Road Wars – Police in Reality TV

I was watching the Crime & Investigation channel today, and it was showing a British police reality program called ‘Road Wars’. Its premise was filming actual police patrols as the police engaged in chases, RBTs, calls to disturbances and checking out suspicious people around Britain. It was very much the same as any reality TV show that followed police in Australia or the US (although I do find it very hard to take people who speak in the Yorkshire accent very seriously).

A few things stood out to me whilst I was watching Road Wars;

1] That they seemed to be focusing heavily on possession of drugs, particularly cannabis, putting their foot down on what some see to be minor offenses that ‘don’t warrant police attention’. The feeling I got from watching it was that; yes it is an offense, and yes we will find you. I figure this is one way they target drugs and try to lower its usage...clever really.

2] The police seemed to be using their discretion by trying to help these trouble youths they found by offering them ways out if they’d cooperate and do things ‘the easy way’ (unfortunately most didn’t, but then again, it wouldn’t have been as entertaining if they did).

And 3] in a ‘high speed’ pursuit, you never see the offending driver escape. They always, always, get caught. Is this because in actual fact the police do always catch the offending driver, or do they just not want us to see them fail to catch the baddies? This also made me think of how this is the pretty much the complete opposite in most movies involving a police car chase. I can’t off the top of my head think of any movie where the pursued get caught by the police (I’m positive there are some though).

All in all, it seemed evident that the police do (and must) show themselves in a good light where they always catch the bad guy, are hard on all offenses, but are capable of using discretion. I know that if I saw the police as being unable to always apprehend the speeders, the car thieves, the drink drivers, the drug dealers, the brawlers and so on, I would lose faith our law enforcement, as I'm sure a lot of people would.