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submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by ButtBidet@hexbear.net to c/movies@hexbear.net

I've been going through the Columbo catalog. Yes, Columbo is really cool, as police shows go. Also I was watching a bit of Red Dragon.

One common narrative is that some cops are special, and have this really precise intuition, which someone magically cuts through all the many details of the case and exactly hones in on the correct perpetrator, which is never without fail. I love Columbo, but FUCKKKK he's so guilty of this. From minute ten of the episode, he's knows who is the murderer and he's just examining all the inconsistencies of the story until the murderer just confesses and goes to a life in prison without a fight. In Red Dragon, ~~Ben~~ Ed Norton's character can just look at the crime scene photos and then the crime plays in his brain like a movie. I might be exaggerating slightly as I was bored of that film. Think Odo, who just knows when something illegal is going to go down.

I feel like many cop movies have this "special police intuition" trope going on.

It does upset me. If one's ever gone dealt with the legal system in any way, cops are wrong AF. I think we've all experienced it when a cop makes a snap (lazy) judgement, follows through with their hunch out of sheer laziness and hubris, the cop builds a lazy ass case out of vibes, and then the innocent victim spends an inordinate amount of time and money trying to prove their innocence, if they're even able to secure their innocence. Often many are stuck with the results of a 5 second cop hunch for the rest of their lives. Prosecutors and courts generally take the cops' findings at their word.

In another venue, we've all tried fighting snap judgements is from admin on Twitter and reddit-logo. AFAIK, I've never seen an admin apologise or return a ban.

I feel like some podcast like Citations Needed or whatever covered this, but no amount of Googling led me to where this idea came from.

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[-] Ildsaye@hexbear.net 59 points 3 days ago

Being autistic, those youtube videos with names like "Former FBI body language expert shows you how to spot a liar" terrify me.

The most full-of-shit people I've ever met all had firm handshakes, an easy smile, and a steady gaze. They could make the predatory delight in their eyes when they discovered your vulnerabilities, look like tender compassion.

You spot liars by having investigated enough to know their claims don't add up, but that is work, and an admission you aren't gifted with the special cop intution.

[-] TrustedFeline@hexbear.net 26 points 3 days ago

Fuck yeah, I hate that pig body language "expert". Oh, avoiding eye contact means you're a liar? Go fuck yourself officer

[-] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago

Maybe I just don't feel like gazing into the simultaneously glassy and hostile orbs of a pig who thinks I might be food, maybe I just don't want that energy in my day

[-] LeninsBeard@hexbear.net 15 points 2 days ago

If you ever wanna watch an hour and a half long takedown of the "body language" grifters this video is great

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[-] Moss@hexbear.net 46 points 3 days ago

You know what show never does this? House MD. It's a detective show without cops, where the super cool genius misanthrope is actually just a loser and wrong all the time. House's intuition is often wrong and makes things worse, and the same goes for other characters. And it has doctors instead of cops. Best detective show ever

[-] Keld@hexbear.net 28 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Okay but it is worth pointing out that they present House as a super genius even though he is wrong all the time, like it's not treated as a failure on his part that he just keeps saying sarcoidosis and paraneoplastic syndrome.

They also have several conversations in which they discuss medical ethics and they pretty much always reach the most fucked up conclusions about patient consent, the role of the doctor and the ethics of various treatments.

Edit: Like here are some of the conclusions reached by just Dr. Cameron (Who is treated as the moral center of the show for it's early seasons) presented as correct.

1: It is good to lie about the benefit of medications if it's to help an unrelated person.

2: Euthenasia is ok but only if the patient is a bad person and deserves to die therefore.

3: It's not only okay to treat patients while stoned, but if you don't feel bad about intervening then you're a bad person.

4: If you're a good enough doctor the rules no longer apply to you

5: Lying to a patients face to get what you want is ok.

6: Giving patients false hope is good because then they don't feel as bad.

Basically every episode has a new and utterly fucked up conclusion reached about medical ethics reached by the cast. It's the same as a police procedural on that front.

[-] ToxicDivinity@hexbear.net 16 points 2 days ago

All true but it's a show and it has to last 40 minutes so they can't just figure it out right away. I feel like house has such a ridiculous premise that it's basically a fantasy show and no doctor would ever say that they are like house or that doctors should be like house whereas cops on the other hand....

[-] Keld@hexbear.net 17 points 2 days ago

I feel I must remind you that cops will model themselves after The Punisher.

[-] Moss@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

Oh yeah it is hilariously pro-medical abuse. Which obviously is extremely fucked up, the message is usually that you should let doctors do whatever they want to you because they know best and people who don't consent to medical abuse are stupid and wrong. Which is bad

[-] Keld@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago

Pretty much. But also every medical drama treats the basic four bioethical principles the same way cop dramas treat the fourth amendment or defense lawyers

[-] Chapo_is_Red@hexbear.net 20 points 2 days ago

I'm almost always eventually right

-House

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 14 points 3 days ago

I've always said that Apothecary Diaries is also House MD in fictional ancient China.

