Last night I saw Jean Pierre Melville's Le Samourai. During a
climactic scene, the police follow Alain Delon through the
Metro. The chief investigator of a single murder has assigned
50, count 'em, 50 cops to the task. They lose him, of course,
though they catch up to him just in time.
There were probably 50 cops assigned to the kidnapping in
Kurosawa's High and Low, too.
Granted, these were foreign films, but I seem to remember
similar amounts of manpower being devoted to single cases in
old US films
(though I can't think of a specific example). Was this ever
close to reality, that that many cops would be devoted to a
single case, no matter how high profile?
High and Low was based on McBain's King's Ransom. In that
book, a handful of cops, along with help from various crime
scene and lab investigators handled the case. McBain is known
for his meticulous handling of police procedure, so I'm
guessing that's far closer to the truth. In these days of
budgetary concerns, I'm betting it's even less. How many cops
are actually assigned (as opposed to watching out and/or
giving occasional assistance) to a redball, as they call high
profile cases in Homicide?
Mark
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