What Does America Think of Chicago P.D. (TV Show)

Cafe Society
1

I was considering creating a Great Debates thread about TV show Chicago P.D. but realised I lacked the authority of actually knowing for sure how Americans view it so this is an unashamed and lenghty trawl for information.

I hold a number of assumptions. Please correct any that are wrong:

  1. Chicago P.D. is a reasonably popular / successful TV show in America. (Based on fairly high production values and since, according to Wikipedia, it has been approved for a third season.)

  2. Chicago P.D. is from the same stable as the ***Law and Order ***franchises. Shows which generally portray the police as honest, hard working and caring. So I would expect Chicago P.D. to be inherently pro-police.

  3. Further, on the TVTropes website:

“This show is produced with the cooperation of the Chicago Police Department, meaning that they have permission to use accurate uniforms, insignia, and markings.”

So to my point.

I am aware the main character Hank Voight (actor Jason Beghe) is deliberately portrayed (in the first season at least) as morally ambiguous: He takes money from drug gangs but it is suggested he is only pretending to be dirty.

However Voight at various times: Handcuffs a prisoner to a police station wall and beats him. He beats a wheelchair bound suspect in a hospital. Most egregiously (and frankly ridiculously) he takes a recaptured prisoner and wraps him in chains, preparing to kill him by dropping him the harbour. (Spoiler: He’s stopped by one of his colleagues but the intent was apparently there.)

Disclaimers

I realise America is a vast country and every possible view is held by at least someone but I am curious of what the mainstream US opinion of Chicago P.D. is. Does Mr and Mrs Joe Average watch Chicago P.D. and think:

Beating and murdering prisoners? This show is like a documentary!

Beating and murdering prisoners? I know it doesn’t really happen like that but I wish it did.

Beating and murdering prisoners? What a load of tosh. It’s like watching a Paul Verhoeven satire. Entertaining enough but of course it’s nothing like reality.

Is a show portraying officers beating and murdering suspects really getting support from the real Chicago PD! Is there no national outcry that the show misrepresents US police?

I am curious.

TCMF-2L

PS I used to watch The Shield but I feel that was very different to Chicago P.D. Firstly the show’s unashamed premise was showing a corrupt police team. Secondly, according to IMDB, the real police didn’t officially support it:

“The uniformed officers originally wore realistic LAPD-style badges over their left breast, which is standard in the real Los Angeles Police Department, as it is symbolically over the heart. After criticism from the real LAPD over the show’s depiction of corrupt cops, the badges were replaced with less realistic badges which were worn over the right breast, starting midway through the first season.”

2

I’ve never heard of it.

I don’t care for cop shows.

3

Just your typical cop show.

4

Where are you from and what do you think of it?

5

I’ve never seen it and have no opinion, but I’m interjecting just to say how great I think it is that Jason Beghe has a successful show. He escaped from $cientology and didn’t go quietly. They threatened/tried to destroy him and were completely unsuccessful. I’m sure he gave a lot of others the courage to leave/the awareness to stay away in the first place. He’s one of 8 major former Scienos featured in Alex Gibney’s upcoming documentary Going Clear (March 29 on HBO!), talking about his experiences.

6

I’m British.

I watch and enjoy a fair amount of TV including quite a few US shows. Chicago P.D. was just something I watched most of season one. Recently, when a channel began advertising the second season would be broadcast soon, it got me thinking.

I remembered the clear illegality of the actions of the lead character. Meanwhile, on this board there are a few posters who always criticise real life US police brutality - for example the ongoing Pit Thread “Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread” - and that got me wondering whether there was some sort of dichotomy going on here between how typical Americans like to see their police portrayed on TV and how typical Americans want the police to be in real life.

I mulled over the idea of starting a thread in Great Debates or even the pit but since I had no real idea how the show is perceived in the US and no idea whether the concept of a “typical American” has any value so I felt that was unwise. However my curiosity was piqued so I thought I would ask around in Cafe Society.

TCMF-2L

7

Another American jumping in to say I really don’t think about Chicago PD. I’ve seen commercials for the show but I’ve never watched an episode. And the show doesn’t seem to get much attention in pop culture. I’ve never seen an episode of Breaking Bad either but I know a lot about that show from hearing so many second-hand references to it. You don’t get anything like that for Chicago PD.