[-] Rom@hexbear.net 11 points 3 days ago

Also inspired by Sherlock Holmes, funnily enough.

[-] CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net 13 points 2 days ago

That's really funny because Sherlock Holmes has dogshit methodology, Arthur Conan Doyle based him off one of his lecturers in medical school, and Arthur Conan Doyle was involved with the Spiritualists to the point that people have drawn connections between Spiritualists' dogshit pseudoscientific reasoning and Sherlock Holmes's horrible methodology. There's a lot of crossover between early Spiritualism and what would become an entire industry of pseudoscientific charlatanism and quackery today.

Sherlock Holmes : detective work :: homeopathy : medicine

[-] vegeta1@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago

If you got him as the attending doctor your health will be in jeopardy

[-] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 10 points 3 days ago
[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 37 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It's a cool trope when the detective is not a cop, which is where it originally started out in novels where a small private detective would be better at the job than the shitty cops.

It's a shit trope that defends and supports cops when it's a cop doing it.

[-] Chapo_is_Red@hexbear.net 28 points 2 days ago

tv has it as "not a cop" sometimes. Psych, Monk, that new show with Kaitlin Olson

Guess this goes back to Sherlock Holmes?

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Guess this goes back to Sherlock Holmes?

Yeah I think so. I don't know of any before that, although there very well might be Sherlock stories are what popularised and created the whole genre I'd bet.

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

Psych really just feels like they're mocking the cops the whole time. Too bad it does a random uturn into severe transphobia at the end.

[-] VibeCoder@hexbear.net 33 points 3 days ago

This is taken to its absurd extreme in Disco Elysium where Harry literally has supernatural intuition and his wild deviations from the case turn out to be relevant all the time to the extent that if you play a certain way you will genuinely earn Kim’s respect as a detective.

[-] segfault11@hexbear.net 35 points 3 days ago

"police intuition" IRL is just us-foreign-policy

[-] TrustedFeline@hexbear.net 24 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

but no amount of Googling led me to where this idea came from.

Try searching for "copaganda". It even has a wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copaganda

Also, it's interesting to listen to the old radio show "Dragnet". It's from the late 40s/early 50s, and you'll recognize it follows the standard police procedural. THey've been doing the same shit for decades. Detective novels predate it, but it's interesting to hear even the acting be so similar to the slop of today.

[-] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 28 points 3 days ago

It's a ripoff of Sherlock Holmes, who was the original "detective who solves crimes through pure logic and intuition." It's been copied, rehashed, and parodied so many times it has become the baseline for all crime solving media.

It's similar to guns, where old westerns would have a crackshot gunslinger hero who could hit a dime at 100 yards with a pistol. Then villains started to be badasses who could also hit far away targets with incredible precision. But now everyone is this way, so later storytellers just assume it's how guns work, meaning you have beat cops shooting guns out of people's hands without anyone getting hurt.

Detective media fell down the same path with Sherlock Holmes' intuition. It's what makes the original character special. But then we need villains who can match that intellect. But then normal people are put on par with the villains, so now everyone is just like that and writers assume that's how cops work. It's "My dad can beat up your dad!" Goku vs. Superman powerlevel wank carried out through generations.

[-] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 15 points 3 days ago

But wasn't Sherlock Holmes less of a "cop's intuition" kind of detective and way more pure robotic logic? "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth". He was the kind to collect evidence and then see what that leads to without preconceptions, beyond what he can hear and observe.

On the other hand, what OP is talking about are cops and detectives that have a feeling they know how is guilty due to instinct, experience, their gut, whatever you want to call it, and then do their best to track down evidence that proves that person is it. Columbo does this by picking up guilty vibes sometimes, I think they've done this in Brooklyn 99 where they have to prove someone did a crime and the tough part is proving it. This does happen in real life occasionally (I just read the book Killers of the Flower Moon, for example) but it also leads to cops relentlessly chasing the innocent too because the person has guilty vibes (i.e. They're black or poor).

[-] purpleworm@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

I think what you're saying just means the Enlightenment values of Sherlock Holmes have been bastardized and vulgarized because thinking about deduction is too hard for the people who write procedurals now.

[-] Robert_Kennedy_Jr@hexbear.net 25 points 3 days ago

OK but Odo spends his free time morphed into a cup or wall panel in Quarks where he can just listen to shady shit going on.

[-] MayoPete@hexbear.net 10 points 3 days ago

Inspirational tbh

[-] miz@hexbear.net 28 points 3 days ago

Ben Norton's character

from acting in blockbusters to the Geopolitical Economy Report, you never know where life will take you!

[-] ButtBidet@hexbear.net 25 points 3 days ago

I heard that his experience with American History X is what led him to move to China and critique US imperialism.

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[-] PaulSmackage@hexbear.net 21 points 3 days ago

The only one i can think of off the top of my head that doesn't do this is Fox Mulder. He can watch a person melt in front of him and he'd just go "where did they go?"

