IdleRich
IdleRich
so it turns out this isn't the NYPD's most shining moment:
- the first cop on the scene couldn't help because his radio wasn't working.
- then the cops in the sunset park station forgot to halt other trains and the shooter hopped another train and got away.
- then it was discovered that none of the cameras in the station worked.
- eventually, the shooter called the tip line and turns himself in, and the cops never bother to show up.
- so after waiting around for awhile, he decides to go wander around the east village, when another person recognizes him and calls in a second tip.
- then the cops finally arrive and arrest him.
NY's finest.
It feels there should be a word for the way that the reality and the televised versions move so rapidly apart.
CSI; NY is on here basically every day and in that show Mac Taylor leads a department full of people whom I don't think it would be inaccurate to describe as almost superhuman. And what is more impressive than the fact that they are all highly qualified medical experts in peak physical condition is their dogged commitment to justice. Every single one of them is prepared to go that extra mile, they investigate every clue to the hilt - if they find some grass stains on the trousers they identify the species and then they discover that it only grows in one place, and then they go there and interview every single person who lives in that neighbourhood... and so on and so forth. And yet we find out that in reality your average NY cop would probably follow a fleeing criminal with his eyes as long as he didn't have to turn his head to do so.
Now, of course, I realise that television and reality are not the same. But I do feel there is a particular phenomenon here - something about how the worse and worse the reality becomes, the more determined the entertainment industry is to insist on their unimpeachable qualities. In some sense it strikes me as similar to the thing that Parkinson (of Parkinson's Law) identified with the British (though I expect it could be any) navy - how in 1600 they had 10,000 ships with 500,000 seamen and just 3 admirals. In 1800 they 5,000 ships and 100,000 seamen being directed by 50 admirals along with 250 vice admirals, and by the year 2000 they had 1,000 ships and 2,000 admirals etc etc (you have probably guessed that I just made up those numbers to illustrate the point).