I have seen a busload of police awaiting trouble, but that's
crowd control and not criminal catching. Thrillers sometimes
seem to feature unlikely numbers of police. I think real life
is more like the average police procedural, such as the last
one I read, Silent Proof by Michael A. Hawley
(who's a sheriff and shouldn't be too far off): The detective
sometimes has half a dozen police at a crime scene or
answering a call, plus her boyfriend from internal affairs
stopping by, although others are in the background doing
computer and files work, and the whole department gets a
bulletin to look out for such-and-such a car.
According to the following article
about Richmond, Viriginia, I read yesterday, the number of
police on the street is going down and murder rates are going
up, maybe parallel to unemployment rates, maybe related to
lack of funding for the 100,000 COPS community policing
program, and probably on account of so many police officers
having been called to military active duty:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.wallace-wells.html
Joy
Mark Sullivan asked:
> 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?
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