This clip from an episode of The Bill from July 2009, just before the shows finish shows a supposedly innocent suspect decide to run from Police officers just wanting to enquire for possible evidence or witness accounts.
I feel that the short clip from the show does well to cover themes that appear through a contemporary crime drama and the issues that due come to face modern police officers. The scene shows that with modern day policing there is no racial divides with a black officer playing a protagonists role. It also opens up for a look into modern youth and the overall representation and trust towards police officers. With the intense, fragile situation the officers find themselves in, this also pulls on the differences of contemporary police to that of the golden age of policing with dramas such as Dixon of Dock Green.
This is an episode from series 2 of Dixon of Dock Green broadcast in 1956. The focus of this clip will be between 1:30 to 5:00 in which the lead, George Dixon has to investigate the small, by today's standards, matter of someone having £10 stolen from their wallet.
This themes this allows the closer analysis of is the simple way the police go about matters in comparison to the contemporary times of The Bill. People these days wouldn't make much out of having £10 or £20 stolen out of their wallets, this is the more common crime police officers had to deal with back then and scale was much smaller. Scale would be effected by budgeting put into the show compared to the big budgets of contemporary works with movie-like proportions to dramas but also the frequency of large, daredevil crimes weren't as common in society during the 50's and 60's because of the much more positive way police were viewed by the public and that statistically they were brilliantly sufficient at stopping crime.
Comparison/ Textual Analysis
With looking at the Dixon clip, the difference of the 'golden age' of policing compared to contemporary is very evident. Dixon only needs to use some skill to defuse a situation and get people working together at a relaxed pace to find out where the money from the wallet has gone. The fact that it is at an occasion such as a wedding shows that the police had much more free time on their hands because crime wasn't a huge issue after the war years. When you look at modern day police they need to be focussed for entire shifts and are always involved in dealing with various forms of crime and a population that has grown more hostile to police presence. Just for context to that point, for example the 2011 summer riots occurred because young people thought they were not being acknowledged in society and the police were a repressive government force to keep them down and looking bad, making the police seem worse in the public eye. The view was also backed by the fact that people believe the police cannot deal with issues including this, so why could they help do anything else. The youth at the 25 seconds area of the Bill scene are a simple example of modern youth making the job of policeman very difficult. This small moment within the chase could have connotations to the youth in modern society, during the times of Dixon youth wasn't a large independent culture which it is nowadays and because teenagers always want to be seen and believe no one understands them they feel the presence of police is in fact a negative one for them and they are not afraid, hence increased violence and disobedience towards officers of the law. This does have its effects on the police because they struggle to deal with the modern stereotypical outlaw youth of today and this in turn is reflected in the media and the public view that the police are a fairly weak force even towards dealing with so much aggravation, this then leads on to society questioning their ability to be able to help anyone. The issue doesn't exist in Dixon's era because the youth were brought up in society by stricter means and the police were a more intimidating, strong presence and this garnered much more respect from the entire population in general therefore leading to less issues to be dealt with.
Even the basic elements of the Bill clip show what the modern day police force are up against. There is the rebellious youth, even shown again with the group chasing the suspect, reluctance to comply with police because of a society that fails to trust after events such as Hillsborough and the mid-eighties Miners strikes and finally extreme incidences involving people including suicide from the clip. The police have a huge array that they have to deal with compared to simple purse snatching of the Dixon era which again made the police force look much more positive because they seemed in control. To simplify difficulties police face now, with a rapidly changing society and the introduction of so many new things into everyday lives technologically, it allows for crime to become easier and cyber and near unstoppable for police at times. Even though it may not be their fault at most times, authorities get blamed when someone commits suicide because they were bullied on the internet but with these issues in modern times it has a huge impact on the stance the people take towards police and their reliability and trustworthiness is brought into question on multiple occasions. What can occur in society now are issues that are out of police control, because they are the authority they get all the blame when things turn ugly and wrong, for example the April Jones abduction in 2012 in which the police were viewed as not doing enough to really try and save the young girl even though they couldn't really do much. Society see it as the police have not done enough because the young girl has gone, if the step back is taken reliability does place parents responcibilities into the question because they are the child's authority in essence. A reason this would never be focussed upon in the media is because families clearly get distraught over heartbreaking circumstances and the police are in place to solve crime so they get the stick when it is not.