8

Taking your comment to my OP literally - probably far more literally than you intended - you would be saying US cop shows generally show police acting violently and illegally. And, further, that would be unremarkable.

On the one hand I know that to be untrue. The Law and Order franchises usually show cops as good people - unless a specific “Bad Cop” character is introduced for an episode. The CSI franchises show cops as good guys.

Homicide: Life On The Street showed Pembleton applying intense psychological pressure to suspects but not using violence.

NYPD Blue showed cops as a bit grubby at times and had Sipowicz, for example, talking of “tuning” a suspect to get a confession. In other words using physical abuse.

To me, Chicago P.D. shows a cop who is himself nothing but a criminal. A cop who murders (or is prepared to murder) prisoners he particularly dislikes. As a dramatic decision it seemed insultingly stupid. All that would be needed would be to shoot the prisoner and claim he died in a struggle. I mean wrapped in chains and thrown in the ocean? Really?

But I wanted to hear what others felt about the morality of the character and whether it says anything about real life.

TCMF-2L

9

According to the latest available ratings, Chicago P.D. has approximately 4.25 million viewers. That means approximately 316 million Americans do not watch the show and, consequently, think little or nothing of it at all.

10

Remember that Voight got his start on Chicago Fire, where he tried to get Dr. Chase - er, Lieutenant Casey - to not file an accident report where Voight’s son, who was drunk, ran into another car, paralyzing young boy in that car, and then got caught in a sting trying to arrange a hit of some sort on Casey.

The question of “is Voight dirty, or isn’t he, and if it is, is it that bad of a thing?” is pretty much the entire point of the series - well, that and the incidents (which are to Chicago P.D. what the fire calls are to Chicago Fire).

11

The concept of “typical American” has no value. So take everything I’m now going to say with a grain of salt.

In general - I’ve never seen the show, read anything about it, or heard anyone mention it - Americans, or at least white Americans, are totally schizophrenic (old, common meaning) about the police. The police are either their friends, protectors against evil, heroic good guys and general all-around necessities or utterly corrupt thugs and bullies who if they are out to get you will use any devious scheme to do so. And they believe both things at one and the same time, switching back and forth between them from incident to incident without any sense they are contradicting themselves. Nor are they, since both sides are absolutely true and proven a million times over in individual incidents.

From what I’ve read the mythical “typical Briton” was gobsmacked in the 60s and 70s when a series of scandals showed their police to be just as corrupt and thuggish as American police. I don’t know how true this is - I don’t know any more about the typical Briton than you know about the typical American - but I also can’t understand how this could not be true. Police have to be heroic and unselfish and protectors of all that’s good, while at the same time being exposed to the worst aspects of humanity, tempted by their power, and susceptible to the money being offered them. It’s been that way in every police force everywhere in history. So why would anyone think it unusual for the police to be portrayed that way in a purportedly realistic production?

12

There are shows where the cops don’t act violently and illegally, of course. That’s the hook for the show, that the main character is a Dirty Harry-type loose cannon. But once you leave that aside, it works out to your typical cop show. The violence is seen in the show as necessary to justice. Been done many times before…by shows currently on the air.

13

FWIW, I am an American and I have never heard of the show.

14

I have never heard of the show.

15

I’ve seen a lot of the episodes and it’s not a very good cop show imho.
Compared to some of the really good cop shows like Homicide:Life on the Streets, NYPD Blue, The Wire, etc. it comes off as cartoonish.
From the solving of a crime in the span of one episode to the bad cop bad cop interrogations that go unchallenged I’ve written it off as a crime fantasy show rather than a crime drama.

16

Here’s an old post about it on a local police blog. They weren’t looking forward to it.

http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/2013/05/chicago-pd-series.html

A comment from a more recent post:

http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/2014/01/scc-is-under-weather.html

17

It’s apparently doing well enough that the network is now working on a pilot for “Chicago Med”, about a hospital set in the same universe, just like Chicago Fire is.

18

Voight started as an antagonist on Chicago Fire. He is arrogant, corrupt, violent, and a piece of work, as we say. The other characters know this, but for some reason have to put up with him.

