he called to warn him. And since the show was cancelled, we'll never know what happened next.
• Cool Bike: In "Personal Matters", it introduces new bikes that are really fast and have built in spike strip deployment systems to help catch a thief/hit and run driver.
• Cool Car: Part of the upgrades Reeves provide are new 650 horsepower patrol cruisers that can take anything short of a .50 caliber bullet. They also have other nifty features, like a direct uplink to the dispatch computer at the precinct and the APB app, chemical sniffers, and microphones that can identify and track the engine sound of a specific model of car.
• Crimefighting with Cash: What Reeves is trying to do. By the third episode he's spent at least 100 million dollars out of his own pocket to make the streets of Chicago safe again.
• Crying Wolf: The first use of the titular app is a kid calling in a man with a knife who just wanted to see if it worked. The kid later used it again and gets accused of this, but it turns out that the kid's dad was committing Domestic Abuse.
• The CSI Effect: Invoked. In "Hate of Comrades", Murphy points out that it would take at least a week for CSI to process the hideout they just found and get any usable data out of it, and they only have a few hours until the gang they're after make their move and then leave the city. Then Reeves arranges for a van containing a prototype portable CSI lab and its development team to show up in a matter of minutes. They then succeed in processing the scene in time, though they do end up misinterpreting one key piece of evidence (they successfully identify a location that is important to the gang by finding a point on a map that had been handled repeatedly, but came to the wrong conclusion as to why that location was so important, leading the police to stake out the gang's getaway route rather than the location of their next heist).
• "Eureka!" Moment: In "Personal Matters", Reeves get one after listening to Murphy's son. This leads into making the motorcycles.
• Expy: Gideon Reeves is one for Tony Stark, although he obviously doesn't personally fight crime. He's a billionaire tech genius and war profiteer who decides to use his wealth for heroism after a tragic experience. The first episode even opens like the first Iron Man film, with Gideon showing off his weapons to investors in the desert.
• Forensic Accounting: "Above and Beyond" takes the old phrase 'follow the money' literally. Reeves has a thick stack of cash coated with UV-reflective powder, and then has the CPD distribute the money to their informers and has them buy drugs. He then has patrol cops wear glasses that can detect traces of the powder on people's hands and clothes, allowing the police to rapidly work out who carries the money and where, enabling them to identify who the boss of all the dealers is.
• Gone Horribly Right: Reeves intended for his "APB App" to be used just for the 13th and is happy it worked out stopping a crime. At the end of the pilot, he learns that there are now tens of thousands of downloads of the app...all over Chicago.
• Good Old Ways: Played with. Reeves' new toys may be very useful for the police, but not all the cops are fans, and it's made clear that APB can't totally replace old-fashioned legwork.
• Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: "Risky Business" has Reeves facing opposition to the 13th District project from a new direction - the board of his own company, as the Reeves Industries Police Division has spent quite a lot of money developing tech for the police without bringing any money back in (and as mentioned in Awesome, but Impractical, some of the items are simply too expensive for most police departments to buy anyway). By the end of the episode, they get convinced that some of the gear can in fact be marketed - only for later episodes to reveal that their plan is to sell subscriptions to an upgraded version of APB, which Reeves refuses to do because the people who need the service most wouldn't be able to afford it. This leads to takeover attempt from the board, which he manages to defeat by coming up with a deal to license some of the tech to the FBI (which is much better able to afford Reeves' tech than most regular police departments).
• Hot Pursuit: Car chases are a major part of "Personal Matters", which includes an explanation as to why criminals often have an advantage in them, even if the cops have better vehicles: the police have to try to avoid damaging property or hitting people, and are obliged to render aid to civilians who get hurt during the chase. The criminals frequently don't care about collateral damage.
• Instant Emergency Response: An aversion set Gideon on the path to upgrade the Chicago PD, and APB is his attempt to make the trope more realistic.
• Jurisdiction Friction: The season 1 finale has some between District 13 and the FBI when the Feds decide that the cyberterrorist attacking the infrastructure of one of the largest cities in the country is less important than the mostly reformed black-hat hacker who is trying to help the police catch the cyberterrorist and who can't possibly get away because she's working from inside a police precinct under their direct supervision.
