The View from the Real World

"Hey, man, you didn't handle that one the way Columbo would have!"

"Look, sergeant, if I was Inspector Erskine [of The FBI], I would of had him for sure!"

Such is the cop-shop banter on the Atlanta police force, says Sergeant W.E. Wood of the metropolitan narcotics squad. Like Wood, many real-life police officers, detectives and lawyers enjoy watching their fictionalized counter parts on television. "We watch Columbo and others," says Atlanta Assistant District Attorney Ross Hawkins, "be cause it makes our jobs a little more palatable to watch someone who does always get his man."

Most real-life lawmen, however, find that TV crime shows bear little relation to reality. "Take a recent episode of Streets of San Francisco, " says San Francisco Private Investigator Harold Lipset. "Karl Maiden and his partner drive right up to a suspect's house and park in front. While they are inside, the suspect drives up, sees the car and gets away. Obviously you wouldn't do something like that." Even more often, says TIME Correspondent Joseph Boyce, himself an ex-policeman, TV cops "go to every call with squad lights flashing and sirens screaming." That, he says, would inevitably "cause you to lose them or put a hole through your forehead. You can't park and shoot at the same time."

TV heroes crack their cases through brilliant deductions, whereas most actual crimes are solved through plodding legwork and tips from informers. Complains Manhattan Detective Lieut. Richard J. Gallagher: "You don't ever get clues like they do on TV." Gallagher points to a sign on his desk reading GOYA/KOD. "That stands for 'Get off your ass and knock on doors!' and that's how homicides are really solved."

The glamorous image does bring in a lot of eager recruits, though. Reports Boston Private Detective A. Michael Pascal: "They come in expecting to be issued a trench coat, a badge and a .357 magnum. What we give them is a pencil, a notebook and an assignment."

Policemen and lawyers alike regret that TV viewers often expect real life to live up to its TV image. "The biggest problem criminal lawyers have," says California Attorney Floyd Silliman, "is what we call the Perry Mason syndrome --jurors preconditioned by TV. According to TV, lawyers are not only supposed to get their clients acquitted, they are also supposed to ferret out the guilty parties."

Atlanta's Sgt. Wood cites a recent case in which a man was on trial for selling drugs to an undercover agent. "The jury wanted to know why we hadn't gotten a picture of the buy and why we hadn't gotten fingerprints from the packet," he fumes. "But that's not the way it works. You don't go out and shout, 'I'm an undercover agent buying dope!' Buys take place in dark alleys, and that little plastic bag they wanted us to get fingerprints from was greasy and dirty and handled by a dozen people." As a result of the jury's TV-induced expectations, says Wood, the dope dealer was acquitted.

The problem with introducing a little reality into TV's crime shows, concludes Chicago Chief of Detectives John Killackey, is that the real thing is anything but entertaining. "Who wants to see the paper work, the weeks spent on bum leads, the incoherent witnesses?" he asks. Of course, there is some reality on TV, he admits. "I got 1,100 detectives, and a few of them do look like Peter Falk--dirty raincoats, one eye..."

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