I used to watch Chicago Fire. I don’t follow the spin-off, but as I understand it, the idea is that he has friends in the police department, or people he’s extorted and threatened, which is why he’s not in prison or at least off the force.

In real life, the Chicago Police Department has a very longstanding reputation as scary and corrupt. The show is playing with that trope, albeit in an exaggerated way.

19

Thank you for the replies. It looks like the show is pretty obscure in the US - it is in the UK as well by the way - and where it is known it isn’t respected. I don’t see any point in starting a debate around it.

TCMF-2L

20

Exapno

“Typical American” (or “Typical Briton”) is always going to raise hackles. We’re all individuals aren’t we? But sometimes it can be reasonable to subscribe to a popular view. Suggesting Friends was a popular comedy in America would be reasonable even though there would be huge amounts of Americans who could honestly say they hated the show.

The following is my purely personal take on British police scandals so please don’t anyone cite this as authoritative.

The 60s saw Britain rocked by the real life Profumo scandal. A senior British politician John Profumo was forced to admit being involved in a sex scandal which ultimately cost him his career and bought down the Government he served. It was a massive blow to the credibility of the establishment in general. But not especially the police.

TV in Great Britain into the 1980s only had three channels - the fourth channel was launched in 1982 - and it took until the late 70s before there were any VHS video recorders and players so a popular UK TV show would be really popular - a big show could gather over 90% of viewers.

The first big UK police show (from my memory) was Dixon of Dock Green which started in 1955 and ran until 1976. (I checked that on Wikipedia and was amazed - I would have guessed it ended in the late 1960s.)

PC Dixon (played by Jack Warner) was a very old school, family friendly British “Bobby” in the traditional uniform and his avuncular presence was seen directly addressing the viewers at the beginning and end of each show with an old fashioned but cheery “Evening all.”

According to Wikipedia - I only really recall parodies of the show, not the show itself - it toughened up at the end of it’s run but the archetypal PC Dixon was an old man (actor Jack Warner was 80 years old at the end) who could spy a hardened criminal at half a mile, blow his police issue whistle, and the villain would trot over and smilingly say “It’s a fair cop. You got me there Mr Dixon, sir.”

Dixon was superseded during it’s run by Z Cars 1962 - 1978. It had a famous brassy theme tune and was far grittier. While Dixon was set in London (albeit a surprisingly free of serious crime London) Z Cars was set “Up North” in a fictional Liverpool suburb and the UK had a tradition of Northern based and gritty “Kitchen Sink Dramas.”

However the game changing police drama was The Sweeney which ran from 1975 to 1978. Previous police dramas concentrated on honest, working class uniformed cops and occasionally the dark suited and white shirted posh, educated officers. The Sweeney was a watershed moment showing plain clothed detectives wearing either lurid seventies fashion - and these were middle aged men - or scruffy old anoraks, swearing, drinking and being as violent as the villains they pursued.

According to Wikipedia the show was inspired by corruption in the real London Flying Squad (a unit specialising in violent crime) but in all honesty I have no recollection of that. What I do recall is that for 20 years (indeed sometimes still to this day) after every real life police scandal there was the suggestion modern young police officers were misguidedly inspired by the stars of The Sweeney (John Thaw’s Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman’s George Carter.)

Many in the public loved (and many still love even today) The Sweeney - it was the direct basis for the later time travelling comedy drama Life on Mars.

The real life scandal which really shook the public faith in the UK police was (or at least, the one I remember causing national outrage) was the pioneering 1982 fly on the wall documentary Police about the Thames Valley Police. The most infamous segment was a young female rape victim (face obscured of course) in a small room, surrounded and being (basically) interrogated by three fat, smoking middle aged men giving the woman full “Victim Blaming” - After broadcast it was discussed by the Government and led to fundamental changes in the way rape victims are handled.

At the time the police officers (who reportedly felt they WERE being sympathetic and helping the victim) were accused, of course, of being too influenced by The Sweeney.

Since this is far too long already I will end by noting, other than citing The Sweeney, most complaints about the British police (in real life or with their portrayal on TV shows) concludes with the suggestion US police shows have been a bad influence!

TCMF-2L