Week Six Blog

This week in class we discussed the portrayal of Law enforcement in the media, specifically focusing on CSI, private eyes, and vigilante's.

In the article CSI and Moral Authority: The Police and Science, the phenomenon of the crime show CSI and society's obsession with it were discussed. Portrayals of the police and forensic scientists are not completely accurate, and often their roles are glamorized and the accuracy of science is exaggerated. When people watch CSI episodes, they trust the police as a moral authority, and get the impression of science being infallible. In CSI, science is what the police and law enforcement officials rely on to solve crime. Science can prove or disprove, and has a certain power with new technology. The degree of accuracy and the speed at which crime solving takes place in CSI episodes is also exaggerated. In reality, crime solving is a slower, more bureaucratic process involving scrupulous procedures. Forensic scientists are not always accurate and perfect in their work, and sometimes they do fail. However, in CSI we do not see this. CSI is an example of what crime investigation could be like if the police and the new forensic science could come together and work in perfect cohesion, solving crime at an unrealistically fast pace, and with an unrealistic infallibility. My eyes were opened after reading this article because i didn't know how unrealistic CSI is/ was. I used to watch it quite frequently, and didn't even think about how the police and forensic scientists are portrayed. The script is portrayed in such a way that makes it believable to the average person watching it.

After watching the latest CSI episode in class, we discussed how many of these typologies are still being used today. We noticed techniques that they use to make science look sexy, smart, and high-tech, as well as the people who seem to have a wealth of knowledge over a wide range of topics, making crime solving seem easy and effortless. Most of the crimes portrayed in CSI are violent and complex. We are given a complicated story through which the crime is entangled, which makes it seem interesting and keeps viewers engaged in the show with an interesting story line. After watching several CSI episodes, we can expect the same type of images and portrayals in subsequent episodes. I think that is interesting to analyze a show such as CSI, because it is one of the most popular television crime dramas, and many people don't even think twice about these kinds of ideas when watching an episode.

After thinking about how crime investigation is portrayed through CSI, I looked at an article in CNN news about a real investigation story http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/03/justice/california-interstate-shooting/index.html?hpt=ju_c2 San Diego police have been trying to find a highway gunman accused of hit and run shootings as well as drive-by shootings. So far, police don't have any specific leads and this did not convince me of police or scientific infallibility. This just reminded me how unrealistic CSI portrays crime investigation. Many crime investigation departments in the country do not use high-tech forensic science like we see in CSI. Crime solving takes time, and the police are not always accurate in identifying perpetrators and we cannot always rely on science to give us the true facts.