Never Ask a Lone Policeman

Be wary of lone policemen, London headteacher tells pupils in the wake of the conviction of another Metropolitan Police officer for rape.  Well. no shit Sherlock.  For those of us who are keen students of schlock cinema, the fact that policemen, especially ones wandering the streets alone, are not to be trusted.  Just watch any of the Maniac Cop films, (actually, you can easily skip the last one, but the first and especially the second are worth watching).  Although, I have to say that he's still a cut above a Metropolitan Police officer as he only kills people, particularly other cops, rather than raping women.  B-movies and exploitation cinema are chock full of bent and criminal cops, abusing their positions of trust to murder, rob and intimidate, so we really shouldn't be surprised that it turns out that they do the same thing in real life.  Yes, I know, I'm back on my old rant about how we all need to be watching more movies, particularly schlocky ones, as they can teach us valuable life lessons.  Like the fact that you can't trust cops.  Even when they aren't corrupt, they're usually being incompetent, refusing to believe people reporting serial killers, vampires and werewolves.  Which, of course, is reflected in real life when women report stalkers and aren't believed until they are murdered.   The real-life police might want us to think that they aren't the fat lazy slobs depicted in many a B-movie, but sadly the real life non-doughnut munching gym going cops are just as bad.  If not worse.  They just have better muscle tone and sharper suits.

Back in the 'good old days' the police could at lest rely upon TV to promote their clean cut image.  You know the thing: good old PC George Dixon wandering around his beat on foot, being avuncular, helping old ladies across the road and the like.  Trustworthy and dependable with no hint of corruption and impropriety: George Dixon could be relied upon not to go around copping a feel of pretty young female crime victims, or beating the shit out of immigrants in back alleys.  There's absolutely no doubt that Dixon of Dock Green couldn't be made today.  Today's relatively honest TV cops are more likely to spend their time investigating corrupt colleagues, as in The Line of Duty, rather than nicking non-police villains.  Any modern day Dixon of Dock Green type of series, if it were to reflect reality, would presumably have to focus on its 'hero' spending his time raping, blackmailing and intimidating every woman who crosses his path, then attempting to cover his tracks to avoid investigation.  Doubtless, he'd have all sorts of dirt on his senior officers, cataloguing their misogyny, racism and corruption, in order coerce them into not pursuing charges against him.  But the original Dixon of Dock Green, of course, wasn't portraying the truth about the Metropolitan Police of the fifties, sixties and seventies, but rather their preferred public image.  In truth, while George Dixon was pounding his beat, finding lost dogs and children, in Soho the Obscene Publications Squad were running protection rackets on sex shops, confiscating the stock of those who wouldn't pay up and selling it to those who would.  If only George Dixon had worked out of West End Central rather than Dock Green, he's have been driving a Daimler paid for out of kickbacks, rather than plodding the streets on foot.