• Mob War: One episode has Reeves and Murphy trying to stop a gang war when the two biggest gangs in the district start accusing each other of burning down buildings in each other's territory. The real arsonist was a racist who was burning the buildings down because immigrants were living there, and was using gang tags to draw the police off his trail.
• Officer O'Hara: Averted. The hero's sidekick is Officer (later Detective) Murphy, but she is Latina, and her surname comes from her ex-husband, the mean old DA who wants to shut the program down.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: The titular APB app is a cell phone program that interacts with the computers in the new police cruisers and dispatch control at the precinct, allowing real-time crime reporting and response.
• Police Are Useless: Reeves starts his quest to revamp the Chicago PD because they didn't respond to his 911 call for help during a robbery until after his friend was killed, and six weeks later had no suspects. However, the police aren't so much incompetent as they are overworked, understaffed, and underfunded. Reeves decides to supply District 13 with state of the art equipment at his own expense.
• Post Cyber Punk: Reeves Industries helps the CPD's 13th District to tackle crimes and terrorism by providing new gear/equipment. There are some sectors of the public and CPD who don't like Reeves' approach in being involved with the police, which also includes potentially breaking local/state/federal laws.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • The show is explicitly based on a true story, except it actually happened in New Orleans, along with a few other changed details. This has actually led to criticism of the show as the real-life event had the entrepreneur bail on his pet project not long into it, which the show occasionally brings up as a possibility. Furthermore, the project was designed to protect the homes of the wealthy versus the poor (something the board of Reeves Industries also wanted to do in the name of profit).
  • The series uses several of the problems Chicago actually faces, such as a manpower shortage and police pension problems.
• Saved by the Awesome: Reeves gets the mayor's office to back off on their actions against his control of the 13th District (at least for a while) by taking down a major drug ring, which means that the city would look bad if they attacked the people responsible.
• Spiritual Antithesis: An interesting case as it wants to be a Spiritual Successor to RoboCop. Except, RoboCop used the rich corporate moguls who privatized the police force and gave it super-tech as the villains. Notably, OCP gave the cops a walking tank with an armor-piercing handgun, while Gideon gives the CPD less-lethal super-tasers and bulletproof jackets. In a sense, it's similar to the Lighter and Softer RoboCop: The Series.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • As shown in "Risky Business" it turns out that no, a billionaire cannot just spend all his time ignoring his own company and spending ludicrous amounts of money on tech for a police department without any returns and just expect their company to sit by and run business as usual without opposition.
  • The end of "Pandora's Box" shows that helping a known criminal could not only get you in trouble with any employers, but the police can also arrest and charge you for aiding and abetting.
• Surveillance Drone: One of the tech provided by Reeves. In "Hard Reset", Reeves modified it with a taser.
  • In "Personal Matters", a new drone for high-speed chases was made but was destroyed in its first use.
  • "Daddy's Home" has multiple miniature drones used to tail automobiles used by Moretti mob soldiers. Unfortunately, they weren't tested well enough to see if batteries or long range distance would lose the signal^note To be fair, that drone model was intended for processing crime scenes, not tailing cars.
• Static Stun Gun: Reeves arms District 13 with state of the art taser weapons. The main advantage is that you can nonlethally Shoot the Hostage then Shoot the Hostage Taker, followed by their greater range and faster rate of fire than conventional tasers. They guns are still capable of firing lethal rounds if necessary.
  • In 1x05, "Above and Beyond", the bad guy has a hostage, and someone asks why the cops don't just stun the hostage. The captain says it's "not safe", implying that the bad guy would shoot the hostage anyway, out of spite or surprise. Also, unlike the first episode, they don't have another officer in a flanking position to cover the perp.
  • As the first season progresses, the show keeps providing situations where stunning someone is simply not practical, such as a suicidal teenager on the lip of a rooftop. If they tase him, he gets knocked away from them.
• Those Two Guys: Most B-stories concerns Goss and Brandt dealing with typical policing situations, such as car theft and suicides.
• Wham Episode:
  • In "Personal Matters", Detective Murphy's ex-husband is appointed by the mayor to look into the 13th District due to Reeves Industries' involvement as head of an investigation team.

"Copy, dispatch, responding."