“True Detective.” HBO Your favorite TV crime dramas are likely highly inaccurate. Here are the most common mistakes that law enforcement has seen on…
“True Detective.”
HBO
Your favorite TV crime dramas are likely highly inaccurate. Here are the most common mistakes that law enforcement has seen on the small screen.
NBC Universal Television
According to Matt C. Pinsker, a criminal justice professor at the Wilder School at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), a practicing criminal defense attorney, and former prosecutor, reading people their rights doesn’t happen as often as TV crime dramas show. If the officer doesn’t need to rely on your answers to questions to convict you of that crime—like for a DUI—then being Mirandized isn’t necessary. These are summary arrests according to Srgt. Paul Grattan, a 17-year law enforcement veteran and a graduate of the FBI National Academy. He also says that this common TV crime drama scene gives birth to a lot of misunderstanding in real life. “Simply put, many people who are arrested do not have to be Mirandized, and it’s rarely done at the scene of a crime or apprehension,” he says. Here are the things medical TV shows get wrong, too.
Pinsker advises his clients not to say anything. It is extremely rare that anything they say would be helpful. In some situations, Pinsker says clients could do more harm than good by speaking up. “Admittedly, it makes for very exciting and dramatic television to see the evil defendant playing verbal games with the heroes of law enforcement while the sleazy defense attorney sits nearby,” Pinsker says. “But this is nothing like real life.” In reality, by the time a person has an attorney the defendant has already made all the damaging statements possible. If a client does have valuable information, they would tell their attorney before speaking with a prosecutor.
Pinskers’ other favorite TV crime drama gaffe is SWAT raids. Sometimes, the main character who is a detective or an ordinary police officer leads the SWAT team in a raid. They are often wearing plain clothes, holding a pistol, and wearing only bulletproof vests in comparison to the SWAT team that is in full gear. “In the real world, the SWAT team would conduct the raid, and once the premise is secured other law enforcement would get involved, such as collecting evidence and interviewing suspects,” Pinsker says. Don’t miss the secrets reality TV show producers won’t tell you.
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That’s right—your favorite detective likely has less pull in real life and tons of higher-ups to answer to, Grattan says. “In fact, detectives in many agencies across the country hold the equivalent level of rank as a police officer,” Grattan adds. “They are typically supervised by sergeants or other executives and never ‘take over’ a crime scene nor [take] command at a major incident.” And while a detective telling a captain to step aside because it is “their crime scene” makes for good TV crime dramas, it would never happen in the real world.
Real cops and detectives have to go through various channels before getting the necessary information for a case. This means checking more than one tell-all database that TV crime dramas have, Grattan says. This includes manually searching files, hunting down family members and court information, as well as other government records. “Furthermore, some information takes a long time to obtain, and formal requests and or subpoenas must be submitted,” Grattan says. “What on television takes seconds, often takes days or weeks.”
This is a personal pet-peeve for Grattan—the magic parking spot. “One thing I’ve always marveled at was how cops always manage to be able to pull right up in front of the call they’re going to,” Grattan says. “In reality, on many calls, we don’t want to pull right in front of the location we’re going to—for tactical reasons—and even if we wanted to, there usually isn’t any room like there is on TV.” Although cops do have leeway on where they can park, the reality is they still need to find a spot for their car when they answer a call.
NBC
The truth is confessions rarely happen and are often not very dramatic, Grattan says. Additionally, the confessions on TV crime dramas show a suspect admitting to the crime as if that means the case is over. “Confessions aren’t as simple as getting someone to say ‘yes, I did it,'” Grattan says. The confession must be thorough, and investigators must convey that the suspect expressed a motive, knew intimate details of the crime, and that their statements match other evidence. Next, check out the classic shows you didn’t know you could watch on Netflix.
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