Reality check

I love a good story, especially a good mystery. I get caught up in the search for “Whodunnit?”, the lingering suspicions that rest on everyone, the tension of the story when danger threatens, the conviction that wrong must be made right and the final unveiling of the secret. It is a world in which I readily lose myself. However, I do not love to have the story line jarred with an impossibility, and that keeps happening a lot of late.

There I am having a good time watching a TV mystery, enjoying the story line when an impeccably dressed woman, her hair flowing around her face, enters the scene as she snaps orders at the men under her. And suddenly I am not following the story, I am wondering how many police women actually dress like that and how many females fill the top positions?

Come on. I know women have broken through the glass ceiling in law enforcement, but I am positive they do not dress in that sexy a fashion or wear their hair loose, nor that there really is as high of a percentage of women in that position as the current television and movies portray.

Yes, the country has seen an increase in the number of women in law enforcement in the last few decades. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of women in law enforcement has grown to 20 to 25 percent of the force, but the number of women who lead departments is closer to 1 percent.

In a comprehensive book, author and former police captain Dorothy Schulz concludes that women make up slightly more than 1 percent (about 200 or so) of this nation’s police chiefs and sheriffs. Women serve as police chiefs in several major cities, and women have been sheriffs as well as heads of state police organizations. Two federal law enforcement agencies (the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Park Police) have also been led by women. In addition, a number of special-jurisdiction law enforcement agencies are currently headed by women or have been in recent years, according to the Police Chief magazine website.

So my return to disbelief originates in reality. Yes, women have ascended the ranks in law enforcement, but nowhere near the high percentage portrayed on the television screen and definitely not to the upper echelons.

Nor do real police officers tracking criminals wear long, loose hair. It looks beautiful on the screen, but real officers wear long hair pulled or pinned back. Dress codes dictate the style as do safety issues. In any scuffling match between an officer and the accused, that long hair becomes an easily grabbed and pulled lever (an impossibility with short hair.) That is not an option that any police officer wants to encounter.

I also hit a reality check concerning the length of time it takes to solve a crime. On television, the investigating officers apparently walks from the murder scene to the morgue to hear the cause of death first hand. Or, the crime lab on shows such as “NCIS” quickly receives and processes the information which points to the real killer. And yet in Union County, as in other parts of the state and country, the “detectives and investigators make intermittent runs to the Crime Lab, delivering evidence for analysis,” the El Dorado News-Times recently reported. With few exceptions, the evidence does not immediately go to the lab.

Hey, I still love the mysteries on television, but fiction will always receive a reality check against the more tedious “20/20” or “48 Hours.” These shows depict the lengthier, more tedious process of the real men and women who show up every day for the less glamorous task of real police work.

Kudos to each of you, and thank you for serving.

 


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