[-] vegeta1@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I remember watching that sex predator seagal cop show where he gets his Spidey sense moments in the show. i-cant Camera blurs and everything. Its so ridiculous i-cant

On a side note that clown kakarot does this several times its why I wasn't murked, why frieza was spared, cell given a senzu, etc. Honestly a miracle earth hasn't been atomised a dozen time off this gut feeling of a guy who thought marriage is a food. Usually the universe twists itself into pretzels to make these guys right i-cant

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

And it's never an intuition for injustice in general, no, that would be "too political". Rather, it's the natural and inborn talent to know, when the very specific laws and regulations of your random moment in time, in the short lived society you happen to find yourself in, at a random little place on earth, are violated to a degree that warrants prosecution by the very legal body you just happened to sign on for. Who knew evolution worked fast enough to produce something so incredibly specific.

Seriously, the idea that something like this could exist just serves to naturalize unjust conditions and build hegemony for the ruling class.

[-] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 22 points 3 days ago

If I remember correctly, Odo just has a lot of constables and informants all over the station

When he petitioned Sisko to grant him full access to the ship's computers and private accounts, he had to be reminded that the Federation does not allow for that sort of behavior and he got all pouty about it

That and it probably doesn't help that he just turns into lamps and vases to spy on people

[-] ButtBidet@hexbear.net 11 points 3 days ago

You might be right, but I feel like Odo does a lot of hunches, and he's never wrong. Except for the Things Past episode when he's extremely wrong.

[-] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That's kinda a thing though. Most murders are obvious and it is only though shoddy police work that they are hard to find. Like, appart from Columbo all the rich white businessmen that kill their wives in the 80s dp have a reasonable expectation to just get away with it. Police intuition is just actually looking into the case at all. Your average cop seems to have a flow chart that is somwthing like, find nearest marginal person to blame. So in that small pond any fish seems like magic

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ok to be fair to Odo he has only one culprit, Quark, and he watches him like a hawk by turning himself into an old Cheeto on the ground

[-] CupcakeOfSpice@hexbear.net 14 points 3 days ago

My dad likes that show On Patrol Live that used to be Live PD before the racial injustice action around 2020 that temporarily stopped the show because very briefly cops were unpopular. Fuckin all the time I hear them go "I know there's a crime here," and pretty much every time it's a person of color. With white guys it's real gentle, everything's explained calmly, and if they do arrest him, it's an unfortunate happenstance that he just happened to be guilty. With a person of color they keep digging until they "find" something possibly illegal and then arrest him. Like, they find a gun, take him to jail, then run to find out if he's registered and legally owning the gun, discovering that he is, and then letting him out the next day to teach him a lesson about following the law and doing nothing wrong.

[-] wolfinthewoods@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I have to admit I would get drunk and watch that show a lot, but only to watch the cops do stupid and reprehensible shit live on the air. There were several instances where the show would suddenly cut away from the officers and convienently take a commercial break when some fucked shit was obviously being done by the cops. Infrequently, but hilariously entertaining, the cops would be made complete fools of and lose the suspect but not cut away to make them look good. There was one where this big pack of guys on dirtbikes (probably 10-15) led the cops on a chase through this rural neighborhood because they'd just lose the cops through tight spaces or go through yards, the cops ended up only catching two of the pack and that's only becauase the two guys accidentally collided with each other and gave the cops a chance to catch up to them, the rest of the pack sped off. I was laughing my ass off that whole time. They should have been playing the Benny Hill theme that whole time.

[-] CupcakeOfSpice@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago

That's great! Then there's also the times they do something horrible, explain what they meant to do, and that is so much worse. I remember them literally slamming a suspect's head through a window, and when asked if that was necessary, he said he didn't know there was a window there, he thought it was a wall. So he meant to slam this guy's face into a wall?

[-] wolfinthewoods@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Those shows are such blatant cop propaganda it's baffling that people take them so seriously. Elliot from Law & Order is like that, break a guy's legs just to get information and the viewers cheer him on. For unknown reasons (possibly an undying love for Olivia) my fiance loved that show and we'd HAVE to watch every new episode right when it came out. So, unexpectedly, I've watched a lot of Law & Order: SVU. And yes, just like in real life, they did mean to slam your face into that wall, at least that part is realistic 😅

Edit: Oh, didn't see I was responding to the post about On Patrol, but the comment still stands either way lol

[-] wolfinthewoods@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago

TVTropes has you covered: Gut Feeling

[-] Meltyheartlove@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago

CW:Cop messing with a dead homeless persons body to create evidence. Is this scene a more realistic depiction of how pigs work.

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[-] corvidenjoyer@hexbear.net 12 points 3 days ago
[-] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 25 points 3 days ago

he's a trickster deity of hearth and fire that mostly just fucks with people and falls off hills

[-] Rom@hexbear.net 22 points 3 days ago

Yeah he works for the LAPD

[-] purpleworm@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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