ABSTRACT
Critics have claimed that illegal and unconstitutional police methods have been presented as legitimate and laudable, with the potential political effect of making such conduct acceptable to the American public. This chapter investigates two types of respondents through the cooperation of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois such as police officers and police trainees. Forty-nine percent of the respondents thought "Police Story" provided the most accurate portrayal of police work, the noncriminal aspects of their job and the personal sides of their lives. A larger percentage of trainees than experienced officers reported watching these shows, whose common denominator is their portrayal of the police as supercops. Those police respondents who reported always noticing how police are portrayed on television were also more likely to believe that the violations serve to discourage respect for the law than were those who sometimes or rarely took note of police behavior on television.
